Imagine an American president who imprisoned critics, spread a culture of white supremacy, and tried to upend the law so that he could commit crimes with impunity.

In this lecture, constitutional law and political science professor Corey Brettschneider discusses assaults on democracy by not one such president but five: John Adams, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, and Richard Nixon. Through their reckless actions, these presidents illuminated the trip wires that can damage or even destroy our democracy.

Corey Brettschneider shows that these presidents didn’t have the last word; citizen movements brought the United States back from the precipice by appealing to a democratic understanding of the Constitution and pressuring subsequent reform-minded presidents to realize the promise of “We the People.” His talk will also be about the citizens―Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Daniel Ellsberg, and more―who fought back against presidential abuses of power. Their examples can give us hope about the possibilities of restoring a fragile democracy in our own time.

Corey Brettschneider is Professor of Political Science at Brown University, where he teaches constitutional law and political theory. He is the author of The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It (2024), and also The Oath and the Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents (2018), among other books.  His constitutional law casebook is widely used in classrooms throughout the United States. He holds a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton and a JD from Stanford Law School.