After Patrick Henry
Neal Q. Herrick

Winner of the IPPY Gold Medal for best book of 2009 in the "Freedom Fighter of the Year" category.

Silver Medal in ForeWord's competition for best political science book of 2009.

In After Patrick Henry, Neal Herrick offers a sharp and compelling analysis of the most pervasive threat to democracy in the United States: government corruption. While bribery and influence-peddling are the most visible forms, Herrick argues that the real danger lies in the laws these corrupt practices produce—legislation that systematically serves corporate power while undermining the public good. This “delusional corruption,” he contends, has enabled everything from unjust wars to the hollowing out of civil society.

Tracing the historical roots of this structural failure, Herrick identifies a fatal flaw in the U.S. Constitution: the weakness of impeachment provisions and the failure to make government truly accountable to the people. He demonstrates how this flaw has allowed the executive branch to operate with increasing impunity—long before Donald Trump, but made glaringly obvious during and after his presidency.

In light of Trump’s repeated defiance of institutional norms and his ongoing efforts to consolidate power, After Patrick Henry reads as both prescient and urgent. Herrick's call to constitutional reform, including a proposed amendment to restore meaningful checks on presidential authority, offers a rare and necessary response not just to Trumpism, but to the deeper constitutional crisis that made it possible.

For anyone grappling with the fragility of American democracy today, After Patrick Henry is a vital contribution—part history, part diagnosis, and part blueprint for democratic renewal.

A powerful indictment, well researched and grounded. A clarion call to all of us to demand a halt to "the gradual and silent encroachments of those in power."
- A. Robert Smith, The Tiger in the Senate

Herrick, who knows not just politics, but government from the inside, has reread American history with a critical eye. A good critical read.
- Dick Howard, The Specter of Democracy

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction

Part I: Our Country in Trouble

• Chapter 1: Presidential Wars
• Chapter 2: An Eroded Political Culture
• Chapter 3: Civil Society Complaisance

Part II: The Broken "Mainspring" of Our Government

• Chapter 4: Should Impeachment Proceedings Consider the Good of the Country?
• Chapter 5: Should Impeachment Proceedings Consider Public Opinion and Party Discipline?
• Chapter 6: Should Impeachment Defendants Be Granted Due Process?
• Chapter 7: Did the 106th Senate Usurp House Impeachement Powers?
• Chapter 8: Did the 106th Senate Usurp the Chief Justice's Authority to Preside?

Part III: Our Journey from Republic to Elective Monarchy and Some Thoughts About a Return Trip

• Chapter 9: Stepping-Stones on the Path We Have Travelled
• Chapter 10: Potholes on the Way Back

Part IV: Stepping Back From the Brink of Tyranny

• Chapter 11: Prudent "Measures" We Should Take
• Chapter 12: A First Step on the Road Back
• Afterword
• Cases
• References
• Index

Neal Q. Herrick is a retired University of Michigan academic in industrial relations. He is co-author, with late Howard Sheppard, of Where Have all the Robots Gone and he served on the Task Force that produced Work in America, published by the MIT Press.

475 pages, 6x9, bibliography, index

After Patrick Henry:  Retail Prices
Paperback:
978-1-55164-320-5 $24.99
Hardcover:
978-1-55164-321-2 $53.99
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