 Greetings from the National Archives. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's virtual panel discussion by George William Van Cleave, author of Making a New American Constitution and the Question of Constitutional Reform. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two upcoming programs you can view on our YouTube channel. On Tuesday, April 6, that noon, Jonathan Petropoulos would tell us about his new book, Gering's Man in Paris, the story of Bruno Losa, who helped supervise the Nazi systematic theft of thousands of artworks during World War II. And on Tuesday, April 13, at 6 p.m., Lisa Napoli, author of Susan Linda Nina and Koki, The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR, will lead the discussion of the early years of national public radio with three of the trailblazing women of the title, Susan Stamberg, Linda Wertheimer, and Nina Totenberg. I'm speaking to you from the National Archives building in Washington, D.C., where the rotunda of our museum has displayed the United States Constitution for nearly 70 years. The Constitution, along with the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, is a centerpiece of our exhibit space where, in a normal year, about a million visitors come to see the founding documents of our nation. We haven't had visitors in a long while, but the three charters remain safely stored, preserved for many generations. Another founding document is seldom displayed, the Articles of Confederation. Our current Constitution came about after leading citizens of the states concluded the articles needed to be replaced with a stronger federal government. In making a new American Constitution, author George William Van Cleave proposes that a new constitutional convention may be in order. Today, our three panelists will probe the described flaws in the Constitution and debate how to create a new social contract. George William Van Cleave received his JD Cum Laude from Harvard Law School and his PhD from the University of Virginia. He was an attorney for 25 years with private law firms and in the federal government and represented private and government clients in state and federal courts from Massachusetts to California. He has taught at four law schools in the University of Virginia, was research professor in law and history at Seattle University of School of Law and is now dean's visiting scholar at Georgetown University Law Center. In addition to making a new American Constitution, he is the author of A Slave Holder's Union, Slavery Politics in the Constitution and the Early American Republic and we have not a government, the Articles of Confederation and the Road to the Constitution. He's published numerous law and history journal articles on British and American constitutional, legal and political history. Joining us as panelists today are Julian Maxwell Hader, Associate Professor of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond's Jepsen School of Leadership Studies and David S. Tannenhaus, Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and James E. Rogers, Professor of History and Law at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada at Las Vegas. Now let's hear from the panel. Thank you for joining us today. Dr. Klee, author of Making a New American Constitution. I'd like to welcome our viewers and thank you for joining us for this discussion of constitutional reform. I'd like to thank the archivist, David Perrier, for allowing us to present this discussion today and to thank Douglas Swanson from the archives for his considerable help in making the arrangements for this broadcast. Finally, I'd like to thank today's panelists, Professors Julian Hader and David Tannenhaus for their participation in today's discussion. Before we begin, I want to emphasize that the archives there is no responsibility for any part of our discussion today. Now the issue of constitutional reform has two parts. First, our constitutional changes deserve and second, if they are, what is the best way to achieve them? I'm going to begin with a brief summary of my views on these issues which are discussed in my book. And then we'll hear from Professors Hader and Tannenhaus all with their own views. As to whether reform is desirable, I argue that we need to make fundamental changes to the constitution. The constitution has many desirable features such as its bill of rights and its commitment to equal justice and the rule of law. And it has been amended over the years to broaden the suffrage in important ways and to nationalize many important rights. Though sometimes key changes have occurred only at the point of a gun, as they did as a result of our civil war. But today the constitution really doesn't meet either the founders goals or modern needs. Why doesn't it meet the founders goals? The founders believed that they were creating an egalitarian republic. That's what the Declaration of Independence says. But today, American society is highly unequal, both economically and politically. And we do not have a truly republican government, especially by modern standards. In America today, wealth is highly concentrated and social mobility has declined sharply over the past several decades. Our middle class, whose continued existence is critical to the survival of democracy, is collapsing. Beyond extreme wealth disparities that especially harm the lives of people of color, there are also persistent racial inequalities in major institutions, such as the criminal justice system and education. Great wealth inequality also means great political inequality. Careful studies have shown that public policies often reflect the desires of the wealthy, not those of the general public. Clearly to preserve our democracy, we need substantial economic and social reforms to restore the