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This timely and essential collection, edited by AEI's Yuval Levin and featuring leading scholars like Jack Rakove, Akhil Reed Amar, Adam White, Colleen Sheehan, and Harvey Mansfield, marks the 250th anniversary of American independence by revisiting the Declaration, natural law, and the birth of democracy, revealing how revolutionary-era state governments and the Western political tradition shaped the Constitutional Convention and the enduring U.S. Constitution.
Featuring original essays by Jack N. Rakove, Akhil Reed Amar, Adam J. White, Colleen A. Sheehan, and Harvey C. Mansfield.
The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of American independence, yet the founding is controversial now in ways it has not been in decades.The American Enterprise Institute offers a major intellectual and educational project to reintroduce Americans to the unique value of their national inheritance.
In the seventh volume of this series,
scholars of American history, law, and politics discuss how the American
Revolution unleashed the forces of constitution-making in the United States. As
states erected new governments in the wake of independence, they worked to
combine traditions of colonial self-government with both classical and novel
political theories.
Studying the revolutionary period shows how it gave birth to a constitutional culture that shaped the delegates and debates that would forge the nation’s enduring Constitution in 1787.
Introduction
Yuval Levin
1. The Invention of American Constitutionalism
Jack N. Rakove
2. The Revolution and the Constitution: Five Grand Narratives
Akhil Reed Amar
3. From Colonial Rule to Constitutional Administration
Adam J. White
4. That Honorable Determination
Colleen A. Sheehan
5. Was the American Revolution a Change of Regime?
Harvey C. Mansfield
About the Authors
About the Editors