How to Be a Citizen: Learning to Be Civil Without the State

The oldest question in political philosophy is simple: What is the best way to organize society? The question used to occupy legal scholar C. L. Skach, too, whose answer was found in crafting good constitutions, until her participation in helping to do so, including in Iraq in 2009, led her to step back from law as the answer.

As she argues instead in How to Be a Citizen, the good life in society shouldn't come as an imposition through law but should instead emerge from bottom-up interaction. Skach lays out six principles--informed by everything from civil wars to civil rights struggles, from the responsibilities of bystanders to mutual aid in the pandemic--to help us build small societies of our, and our neighbors', making. The lessons are sometimes deceptively simple: share your tomatoes from your garden, cultivate and spend time in unstructured social spaces, teach children to negotiate their social interactions, rather than prescribe such interactions for them. But the aggregate makes clear that many small steps, in concert, can lead to beautiful things, all without the law.

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