middle class and to make racial equality and impartial justice realities. Unfortunately, the Constitution is now a major obstacle with such reforms. There are several important reasons why. The first reason is that the Constitution and Supreme Court interpretations of it protect great concentrated wealth and power. The Constitution today gives grossly disproportionate political power to small states. And many of their representatives think that protecting existing wealth is central to their jobs. The Supreme Court interprets the Constitution to allow enormous wealth to be used to influence the political process as I detail in my book. In the future, the Supreme Court may also interpret the Constitution to limit Congress's power to control excessive wealth. So the Constitution and its interpretation unfairly protect a wealthy class that opposes important social and economic reforms. A second reason that the Constitution is the enemy of reform is that the Constitution is not truly Republican because it allows popular minorities to control important government decisions. I expect that my colleagues are going to discuss representation issues in some detail a little later. In the interest of time, let me just say now that my book shows, for example, that the Senate's extreme small state bias repeatedly distorts major national policy choices on issues from climate change to foreign policy to gun control. The third reason that the Constitution is failing us is the key parts of it, such as the separation of powers, no longer work. Congress is no longer our central policymaking body as the founders not only expected, but feared that it would be. It is chronically gridlocked and it has ceded much of its authority to presidents under the Supreme Court who have, as a result, too much political power. Republican government is growing steadily weaker as a result. Many people today have differing political views, support individual constitutional amendments, such as limiting or barring money in politics, or a balanced budget agreement. But my book shows that none of these individual reforms will succeed. And there are a variety of reasons for that, but it's clear that it simply is not going to happen. I thought it was fair to talk about this. Nor will popular end runs, such as the National Popular Vote Initiative, succeed. This means that a popular convention is the only viable route to reform. Now, many people fear any new constitutional convention. Later, I expect that my colleagues will discuss some of the understandable concerns about holding a convention. In my view, however, there is no sound reason to fear a convention. Conventions have no authority whatsoever unless and until their work is ratified by a popular supermajority. Therefore, a convention can only succeed in making changes regarded as legitimate if its work accurately reflects the views of a popular supermajority. This means there is little chance that a convention will adopt extreme proposals because if it does, they will be rejected as the founders were acutely aware of. And a convention is the only place where it will be possible to make a grand bargain to resolve a range of hotly contested issues. A new convention will allow us to begin the essential process of restoring national unity. And with that, let's turn to the panel for their views on these issues. And to start, I wanna ask both panelists, do you think that major constitutional reforms are needed? Why or why not? If you think they are, what general types of reforms do you support and why? But you all would like to make brief opening statements before we get to those questions. Feel free. Yes, well, thank you so much, George and the National Archives for arranging this conversation. Let me start by saying last spring, I had the students in my Constitutional History course at UNLV write a performance review of the US Constitution for President Trump. They had to answer three questions. Why did we adopt it in the first place? How well has it worked and do we still need it? Among the course materials, they read George's book on the story of how we got from the Articles of Confederation to our current Constitution. And then George was generous enough to share drafts of the chapters from his new book Making a New American Constitution. I wanna say with few exceptions, the students absolutely believed that we still needed the United States Constitution because it preserves the rule of law and protects us against tyranny. Yet they were worried about the future and whether we're capable of meeting the challenges of the 21st century. They wanted to reform the Constitution but only through amending it. The hardest part for them was coming to terms with George's very powerful argument in chapter five of his book that this kind of piecemeal approach will not work. So let me just conclude with two observations. At first at my core, I'm a lower case Republican. I believe in representative and inclusive democracy, a free market for the exchange of ideas, regulated property rights and majoritarian rule. I support universal suffrage for all adult citizens that includes prisoners and ex-prisoner voting rights. So I believe very deeply in democratic participation. I believe to get to George's question, we need major constitutional reform because the Constitution itself generates anti-democratic governance and it prevents us from using national power to meet the challenges of the 21st century which include climate change, growing income and wealth inequality, bitter political polarization, massive over-incarceration of our citizens and a troubling loss of faith in democracy as a viable system of government. So I'm concerned about where we are now and what the future may bring. Okay, thank you very much, David. And now we're here from