Over at JOTWELL,
Reuel Schiller (UC Hastings) has posted an admiring
review of
Michael Klarman's
The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution (2016). Here's a taste:
Michael Klarman’s The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution
is a marvel. It’s an 850-page tome that draws us in even though we all
know what happens in the end. Indeed, for most readers, the broad
outlines of its narrative are ones that we’ve heard many times: in grade
school, again in high school, perhaps in college, and, for a lucky few,
once again in graduate school. The book’s seven chronological chapters
tell our nation’s origin story: the flaws of the Articles of
Confederation; the politics of the pre-constitutional period; the
Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia; the debate over the
constitutional status of slavery; the hard-fought political battles
between Federalists and Antifederalists at the state ratifying
conventions; ratification itself; and the drafting and adoption of the
Bill of Rights.
Yet Klarman manages to give us a story that demands reading despite its familiarity. . . .
And a bit more:
Thus, Klarman’s story of the framing is not one of brilliant political
philosophers collaborating on a document to preserve their republican
revolution. Instead, it is one of “ordinary politics” (p. 8) in which
each side attempted to create a federal government that would further
its mundane political interests. . . .
Read on
here.
