In the seventh symposium of the “We Hold These Truths: America at 250” initiative held at AEI, scholars of American history, politics, and law examined how the American Revolution shaped American constitutionalism. Opening the first panel, Harvard University’s Harvey C. Mansfield argued that the Revolution represented a shift away from Aristotle’s concept of regime and toward modern liberalism. AEI’s Adam J. White assessed how the founders identified not only tyranny but the mutability and absence of governance as threats to republican government. In the second panel, Yale University’s Akhil Reed Amar, Stanford University’s Jack Rakove, and Arizona State University’s Colleen Sheehan explored how the Revolution gave rise to a written constitutional tradition. They discussed the invention of popular ratification, the imperative of national union, and James Madison’s understanding of republicanism as rule through refined public opinion.
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