Bruce Ackerman is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University. His extensive publications have influenced the fields of political philosophy, constitutional law, and environmental law, as well as current thought on issues of social justice in taxation, welfare, and public policy. His major works include Social Justice in the Liberal State (Yale, 1980), the multivolume constitutional history We the People (Harvard, 1991-2014), The Decline and Fall of the American Republic (Yale, 2010), The Failure of the Founding Fathers (Yale, 2005), and Before the Next Attack (Yale, 2006). His book The Stakeholder Society (Yale, 1999, with Anne Alstott) was a basis for Tony Blair’s introduction of child investment accounts in the United Kingdom. Ackerman’s many honors include Commander of the French Order of Merit and the American Philosophical Society’s Henry Phillips Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Jurisprudence, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rockefeller Fellowship in the Humanities. In 2010 he was named a Top 100 Global Thinker by Foreign Policy magazine. Educated at Harvard University (BA) and Yale Law School (LLB), Ackerman is a member of the American Law Institute and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In his Academy project, “A General Theory of World Constitutionalism,” Ackerman develops a new framework for understanding the proliferating constitutionalisms of this century. He claims that standard legal frameworks are too court-centered, failing to appreciate that judges play different roles in different constitutional regimes. Political science emphasizes the importance of institutional design, notably in the choice between presidential and parliamentary systems, but fails to integrate larger normative issues involved in constitutional legitimation. Historical works sometimes touch upon these issues in the study of national or regional developments but do not integrate their particularistic insights into a general framework.
To grasp constitutionalism in both its differing traditions and as a worldwide phenomenon, Ackerman explores three dimensions of constitutionalism: first, as a legitimating discourse of modernity; second, as a specification of institutional practices; and third, as the product of distinctive historical conjunctures. This framework permits both comparative research and reflection as it exposes fundamental problems such as the European Union’s confrontation with the diverse discourses, practices, and historical conjunctures represented by the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
Meet Bruce Ackerman
A short portrait filmed at the Hans Arnhold Center, introducing the work and ideas behind fellows’ projects in Berlin.
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Berlin Journal Articles
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Videos
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A General Theory of World Constitutionalism
Daimler Fellow Bruce Ackerman identifies three sets of actors that play key roles in different forms of constitutional legitimation: revolutionary outsiders, established insiders, and a combination of established insiders and political elites previously excluded from the system.
Explore Past Fellows
Hakim Abderrezak
Marco Abel
David Abraham
