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- Richard Davies Parker (born 1945) is the Paul W. Williams Professor of Criminal Justice at Harvard Law School, where he has taught constitutional law and criminal law since 1974. He also serves as chairman of the Citizens Flag Alliance, an American nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing a constitutional amendment that would protect the American flag against acts of physical desecration. Parker is best known as a proponent of constitutional populism, or the view that interpretation of the United States Constitution should conform to the values of the majority. He is the author of ''Here the People Rule": A Constitutional Populist Manifesto, in which he calls for a reorientation of constitutional law "to promote, not limit, the expression of ordinary political energy—thus to extend, rather than constrain, majority rule." In additional to his work in constitutional law, Parker has explored the intersection of law, literature, film, and philosophy, including teaching a course at Harvard on Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy for lawyers. Nietzsche's influence can be felt in Parker's embrace of popular political discourse involving highly charged emotional appeals. Spirited democratic debate, in his view, should include "fluidity and excess, the uncontainable imagery, the emotion, even the literal nonsense, of rhetoric." He contends that constitutional argumentation should center not on doctrine but rather on defining democracy, "what it can be and what it should be." (en)
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