Professor N.W. Barber reviews Cass Sunstein’s A Constitution of Many Minds: Why the Founding Document Doesn’t Mean What it Meant Before and Adrian Vermeule’s Law and the Limits of Reason.

Both Sunstein and Vermeule consider claims that the public as a whole and the judiciary, when treated collectively, might constitute groups whose decisions about facts will be more reliable than decisions made by individuals. Professor Barber analyzes this claim, drawing on the authors’ fascinating studies of the advantages and dangers of collective decision making.