How to Be a Citizen

An expert on the writing of constitutions argues that the path to a thriving society begins with forgetting about them 

In 2009, constitutional scholar C. L. Skach went to Iraq to help revise the constitution. She survived a missile barrage in the Green Zone—an event that proved a breaking point in her thinking about constitutions. In short: they don’t really work.

In How to Be a Citizen, Skach calls to move beyond constitutions. She argues that just as complex natural systems spontaneously generate order, we can, too. Looking to pandemic gardens, Reggio-Emilia schools, and community-driven safety patrols, she envisions not government by force, but society that is local, cultivated, and true. Grounded in six principles as simple as a call to spend time on a park bench, this book shows how community spaces, education, and markets can be reshaped to nurture cooperation and encourage flourishing.

Equal parts personal, philosophical, and practical, How to Be a Citizen invites us to see society not as something imposed by law, but rather something we create together.

• “From a search for laws that can provide the basis for a good society, Cindy Skach leads us to reexamine the virtues of a good citizen, one whom people can respect and value as a member of their community. To make a better world, she urges, we should teach our children first how to build better communities.”
  Roger Myerson, University of Chicago, 2007 Nobel Laureate in Economics
• “When a renowned constitutional scholar explains why the law, enforced by a hierarchy of power, is not enough and is sometimes even the problem, we need to listen. Skach describes brilliantly, with compelling examples, six ways to become better citizens and thereby improve our own wellbeing while helping to build a better world from the ground up. I recommend this book to everyone.”
  Peter Gray, author of Free to Learn
• “Skach’s experience includes advising constitution drafters and observing how constitutions work (too often badly) on the ground. Drawing on that experience and a wide range of studies by social scientists, Skach urges us to move away from relying on constitutional rules and authorities and toward a ‘guerilla’ constitutionalism in which we rely on our own resources and resilience to solve our problems. Not James Madison but Bob Dylan or Annie Lennox should be our guide. This is an incredibly thought-provoking work addressing the crises of governance we face today.”
  Mark Tushnet, Harvard Law School