Julian with some opening remarks. It's a pleasure to be here. I might take a little bit more time. I'm a historian which means I'm in the business of old evidence and discovering new things about old matters. And I suppose it's difficult to reconcile that which hasn't been recognized. And I'm gonna lay out some evidence here that I think speaks to the fact that something needs to be reconsidered. In terms of constitutional reform, probably there's no more pressing issue than malapportion representation in the Senate or specifically Article I, Section III and the manner in which state legislatures use statistical formulas to determine the districts that elect members to the House of Representatives. I'm not a historian of the Constitution but I am an urban historian and a historian of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which by default means that I've worked with constitutional studies. And in thinking about the question of constitutional reform, I think perhaps something needs to be reconsidered. And here's what I found and I think history really does matter here. In terms of the possibility of constitutional reform, there are no more pressing issues than malapportion representation in the Senate or specifically Article I, Section III and the manner in which deeply partisan state legislatures use statistical formulas to determine congressional districts. Both of these problems, it turns out, have historical implications in urban and African-American history. The problem of the Senate and to a certain degree, the House relates to the former. The latter, of course, is a matter of America's tortured racial political history, the legacy of disenfranchisement and the enduring resistance to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has characterized the last several decades. Well, let's start with the problem of political cartography. Over the last several decades, the United States has undergone profound demographic shifts. We're not really more urban than rural, but the continuity of residential segregation in the United States has given rise to shockingly predictable metropolitan housing patterns. Housing patterns that have been manipulated into tortured congressional districts. There's absolutely no way the framers could have anticipated massive human migrations that characterize residential patterns in the late 19th century and the 20th century. First from farm to city, then city to suburbs. You know, very few people know this, by the way. If you've, the movement of Americans into America's suburbs in the mid 20th century was one of the greatest migrations of human beings in the history of humanity, by the way. It was unbelievably profound. They also could have got, the framers could have not have been predicted the rise of the megalopolis and increasingly complex and dense modern cities. You know, let me just dump some data here, right? In 1790, the urban population of the United States stood at 5.1%. New York was 13%. Virginia, 1%. Massachusetts, 13%. And Pennsylvania, 10%. As America's urban population eclipsed rural population, for the first time, America's urban population eclipsed its rural population in 1920. By 1960, 69% of the population of the cities, 1980, 73%, 2079%, and by 2020, 82%. Over 30 million people live in America's cities. Voting weights and equal representation has become a particularly troublesome matter. You know, political scientist John Griffin argues that if judged by the standard of one person, one vote, the United States is the most, the most malapportioned legislatures in the world, right? The Atlantic actually just brought this up recently. And by the way, they brought up Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who argued in 1995 that sometime in the next century, the United States is going to have to address the question of apportionment in the Senate. And in terms of the Senate, the voting power of a citizen of Wyoming, the smallest state in terms of population is about 67 times that of a citizen in the largest state, which is California. You know, and I'm not implying that rural Americans shouldn't have a proportional vote in Washington. I'm saying that the current system didn't disadvantage any number of demographics in America's urban on place and it might even disadvantage people of particular political persuasions. A state's population then influences the relationships between elected officials and voters. It affects fundraising, it affects political behavior, most ominously, public service deliverables and policy decisions. Less popular states consistently receive more federal funding than states with more people. And in terms of the House, Article I, Section II of the Constitution led to state legislatures to draw congressional district boundaries. These matters are more deeply partisan, racial and contentious by the day. You know, African Americans, in terms of their population numbers, have always exerted a disproportionate influence on American political imagination. From the three-fifth clause to the 15th amendment to the anti-democratic and underrepresentation that characterized Jim Crow segregation. And more frankly, black Americans weren't citizens in the United States until 1965, especially in the South. You know, I'll save you the gory details about what that means in terms of public policy and public services, right? But suffice it to say that after the ratification of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Warren and Berger courts had had enough of the Machiavellian frenzy of not just direct disenfranchisement, but also the rise of both nations. After 1965, they absolutely revolutionized political representation in America. And I'll show you how this matters. It had deeply profound implications for the House of Representatives. To