The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It

Winner of the American Bar Association's 2025 Silver Gavel Award, this history examines five U.S. presidents who exceeded constitutional limits and the citizens who resisted them. Constitutional law and political science professor Corey Brettschneider documents assaults on democracy by John Adams, who prosecuted critics of the early republic press; James Buchanan, who colluded with the Supreme Court to deny constitutional personhood to African Americans before the Civil War; Andrew Johnson, who urged violence against political opponents while promoting white supremacy after the Civil War; Woodrow Wilson, who modernized and nationalized Jim Crow laws in the 1910s; and Richard Nixon, whose criminal acts in the 1970s reflected corrupt views of presidential power. Through these cases, Brettschneider shows how citizen movements—led by figures including Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and Daniel Ellsberg—pushed back against presidential abuses. These citizens appealed to democratic constitutional principles and pressured reform-minded presidents to fulfill the promise of "We the People," bringing the nation back from democratic crisis and offering examples of how democracy can be restored.