I had the privilege of speaking with Michael Klarman, the Charles Warren Professor of Legal History at Harvard Law School, about how the Constitution was really made and what that means for us today. As Michael covered in his essential book, The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution, the Constitution’s ratification was far less democratic and more controversial than most of us imagine. Madison, Hamilton, Washington, and other elite framers wanted a government less responsive to popular opinion, seeking to curb the redistributive, democratic tendencies that emerged in state constitutions after the Revolutionary War.
We discussed how these founding divisions between elite control and popular power echo through today’s democratic crises—especially when it comes to the capture of the Supreme Court and the Republican Party by right-wing plutocrats and white Christian nationalists. We talked about the difference between popular constitutionalism and judicial supremacy; the incoherence and ahistorical nature of “originalism”; why plutocrats and Republicans who neither liked Trump nor necessarily opposed democracy are now consolidating behind his authoritarian rule; and much more.
Some links to more of Michael Klarman’s commentary and scholarship:
A debate with Jonathan Turley at Colgate University on whether we are in a constitutional crisis
“Last Lecture” on Threat to Democracy and Rule of Law posed by Trump Administration (April 2025)
Harvard Law Review (2020): The Degradation of American Democracy — And the Court
Books:
