SECESSION
Why Our Country Should Split Up
(And How to Do It Peacefully)

Coming January 2027 from Mariner Books

What if America’s political divisions have become too deep—and its constitutional structure too poorly equipped to manage them—for the country to continue in its present form?

Secession makes the case for taking peaceful separation seriously. Moving beyond diagnosis and provocation, Kent Greenfield offers a practical blueprint for how a negotiated, democratic restructuring could address questions of citizenship, borders, constitutional design, interstate travel, federal property, and the many other challenges a separation would create.

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“It is not hyperbole to say that this is a book that could change the world. In this beautifully written book, Professor Greenfield shows that what divides us as a nation is greater than what unites us and when that happens it is time to seriously contemplate a divorce. While many engage in occasional speculation about secession, Professor Greenfield takes the idea seriously and argues that it is both necessary and possible without a civil war.”

—Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley, and author of No Democracy Lasts Forever

ADVANCE PRAISE

“A bracing book by a giant scholar unafraid to follow an uncomfortable argument to its logical end. … Less a thought experiment than an engineering document.”

—Richard Albert, Hines H. Baker and Thelma Kelley Baker Chair in Law, University of Texas at Austin, and publisher of The Leaflet

Kent Greenfield’s Secession is a sobering breath of fresh air. In straightforward prose infused with honest history and legal rigor, Greenfield expands the imagination of readers committed to multiracial democracy in America, showing that getting divorced from our dysfunctional political structures may be necessary to building a healthy constitution that truly meets the needs of “we the people.”

—Julie Suk, Leonard F. Manning Professor, Fordham University School of Law; Steven M. Polan Fellow in Constitutional Law and History, Brennan Center for Justice

Kent Greenfield's Secession offers a brilliant and insightful analysis of the current challenges to our nation's stability at a time of sharp division. His proposed solution - a national "divorce" between liberal and conservative states - is profoundly provocative and intriguing.

—Geoffrey R. Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Professor of Law, former Dean and Provost, The University of Chicago

Offering frank descriptions of the profoundly polarized politics and cultures of the United States, scholar and public intellectual Kent Greenfield offers arguments for and by “blue states” and responds to counterviews. Whether you find the idea preposterous or appealing, Greenfield’s cogent and accessible treatment of the pros, cons, and hows offer bountiful insights, optimism, concrete options, and compassion for all people frustrated by the national divisions.

—Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor and former Dean, Harvard Law School

Secession is not an idea that many people take seriously. But they should. More and more Americans are coming to the conclusion that we are on the wrong track. Something is deeply amiss in our nation. It could be fixed, maybe, with constitutional amendments. But our Constitution is at best difficult to amend, and in this polarized time nearly impossible. Rather than continue our path of decline and division, we should consider what Americans have always done when their current governmental structure proves unable to effect their safety and happiness: a radical reworking of the system. As with the Revolution, the Constitution, Reconstruction, and the New Deal, it is time for another moment of remaking. Is that secession? Maybe—this brilliant book will go a long way towards persuading you that secession might actually work. And even if secession is not the ultimate outcome, putting it on the table as a real possibility might help drive us towards the fundamental changes we need to make America a real democracy.

—Kermit Roosevelt, David Berger Professor for the Administration of Justice, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

The Confederacy lost the Civil War but the states that once comprised it now so dominate our national politics as to render progressives’ goals essentially impossible to achieve. In this meticulously detailed and engaging book, constitutional scholar Kent Greenfield boldly proposes to borrow the Confederacy’s most discredited idea—secession—as the least painful way forward not only for blue state residents but for the vast majority of Americans who agree about little other than that our differences have become irreconcilable.

SECESSIONWhy Our Country Should Split Up (And How to Do It Peacefully)