In the seventh symposium of AEI’s “We Hold These Truths: America at 250” initiative, scholars of American history, law, and politics discussed 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.