Personal and Haunting Reflections on the American State

November 01, 2024 at 09:31 AM EDT

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With the persistent dysfunction of our current political moment, we should examine how significant changes to the American state have triggered this evolution. When Trump was elected in 2016, his sudden emergence surprised journalists, pundits, political consultants, and academics alike. Yet as the years since have demonstrated, the election was no fluke, but rather the rise of a movement. Twilight of the American State by Pierre Schlag (published free-to-read online by the University of Michigan Press in 2023) not only explores how U.S. law and legal institutions set the stage for 2016, but the book also shows how the uneasy and unstable combination of different versions of the state—liberal democratic, administered, neoliberal, and dissociative—fueled the political-legal dysfunction America confronts today.

Of course this is not an easy topic to tackle. After reading the book, Mark Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Emeritus Professor of Law from the Harvard Law School wrote, “Schlag tells us that understanding how we got to where we are is the precondition for doing something about it, though he forgoes prescribing simple remedies.” That is immediately clear from the preface, where the author writes, “This is an unusual book for law. It has no conclusion. Instead, it offers itself as a preliminary step: it is an effort at awareness and reconnaissance—a kind of intellectual reckoning with our political-legal conditions.”

As promised, Twilight of the American State avoids prescribing quick fixes or lamenting political polarization, and instead invites all readers to take a big picture view of how our law and legal institutions have changed, and how those changes will shape our future. It’s a provocative thesis—a dramatic rethinking of the political-legal character of the American state. Mitchel Lasser, Professor of Law and Director of Graduate Studies at Cornell Law School praised Schlag’s writing for making an “exciting and cutting-edge contribution in the fields of legal and political theory and history” and added, “Its distinctive voice is simultaneously personal, charming, and haunting.”

Author Pierre Schlag is University Distinguished Professor & Byron R. White Professor of Law at the University of Colorado. In his book, he brings to bear his experience teaching jurisprudence, constitutional laws, and contemporary legal theory, as well as his previous experience as a lawyer with the Washington, D.C. firm of Covington & Burling. Since writing the book, Schlag has continued to consider the issues that remain unaddressed. He reflected, “My own profession (law) has largely failed to examine the ways in which it has allowed law to turn from a profession into a business. Indeed, the state (with or without Trump) is now a business—a set of extensive (and largely covert) legalistic entanglements with private enterprise—local tax breaks, selected subsidies, exemptions, special dispensations, waivers, and so on. These are markers of institutions that have been implicated in and become victims of their own degradation.” In thinking about the upcoming election he added, “Now, of course, given the election. . . these questions are probably not foremost on everyone’s mind. But even so our institutions—the media, the press, the political parties—could do with a bit of self-reckoning—and not just internally.”

Twilight of the American State is part of the University of Michigan Press’s “Dialogues in Democracy” collection, which invites all readers to find books that contextualize their experiences of voting in America. As they point out, while “tensions erupt every four years during the presidential election, [they] also shape our daily experiences of democracy outside the voting booth.” To make sure all interested readers have an opportunity to engage with this scholarship, the book was published open access and is immediately available free-to-read online at https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12393244.

So, what has changed, and what can we do to address it? We invite you all to read the book for free and reflect on your own solutions.

The University of Michigan Press is a vital component of UM Library's Publishing division, which is the primary academic publishing division of the University. In partnership with authors and series editors, they publish in a wide range of humanities and social science disciplines. They champion the library’s dedication to helping all learners, researchers, and creators to succeed through global digital and print publishing and distribution programs. The Press, with a rich history of publishing expertise, continues to lead in the development of digital scholarship and to support the dissemination of quality knowledge as widely and freely as possible.