From a renowned legal scholar, a new vision of how the judiciary has reconfigured rights and power.Ambitious and erudite, The Power Revolution is a new challenge to conventional wisdom from one of our most prominent constitutional scholars. Philip Hamburger’s prior scholarship initiated the current judicial reconsideration of the administrative state. Here, he makes the broader point that the acclaimed rights revolution has been accompanied by a much more substantial power revolution—a vast judicial expansion of government power and a corresponding judicial erosion of rights. The slant toward power goes much further than has been understood, and because it cuts across much of the Constitution, its effects are sobering. It threatens both our freedom and our government. It even undermines the nation’s stability. It’s therefore important to understand the contemporary realities of unconstitutional power, not just our old constitutional ideals.In observing the judiciary’s responsibility for how we are governed now, The Power Revolution calls upon Americans to push back against unconstitutional power and urges the judges to reconsider what they have done. After so much damage to the Constitution, it is time for repair.
