Among progressive scholars of the US constitution, Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law, is widely considered pre-eminent. Now 71, he studied at Northwestern and Harvard and has also taught at DePaul, USC, Duke and UC Irvine. He has argued several cases at the US supreme court and written extensively about it.
His last book, Worse Than Nothing, was a broadside against originalism, the doctrine touted by rightwing justices as they take an axe to hard-won rights. In his new book, Chemerinsky goes to the root of the problem with a still starker title: No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.
