Michael Arnheim

Michael Thomas Walter Arnheim (also known as "Doctor Mike"; born 24 March 1944) is a practising London barrister and author. He has written 26 published books to date, including most recently the philosophical work, The God Book, and political works, Two Models of Government and Anglo-American Law: A Comparison. Previously published books include The Handbook of Human Rights Law, Principles of the Common Law, The U.S. Constitution for Dummies (part of Wiley's For Dummies series), and The Problem with Human Rights Law.

Early life and education Michael Arnheim was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, to a secular orthodox Jewish family. His father, Dr Wilhelm Arnheim, who had come to South Africa from Germany in 1933, was a medical doctor and a polymath with a dry sense of humor. His mother, Victoria (née Shames) was a music teacher and an active member of the Council of Johannesburg's Great Synagogue. She was born in South Africa of Lithuanian-born parents, her father, Wolf Shames, being a noted rabbinical scholar. Michael Arnheim was particularly close to his paternal grandmother, Martha Arnheim (née Bernhardt), from whom he learnt German and by whom he was entertained with her amusing tales of life in Baerwalde, Pomerania, in pre-World War I Germany. Michael Arnheim's grandfather, Max Arnheim, a prosperous barrel manufacturer, served in the German army in World War I, and Oma's father, Julius Bernhardt, fought on the Prussian side in the Danish-Prussian War of 1864, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

As a 14-year-old student at King Edward VII School in Johannesburg, Arnheim was picked to join the "Quiz Kids" team, appearing on South Africa's Springbok Radio. Arnheim was elected a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, where he taught while researching his next book, Aristocracy in Greek Society (1977), which he was invited by Professor Howard Hayes Scullard to write as part of the Thames & Hudson series, Aspects of Greek and Roman Life.

At the age of 31 Arnheim was invited to take up the position of full Professor and Head of the Department of Classics back at his old university in South Africa. which predicted that the alternative to White rule was not a shared-power democracy between Blacks and Whites, but rule by a Black oligarchy at the expense of Whites and ordinary Blacks alike.

Arnheim's next book. Is Christianity True? (1984), was translated into several languages, including Spanish. Through examination of historical evidence the book asserted that most Christian beliefs about Jesus were untrue. One review wrote:

Arnheim was invited to address Professor Henry Chadwick's Patristics seminar in the Cambridge Divinity School.

Despondent about the future of South Africa, Arnheim returned to Britain, where he was called to the Bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1988, His civil law practice has been largely in the field of commercial litigation including some international litigation as of counsel to Brown & Welsh P.C. of Meriden, Connecticut.

From early on in his practice at the Bar, Arnheim wrote articles in favor of clients' being allowed to come direct to a barrister, thus avoiding the additional expense of having to be referred by a solicitor. The idea was only taken up in 2000 in a report by the Director of Fair Trading, Sir John Vickers. Arnheim was one of the first barristers to register for direct public access when this was eventually allowed in 2004. Arnheim has also written extensively on other legal topics, ranging from court procedure to the common law, constitutional law, judicial power and human rights.

Views Dr Arnheim at a book-signing at the Tattered Cover Bookstore, Denver, Colorado, in September, 2016. Religion The God Book (2015), a sequel to Is Christianity True? (1984), is a critique of atheism and conventional religion alike. The book argues that atheism and conventional religion are both deficient in credibility as well as in toleration. Arnheim prefers Deism, or the belief in an impersonal God who does not get involved in the day-to-day affairs of the world.

Arnheim additionally authored an article entitled "God Without Religion" for publication in Pandeism: An Anthology (2017).

History and politics Arnheim's Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, The Senatorial Aristocracy in the Later Roman Empire, offered a new explanation of the "decline and fall" of the Roman Empire in the West. Arnheim contended that the reason the Western Empire fell was that the central government in the West was sapped from within by the senatorial aristocracy, who now again dominated the top administrative posts while building up their own countervailing local power through the spread of large estates. As a result, the central government proved unable to withstand the "barbarian" incursions. The same rise of the senatorial aristocracy did not occur in the Eastern half of the Empire, which therefore survived for another thousand years, albeit in a gradually shrinking state.

This analysis itself was based on a new theory about the essential nature of governmental power, namely that there are and have ever been essentially only two models of government: (a) where power is concentrated in the hands of a minority, whether hereditary or not; and (b) where power is concentrated in the hands of a single individual. This analysis was also the subject of Aristocracy in Greek Society (1977). The same model was then tested and found to apply to modern history and the present-day world as well. This is the theme of Two Models of Government, published in 2016. His 2020 book, Gateway English, seeks to show how English can be used as a gateway to learning other languages through etymological links. His 2022 book, Why Rome Fell, was reviewed by Bryn Mawr College as "a useful [thesis] both to contemplate and qualify". The book argues that the transformation of Rome was driven less by decay than by the empire's conversion from a tolerant communal religion to the exclusivist creed of Christianity, and by Constantine's fusion of monarchical authority with a serviceable aristocratic elite that shaped both the Byzantine and post-Roman political order.

He wrote the book Handbook of Human Rights Law, which was published by Kogan Page in 2004.

Arnheim was U.S. Constitution for Dummies (2009) as part of the For Dummies series of books.