SEPTEMBER 2019 - AudioFile
The author narrates in a clear, deliberate voice that helps listeners process the legalese that is necessary in a discussion of the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. But her tone shifts between that of a benevolent tour guide and that of a condescending teacher. Wehle’s prose explores the major tenets and intellectual considerations at the core of these two founding documents to distill what is said, what isn’t said, and what is up for debate. (Spoiler alert: It’s mostly up for debate.) While Wehle’s narration sometimes sounds like she’s talking down to listeners, this audiobook is accessible and useful to understand how and why the U.S. does and doesn’t operate in the ways people sometimes expect. L.E. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
08/19/2019
In this accessible treatise, Wehle, a law professor and commentator for CNN and MSNBC, deplores the state of relationships among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the U.S. government. She argues that the “ingenious” checks and balances the Constitution establishes between the three branches are no longer working, and the executive branch is accumulating too much power. As evidence she cites Congress’s tolerance of the executive branch’s incursions into Congress’s power to declare war, the proliferation of executive orders that bypass congressional legislative priorities, and Congress’s reluctance to employ the Constitution’s emolument and impeachment clauses to check executive overreach. As causes, she identifies the flow of corporate money to political campaigns, state efforts to suppress voter participation, and polarized politics that hampers constructive policy making. She also opines that President Trump lacks respect for constitutional norms and that his behavior presents a realistic threat to democracy. Wehle elegantly translates the Constitution into layperson-friendly terms, using everyday analogies; she compares the American government to an ice cream parlor and an employee manual, and she uses Wallace Stevens’s poem “The Mind of Winter” to explain the plain-language approach to legal interpretation. Her analysis of the consolidation of power in the executive branch, though cogent, will probably only reach readers already concerned about President Trump. (June)
Jake Tapper
Not since perhaps the Nixon years have there been so many valid questions about the U.S. Constitution and its role in our lives – and so many perceived challenges to it. Kim Wehle’s How to Read the Constitution—and Why provides essential, compelling reading on this glorious document. A must-read for this era.
SEPTEMBER 2019 - AudioFile
The author narrates in a clear, deliberate voice that helps listeners process the legalese that is necessary in a discussion of the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. But her tone shifts between that of a benevolent tour guide and that of a condescending teacher. Wehle’s prose explores the major tenets and intellectual considerations at the core of these two founding documents to distill what is said, what isn’t said, and what is up for debate. (Spoiler alert: It’s mostly up for debate.) While Wehle’s narration sometimes sounds like she’s talking down to listeners, this audiobook is accessible and useful to understand how and why the U.S. does and doesn’t operate in the ways people sometimes expect. L.E. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
