Bruce Arnold Ackerman (born August 19, 1943) is an American legal scholar who serves as a Sterling Professor at Yale Law School. In 2010, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers.[2] Ackerman was also among the unranked bottom 40 in the 2020 Prospect list of the top 50 thinkers for the COVID-19 era.[3]
Ackerman is listed as counsel in U.S. Army Captain Nathan Michael Smith's lawsuit against President Barack Obama.[6] The lawsuit asserts five counts against the President: that Operation Inherent Resolve violates the War Powers Resolution, that the Constitution's Take Care Clause requires the President to publish a sustained legal justification of his actions, that the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists does not authorize the operation against ISIS, that the Iraq Resolution does not authorize the operation in Iraq, and that the Commander in Chief clause does not allow the President to authorize the operation.[7] 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.[8] The White House responded that the lawsuit raises "legitimate questions".[9] After the district court dismissed the lawsuit as a political question, Ackerman appealed.[10]
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.
2006: Before the Next Attack: Preserving Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism
2010: The Decline and Fall of the American Republic (ISBN9780674057036)
2014: We the People, Volume 3: The Civil Rights Revolution (ISBN9780674050297)
2018: Revolutionary Constitutions: Charismatic Leadership and the Rule of Law (ISBN9780674970687)
2024: The Postmodern Predicament: Existential Challenges of the Twenty-First Century (ISBN9780300277098)
We the People: Foundations is best known for its forceful argument that the "switch in time", whereby a particular member of the US Supreme Court changed his judicial philosophy to one that permitted much more of the New 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.[12]
University of Tehran held a conference in May 2019, about Revolutionary Constitutions: Charismatic Leadership and the Rule of Law with Ackerman and Maftouni as keynote speakers. Maftouni also wrote a review on the book which was published in The Socratic Inquiry newsletter[14] and an analytical paper about some parts of the book which was published in Journal of Contemporary Research on Islamic Revolution.[15]
^Thiruvengadam, Arun K. (2019). "Evaluating Bruce Ackerman's 'Pathways to Constitutionalism' and India as an Exemplar of 'Revolutionary Constitutionalism on a Human Scale'". International Journal of Constitutional Law. 17 (2): 682. doi:10.1093/icon/moz048. ISSN1474-2659.
^ For a more extended consideration of his contributions over the course of his career, go to Biographical
Overview: "Bruce Ackerman" at law.yale.edu
^Nadia Maftouni, Book Review: Revolutionary Constitutions: Charismatic Leadership and the Rule of Law (Bruce Ackerman, Harvard University Press, 2019), The Socratic Inquiry Newsletter, 1 (3), 2-3 (2019).
^Nadia Maftouni, Is the Iranian Revolution Sustaining a
Constitutional System? The Assessment in Terms of Bruce Ackerman's Theory, Journal of Contemporary Research on Islamic Revolution, 2 (6), 85-98 (2020).