The George W. Bush administration's ambitious--even breathtaking--claims of unilateral executive authority raised deep concerns among constitutional scholars, civil libertarians, and ordinary citizens alike. But Bush's attempts to assert his power are only the culmination of a near-thirty-year assault on the basic checks and balances of the U.S. government--a battle waged by presidents of both parties, and one that, as Peter M. Shane warns in Madison's Nightmare, threatens to utterly subvert the founders' vision of representative government.

Tracing this tendency back to the...