A gripping account of how the distinction between law and politics is collapsing in the United States and imperiling democracy itself

The norms that have separated law from politics in America are eroding, making government by constitutional democracy increasingly hard to sustain. Losing the Law tells the story of how we came to this precarious moment. This powerful, persuasively argued book describes how a decades-long revolution in professional culture and legal thought is fueling the nation’s authoritarian slide. It also offers essential guidance on what we can do to change course, not just by crafting institutional reforms but by resetting professional incentives and popular beliefs about the power and limits of the rule of law in constitutional governance.

Looking behind the well-recognized politics of red and blue, Deborah Pearlstein charts the independent rise of “legal polarization”—a growing divide between lawyers and judges who believe there should be a difference between law and politics and those who no longer do. Drawing on original interviews and archival research, a close reading of American law and legal thought, and a sobering accounting of recent events, she unearths the conservative legal movement’s foundation-shifting secondary effects as it established a new career pipeline from law school to judgeship, promoted partisan loyalty above professional responsibility, and popularized legal theories in irreconcilable conflict with long-settled understandings of how law worked. From the early role of unitary executive theory in kneecapping major post-Watergate reforms to originalism’s inevitable rejection of precedent, Pearlstein traces how legal polarization has supercharged democratic backsliding under Trump 2.0.

An urgent call to action by one of today’s foremost legal minds, Losing the Law lays out the complex task ahead for those committed both to understanding the depth of the current crisis and to reestablishing sustainable constitutional governance in the years ahead.