Humanity is currently in the grip of deep institutional denial concerning the adequacy of its institutions for dealing with serious intergenerational challenges, such as global climate change. In response, we should call for a global constitutional convention focused on developing new institutions to protect future generations and further their interests. This chapter presents ten initial guidelines for how to construct such a global constitutional convention. Although each follows as a fairly modest and natural inference (a ‘baby step’) from the purposes of the convention itself, the implications stand in sharp contrast to the status quo and to most conventional discussions of reform. The guidelines are, thus, both modest and radical. As a result, the global constitutional convention is, perhaps, just the kind of realistic utopia that we need.

Chapter 3 reveals how violent individuals and a violent state are structured in the Constitution. Here, violent, White self-determination (the right of White individuals to overthrow government) and liberalism (the systemic differences central to a liberal state) mix with republicanism (a decentralization of authority that privileges violent acts of citizens, a group most often defined as propertied, White men). In Article IV, Section 4, the Second Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment, this chapter reveals the key formulations and tensions of American violence.

Tells story of 1787 Constitutional Convention focusing on how and why impeachment was included in the constitutional design. Describes the unique design of American impeachment and how it differs from prior British practice. Focuses particularly on the kinds of officials who are impeachable, the mechanism of impeachment, the standard of impeachable conduct, and the consequences of impeachment.

It is not possible to argue that the framers wisely created the electoral college and provided a sound basis for selecting the president in the twenty-first century. The electoral college does not work at all as the framers anticipated. Electors rarely exercise discretion and are condemned when they do. Instead, they are agents of political parties, which did not exist in 1787. The House has not selected the president since 1824. In addition, most of the motivations behind the creation of the electoral college are simply irrelevant today. Legislative election is not an option, there is little danger that the president will be too powerful if directly elected, voters have extraordinary access to information on the candidates, there is no justification at all for either electors or state legislatures to exercise discretion in selecting the president, defending the interests of slavery is unthinkable, and the short-term pressures have long dissipated. Those delegates who wanted electors to exercise independent judgment or be selected by state legislatures would soon be disappointed, and there is no support—and no justification—today for either option. In addition, the broad thrust of constitutional revision over the past two centuries has been in the direction of democratization and majority rule.

This chapter examines the major rebellions that occurred in Spanish America during the era of North American colonial protest and rebellion against British policies and government. It focuses on the revolt of the city of Quito in 1765, the Andean rebellions started by Tupac Amaru in 1780, and the 1781 Comunero rebellion in New Granada, set in the context of Spanish administrative and fiscal reforms under Charles III and Spanish geopolitical conflict with Britain between the Seven Years’ War and the American War of independence. The principal purpose here is to enquire into the origins of the rebellions, their organization and social composition, and the political attitudes and ideas of their participants. In addition to comparing the Spanish American rebellions in terms of their causes, political cultures and political impacts, it also reflects on their contemporaneous relationship to the American Revolution and their place in the wider challenge to European monarchies during the Age of Revolution.

The American federal union was created in 1781 by the Articles of Confederation. Designed to protect the independence and promote the interests of the member-states, it concentrated power over international matters and war in a central government. Although the Articles granted extensive powers to a congress of states, their implementation was left to the state governments. This arrangement proved dysfunctional and by early 1787, the future of the union was in doubt. The Constitution challenged neither the aims nor the purposes of the American union. Instead, it radically reformed its structure. It set up a central government with a legislative, executive and judicial branch and the right to legislate directly on the individual citizens of the American states. By allowing the federal government to operate independently of the states, the problem of the non-implementation of congressional decisions was overcome. Only with the adoption of the Constitution did the American union acquire national cohesion and a central government with the capacity to act with determination and energy against foreign powers and stateless peoples on the North American continent.

The Federal Red River campaign of spring 1864 is a military and political disaster, casting a pall over Louisiana’s constitutional convention and the inauguration of Arkansas’s Unionist government. Federal forces ostensibly control most of Arkansas, but such control tenuous in places, and the Arkansas government encounters much resistance to its authority. The Louisiana constitutional convention crafts a free-state constitution, but conservative Unionists contest it relentlessly, and the large majority of free-state delegates oppose black political and legal equality. The organization of a free-state government and constitution in Tennessee remains on hold, although Andrew Johnson nominated as Lincoln’s running-mate in the 1864 election. Confederate atrocities against black Union troops at Poison Spring and Marks’ Mill, Arkansas, and at Fort Pillow in Tennessee underscore the determination to preserve slavery.

Democracy is not only about voting. Deliberation plays an important role as well. Just like voting, deliberation can occur behind closed doors in the shadows or be subject to the glare of sunlight. In this chapter I argue that deliberation among representatives in a legislature ought to occur behind closed doors and away from the glare of sunlight, but only if it is structured properly. More specifically, I propose a new way of institutionalizing secret deliberation that secures its benefits while avoiding its costs. The key is to add external accountability mechanisms of a very specific kind to the deliberative process and to select participants in the secret deliberative body in a very particular way. If we do both things, then democratic deliberation is optimized when it occurs behind closed doors.

Connecticut’s Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth were among the most important participants in the War for Independence, the Constitutional Convention, and the First Federal Congress. As well, both served on their state’s Superior Court, and Ellsworth was chief drafter of the Judiciary Act of 1789 and Chief Justice of the United States from 1796–1800. Their religious convictions, informed by Reformed theology, influenced their contributions to the creation of America’s constitutional order, and they represent well the 50–75% of Americans in this era who Calvinists.