Why, if the constitutional order is so well designed, do so many American citizens have a negative view of the American political order? To address that question, Marc Landy examines the most crucial episodes in American political development from the Founding to the present, while at the same time examining critics of the American constitutional order from Thomas Paine to The 1619 Project.

Landy frames his defense of the Constitution by understanding America in terms of modernity, where small republics are no longer possible and there is a need to protect the citizens of a massive modern state while still preserving liberty. The Constitution makes large, popular government possible by placing effective limits on the exercise of power. The Constitution forces the people to be governed by the dead, both to pay the debt we owe to those who came before us and to preserve society for generations yet unborn.

Landy’s central argument is that the Constitution provides for a free government because it places effective limits on the exercise of power—an essential ingredient of any good government, even one that aims to be a popular government. That the people should rule is a given among republicans; that the people can do anything they want is a proposition that no one could accept with their eyes wide open. Thus, the limits that the Constitution places on American political life are not a problem, but a solution to a problem.

Landy offers both a survey of American anti-constitutionalism and a powerful argument for maintaining the constitutional order of the nation’s Framers.

Bio:

Marc Landy is professor of political science at Boston College and coauthor of Presidential Greatness and The Environmental Protection Agency: Asking the Wrong Questions: From Nixon to Clinton. He was the recipient of the 2009 Teaching Award chosen by the student members of the Boston College Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. He is the Faculty Chair of the Boston College Irish Institute. Marc Landy has a B.A. from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University.