The Constitution in Jeopardy

Over the last two decades, a fringe plan to call a convention under the Constitution's amendment mechanism-the nation's first ever-has inched through statehouses. Delegates, like those in Philadelphia two centuries ago, would exercise nearly unlimited authority to draft changes to our fundamental law, potentially altering anything from voting and free speech rights to regulatory and foreign policy powers. Such a watershed moment would present great danger, and for some, great power.

In this important book, Feingold and Prindiville distill extensive legal and historical research and examine the grave risks inherent in this effort. But they also consider the role of constitutional amendment in modern life. Though many focus solely on judicial and electoral avenues for change, such an approach is at odds with a cornerstone ideal of the Founding: that the People make constitutional law, directly. In an era defined by faction and rejection of long-held norms, The Constitution in Jeopardy examines the nature of constitutional change and asks urgent questions about what American democracy is, and should be.

As a lawmaker, diplomat, lawyer, and professor, Russ Feingold has devoted his career to protecting the Constitution's bedrock guarantees. Serving nearly two decades in the United States Senate, Feingold was the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act, citing civil liberty concerns, and cosponsored the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold Act), the most important campaign finance reform in decades. He sat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and chaired its Sub-committee on the Constitution.

Feingold has also served as a U.S. special envoy and taught at Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and Marquette Law Schools. He is now president of the American Constitution Society, the nation's leading progressive legal organization, and an affiliated scholar of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center. He is a recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. His previous book, While America Sleeps: a Wake-up Call for the Post-9/11 Era, was a New York Times bestseller.

Peter Prindiville is a Bradley Research Fellow with the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, served as a fellow on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and written on domestic and international comparative constitutional topics. Prindiville earned his undergraduate degree from Georgetown's School of Foreign Service and a master's degree from the National University of Ireland, where he was a Mitchell Scholar. He will graduate with a J.D. from Stanford in June.