- This event has passed.
Please join Stanford ACS for its final reading group event of the year. This quarter, we will be reading The Original Theory of Constitutionalism by David Singh Grewal and Jedediah Purdy. The piece is framed as a review of Richard Tuck’s The Sleeping Sovereign, a book reconstructing the history of modern constitutional democracy. Tuck argues that modern constitutionalism, based on the idea that average citizens can govern themselves by communicating fundamental principles to a governing agent, arose as a way for the democracy of the ancient Greek city-states to be conceivable in an increasingly complex early-modern Europe. Reflecting on this, Grewal and Purdy argue that the Article V amendment process makes it difficult to ensure that the U.S. Constitution is still a legitimate exercise in self-government. They further argue that constitutional theories like originalism, living constitutionalism, and their variants are all necessarily imperfect responses to this difficulty.
The article isn’t too long, but if you’re in a pinch, it’s fine to skip Part I of the piece. Alternatively, if you find yourself with extra time on your hands, we can discuss Grewal and Purdy’s work in conversation with this HuffPost article examining the seemingly successful Article V amendment efforts currently underway. (And of course, people are always welcome to just come and listen!)