Bruce Ackerman | |
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.png) Ackerman in 2017 | |
| Born | Bruce Arnold Ackerman (1943-08-19)August 19, 1943 (age 82) New York City, U.S. |
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| Title | Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science |
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| Discipline | Constitutional law |
| Institutions | University of Pennsylvania Yale University Columbia University |
| Doctoral students | Chang Wen-chen |
| Notable works | We the People (1991–2014)[1] |
Bruce Arnold Ackerman (born August 19, 1943) is an American legal scholar who serves as aSterling Professor atYale Law School. In 2010, he was named byForeign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers.[2] Ackerman was also identified as one of the top 50 thinkers of theCOVID-19 era byProspect.[3]
Ackerman was born inNew York City on August 19, 1943 toJewish parents whose families had fledEastern Europe in previous decades to escapeantisemiticpogroms.[4] He grew up in theBronx, graduating from theBronx High School of Science. He went on to earn aBachelor of Arts,summa cum laude, fromHarvard University in 1964, followed by aBachelor of Laws (equivalent to aJuris Doctor) degree fromYale Law School in 1967.
Ackerman clerked for U.S. Court of Appeals JudgeHenry Friendly from 1967 to 1968, and then forU.S. Supreme Court JusticeJohn Marshall Harlan II from 1968 to 1969.
Ackerman joined the faculty ofUniversity of Pennsylvania Law School in 1969.[5] He was a professor atYale University from 1974 to 1982 and atColumbia University from 1982 to 1987. Since 1987 Ackerman has been theSterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale. He teaches classes at Yale on the concepts of justice and on his theories of constitutional transformation. He regards himself as alegal pragmatist.[6]
He was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986.[7] He is also aCommander of the Order of Merit of the French Republic.
Ackerman is listed as counsel in U.S. Army Captain Nathan Michael Smith's lawsuit against PresidentBarack Obama.[8] The lawsuit asserts five counts against the President: thatOperation Inherent Resolve violates theWar Powers Resolution, that the Constitution's Take Care Clause requires the President to publish a sustained legal justification of his actions, that theAuthorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists does not authorize the operation against ISIS, that theIraq Resolution does not authorize the operation in Iraq, and that the Commander in Chief clause does not allow the President to authorize the operation.[9] Captain Smith's attorneys allege he has standing to sue because he will be personally liable for any damages he inflicts in an illegal war.[10] The White House responded that the lawsuit raises "legitimate questions".[11] After the district court dismissed the lawsuit as apolitical question, Ackerman appealed.[12]
In 2022, Ackerman co-authored aPolitico article withGerard Magliocca predicting that the2024 United States presidential election would divide the country into Democratic states that disqualifyDonald Trump from appearing on the ballot under theFourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution for theJanuary 6 United States Capitol attack and Republican states which would not, potentially leading to aconstitutional crisis in which no candidate wins a supermajority of votes in theUnited States Electoral College and in which theUnited States House of Representatives either nominates Trump as the winner despite losing the electoral vote or is completely incapable of resolving the issue through acontingent election as constitutionally required.[13] This prediction failed to play out after the Supreme Court ruled inTrump v. Anderson that individual states could not rule on the eligibility of a candidate.
Sandrine Baume identified Bruce Ackerman as a leading critic of the "compatibility of judicial review with the very principles of democracy," in contrast to writers likeJohn Hart Ely andRonald Dworkin.[14] For his position as documented by Baume, Ackerman was joined in his opinion aboutjudicial review byLarry Kramer andMark Tushnet as the main proponents of the idea thatjudicial review should be strongly limited and that the Constitution should be returned "to the people."[15]
Ackerman is married toSusan Rose-Ackerman, also a professor at Yale Law School, who teaches classes onadministrative law. Their son,John M. Ackerman, also an academic, lives and works in Mexico. Their daughter, Sybil Ackerman-Munson, is an environmentalist inPortland, Oregon.
He is the author of nineteen books and more than ninety articles. His interests cover constitutional theory, political philosophy, comparative law and politics, law and economics, American constitutional history, the environment, modern economy and social justice.
His works include:
We the People: Foundations is best known for its forceful argument that the "switch in time", whereby a particular member of theUS Supreme Court changed his judicial philosophy to one that permitted much more of theNew Deal legislation in response to the so-called court-packing plan, is an example of political determination of constitutional meaning. Ackerman delivered the 2006 Oliver Wendell Holmes Lectures at Harvard Law School.[16]
The Stakeholder Society served as a basis for the introduction ofChild Trust Funds in theUnited Kingdom.[17]
University of Tehran held a conference in May 2019, aboutRevolutionary Constitutions: Charismatic Leadership and the Rule of Law with Ackerman andNadia Maftouni as keynote speakers. Maftouni also wrote a review on the book which was published inThe Socratic Inquiry newsletter[18] and an analytical paper about some parts of the book which was published inJournal of Contemporary Research on Islamic Revolution.[19]
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