The Executive Unbound
After the Madisonian Republic
Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule
Reviews and Awards
"A thought-provoking book." -- Library Journal
"This is a book that will, for many readers, both illuminate and infuriate. It is the most full-throated embrace in recent years of the very important (and always controversial) jurisprudential theories associated with Carl Schmitt, particularly with regard to the accretion of power in the Executive Branch. If their views become widely accepted, American law--or at least the American legal academy--will never be the same again." --Sanford Levinson, author of Our Undemocratic Constitution
"This exciting, contrarian, and learned book challenges the core of liberal legalism." --Jack Goldsmith, author of The Terror Presidency
"In a relentlessly challenging attack on Madisonian pieties, Posner and Vermeule use contemporary examples to argue with verve and style that only politics can realistically check the inevitable dominance of the modern executive." --Charles Fried, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
"Opponents of presidential power may be discomfited by Posner and Vermeule's argument that the imperial presidency is unavoidable in the modern world. Proponents of presidential power may be equally discomfited by the authors' argument that presidential power is constrained in practice by politics. Both sides will find it difficult to identify the cracks in a provocative argument with which everyone interested in the twenty-first century Constitution must contend." --Mark Tushnet, Professor of Law, Harvart Law School, and author of Why the Constitution Matters
"The title of Posner and Vermeule's book is as provocative as its argument, since the executive is, on their view, bound--but by politics, not law. If they are right, then standard courses in law school should be re-titled 'Constitutional Politics' and 'Administrative Politics', not to mention 'International Politics', and perhaps even moved out of the law schools and into political science departments. For that reason alone, there will be strong resistance to their book's central thesis, which is the mark of a highly successful work." --David Dyzenhaus, Professor of Law and Philosophy, University of Toronto, and author of Hard Cases in Wicked Legal Systems
