Politics and Capital: Auctioning the American Dream - Hardcover

John Attanasio has advised courts, legislatures, ministers, and constitutional commissions on democracy, economics, and rule of law for over 30 years. He has mediated sensitive international disputes, and lectured widely around the world. Attanasio is President of the International Academic Institute of Legal Process and Procedure. He served as dean of two law schools and taught at two others. He was the first Fulbright lecturer to teach courses on American constitutional law in the Soviet Union. He was Director of the Rule of Law Forum which organized bilateral meetings of high-ranking government officials under the auspices of the State Department. He organized Supreme Court Summits and other meetings involving many of the most important highest courts in the world.

John Attanasio has been named a Lifetime Achiever as a leader in the law and education industries by Marquis Who's Who.

"John Attanasio has constructed a highly persuasive argument against the standard libertarian opposition to any governmental restraint on the uses of private property. It's an unusual argument, since it starts from the same commitment to individual autonomy that drives libertarianism but ends up in a very different place. It works especially well in taking apart the claim that any restriction on the use of money in political campaigns violates the free speech of the donors. Attanasio's book illustrates the important maxim that there are many paths to the right political and moral position." -- Michael Walzer, Professor Emeritus, Institute for Advanced Study

"In this important new book, leading constitutional expert John Attanasio makes a compelling case that Supreme Court decisions allowing rich people to give money to influence politics have caused the growing income inequality in America that Thomas Piketty comprehensively quantified." -- E. Donald Elliott, Professor (Adjunct) of Law, Yale Law School

"Our political system is in grave crisis. Economic, political, and social inequality suggests it is broken. This important and extremely thoughtful book explains how we have gotten to this point by exploring economics, law, and political theory. Perhaps most important, it offers significant thoughts about how we get out of the current chaos." -- Arthur R. Miller, University Professor, New York University School of Law

"The philosophical argument in this book could become centrally important to the development of a centrist legal position on the law of campaign financing and on constitutional law more generally. This book has the potential to have the same sort of impact on constitutional theory that John Ely's great book, Democracy and Distrust, had some 35 years ago." -- William E. Nelson, New York University School of Law