IN A BOOK that is the culmination of years of writing and speaking on the Constitution, it is impossible to credit all the persons who have helped me formulate the views I express here. But if I had to credit a single person with stimulating the thesis presented in this book, it would be my old friend Sandy Levinson. In the fall of 2012, he visited my Georgetown law seminar, Recent Books on the Constitution, to discuss his book, Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It). In his book, Sandy comprehensively chronicled all the ways that the U.S. Constitution was “undemocratic.” He objected to the electoral college and the various choke points in the legislative process, especially the presidential veto, pardon power, and life tenure for unelected federal judges. He was positively indignant about the equal representation in the Senate that the Constitution affords every state regardless of population, and also strongly objected to the fact that incompetent and unpopular presidents get to serve out their terms rather than being replaced (as in parliamentary systems) by their own party when public opinion turns.
When in the summer of 2013 I was asked to review Sandy’s book for the Claremont Review of Books—to whom I am also grateful—the seed of Our Republican Constitution was born. There I wrote:
In the founders’ republican form of government, the people retain their sovereignty through numerous checks on government power but do not themselves rule day to day. The founders’ concern was somehow to empower an “energetic” government to advance the general welfare while preventing it from violating the rights of the majority or a minority, or even the rights of a single individual. So if democracy equals simple majority rule, as it did for the founders, then the Constitution is not only undemocratic, it is downright antidemocratic.
From there it was a short step to the realization that, with their new “undemocratic constitution,” the founders had altered the very meaning of “republican.” Sandy also provided very helpful feedback on an earlier draft of the book, when I presented the idea at Harvard Law School.
The other major contributor to my thesis was my dear friend Larry Solum. For it was he who admonished me to read Chisholm v. Georgia, which first exposed me to the individual conception of popular sovereignty that is at the core of this book. And he was, as always, an invaluable sounding board for all these ideas throughout their formative stages. I am also grateful to my friend Jack Balkin for his comments on an earlier draft at a talk I gave at Yale Law School. And I appreciate the feedback on the manuscript I received from the Georgetown Law students in my Recent Books seminar. The students at Georgetown Law make being a professor there so rewarding.
My editor, Adam Bellow, offered invaluable suggestions for how to make an earlier draft more accessible. As a result of his comments, the book was thoroughly revised and reorganized in ways that greatly improved it. I thank Alexa Gervasi for her research as well as her skillful edits of previous drafts. I am grateful as well for the summer and sabbatical research support provided by Georgetown Law and my dean, William Treanor, with additional support provided by Scott Banister.
Finally, I thank my loving wife, Beth, for her patience and encouragement as I wrote.
This book is dedicated to the memory of the man who had the greatest influence on my political convictions: my father and personal hero, Ronald Evan Barnett—who was a true “republican” as I am defining the term. Throughout its writing he was caught in the horrible downward spiral of Alzheimer’s, and he was never far from my mind as I wrote, as he is in my thoughts now as I write this. I miss him dearly, but know he would proudly and justly have considered this book a part of his legacy as well as mine.