School of Law Author Series 2020/21. Seminar 1 with Professor Eric Posner

Professor Eric Posner at Trinity College Dublin School of Law, on his new book 'The Demagogue's Playbook: The Battle for American Democracy from the Founders to Trump'.

Date and time: 3pm-4pm Irish Standard Time, Wednesday, 2 September 2020

A recording of the seminar can be found Here

Eric Posner, Kirkland & Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law, Arthur and Esther Kane Research Chair, University of Chicago Law School, will be discussing this important and timely new book with Donna Lyons, Trinity College Dublin School of Law on Wednesday, 2 September 2020.

This event will take place at 3pm Irish Standard Time and 10am US Eastern Time. The event will be free of charge and open to all. It will be possible for attendees to join the webinar directly via Zoom HERE

The event will be simultaneously live-streamed on the Law School Facebook Page.

There will be an opportunity for attendees to ask questions of Professor Posner during the session. The webinar will be recorded and made available online following the event.

What—and who—is a demagogue? How did America’s Founders envision the presidency? What should a constitutional democracy look like—and how can it be fixed when it appears to be broken?

Something is definitely wrong with Donald Trump’s presidency, but what exactly? The extraordinary negative reaction to Trump’s election—by conservative intellectuals, liberals, Democrats, and global leaders alike—goes beyond ordinary partisan and policy disagreements. It reflects genuine fear about the vitality of our constitutional system. The Founders, reaching back to classical precedents, feared that their experiment in mass self-government could produce a demagogue: a charismatic ruler who would gain and hold on to power by manipulating the public rather than by advancing the public good.

President Trump, who has played to the mob and attacked institutions from the judiciary to the press, appears to embody these ideas. How can we move past his rhetoric and maintain faith in our great nation? In The Demagogue’s Playbook, acclaimed legal scholar Eric A. Posner offers a blueprint for how America can prevent the rise of another demagogue and protect the features of a democracy that help it thrive—and restore national greatness, for one and all.