vailsymposium

Join Clay Jenkinson for a timely and in-depth conversation about the US Constitution in our modern world with constitutional scholars Beau Breslin and Sanford Levinson as part of the Conversations on Controversial Issues series as we mark the 250th anniversary of America’s founding.

In an earlier program, Jenkinson traced the origins and development of the U.S. Constitution and the ideas that shaped it. In this Symposium, we turn to the present—and the future. After more than two centuries of use, the Constitution continues to guide American governance, but it also shows signs of strain in a nation vastly different from the one that adopted it.

The framers themselves anticipated the need for periodic constitutional change, designing amendment mechanisms to allow future generations to adapt the document to new realities. Thomas Jefferson believed the Constitution should be rewritten every 19 years so that each generation could craft its own framework for freedom. Today, however, constitutional change has become virtually impossible, even as questions of representation, democratic functionality and institutional trust grow more urgent.

Drawing on extensive scholarship, Jenkinson will explore the Constitution’s structural vulnerabilities, the limits of the current amendment process, and the ongoing debate over whether meaningful reform is still possible within existing frameworks with Beau Breslin, a professor in Government at Skidmore College and Sanford Levinson, a renowned Constitutional Law professor at the University of Texas Law School. They will examine, in some depth, the most provocative alternative: the idea of a modern constitutional convention.

How realistic is such a convention in the 21st century? What safeguards would be necessary? Could it expand representation and democratic legitimacy—or would it risk destabilizing the constitutional order?

This program invites participants into a thoughtful, historically grounded discussion about constitutional endurance, democratic renewal, and what it might mean to take the framers’ own belief in constitutional adaptability seriously.

Recommended listening:
Listening to America Podcast: “A Constitution for the Living” with Beau Breslin

Recommended reading available at The Bookworm in Edwards:
“Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws that Affect us Today” by Sanford Levinson and Cynthia Levinson (graphic novel, recommended reading 10-14 years old).

“Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It)” by Sanford Levinson

“A Constitution for the Living: Imagining How Five Generations of Americans Would Rewrite the Nation’s Fundamental Law” by Beau Breslin