beat back the resistance to the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court initiated what we call the so-called Reapportionment Revolution in a series of cases that I'll spare you the gory details. This went beyond safeguarding access to the suffrage and also protected a minority group's right to elect preferred representatives in a manner that was commiserate with their total voting age and population. They mandated what became known as Safe Minority Distance where African Americans and ultimately other minorities were free to elect candidates of their choice free from white interference. This was, of course, chock full of problems. And it had unintended consequences. In time, the legacy of residential segregation not only gave rise to safe black districts, but to safe white districts as well. This led in time to shockingly predictable electoral outcomes, liberals from diverse cities, moderates from entering suburbs, conservatives from suburbs, and sometimes reactionaries from rural areas. Think about what I just said in terms of Senate representation. All right, now imagine that these very districts despite various legal forms since the 1970s have given rise to overwhelmingly white representation in state legislatures. This has in recent years, deeply partisan implications. These partisans have not only to continue to draw increasingly tortured districts to protect themselves and their compatriots, these districts have congressional implications. One could make the argument that partisan gridlocking Washington is as much a reflection of residential patterns, a malenforcement and the structure of elections as ideology, thanks. Julian, thank you very much. David, would you like to add something about specific reforms that are of concern to you? Yes, yeah, no, I'd like to build on what Julian just said. So I'm supportive of constitutional amendments that would eliminate the electoral college, abolish the partisan gerrymandering that it's connected to what Julian just explained. My concern is I'm not sure that we can achieve those major reforms under our current constitutional system because our constitution is the hardest to amend among the constitutions in the world today. If you look at our history, since 1789 there've been more than 11,000 proposed amendments, only 27 of them have become part of the constitution. And the last substantive amendment that addresses electoral politics that Julian mentioned, the 26th amendment, which gave 18-year-olds the right to vote in federal elections, was ratified more than 50 years ago. And I'm concerned that we're becoming increasingly anti-democratic, particularly the Senate, which Julian was mentioning, that if you think of the example, and I still find this mind-boggling, and it's something that George writes about in the book, that a president who lost the popular vote in 2016 was then able to nominate a Supreme Court justice who was confirmed by the votes of only 51 senators who represented approximately 44% of the U.S. population. That justice now holds a lifetime appointment on our nation's highest court. And I find that deeply anti-democratic and really troubling. So that's my reaction. I really appreciate what Julian laid out. My concerns are how difficult under our constitutional system it is to address this anti-democratic present and a future that I'm concerned is gonna get worse. I'll end by saying that experts predict, and this builds on Julian's kind of telling us the story of history and urbanization, that by 2040, about 30% of the U.S. population will control 70 seats in the Senate. And moreover, the equal representation of states in the Senate is hardwired into the final clause of Article V in the Constitution. So as a believer in democratic theory, we need to have a system that better allows the will of the majority to be expressed. Well, David, thank you for that. And in a way that moves logically unless there are other reforms that the two of you would like to discuss that moves logically to the question of how it's going to be possible to achieve reform, particularly on these representation issues because to start off with, as David points out, in theory, the Senate representation cannot be changed without the consent of every state. The Constitution has a really remarkable, and I think amazingly anti-democratic provision that says that if 49 states want to change the representation in the Senate, one state can say, no, not working for us, the rest of you should go home. So that a reform that was supported by 90% of the population could be defeated by one state. So this brings the broader question, which is how can we achieve representation reforms? Why shouldn't we just follow the provisions of the existing Constitution for amendments? David, what do you think? That's my, and I'll turn it over to Julian in a moment, but that's my enormous concern that it was what I first realized when kind of studying kind of constitutional history and these issues, there was a whole kind of outpouring of scholarship by people like Jack Ray Cove and then Sandy Levinson when he wrote our undemocratic Constitution, really pointed out that there was this disjuncture between the system that we had, the kind of structures in place and democratic values. And I've been thinking about this issue ever since and what strikes me is most Americans were very comfortable when we think about the Constitution and what it means, we often turn to the Bill of Rights, we think about the First Amendment, but we don't talk about these structural issues. And I think particularly the work of Sandy Levinson he's been sounding the clarion call now for a generation. And what I found so powerful about George's book was he systematically in chapter five goes through many things that I support as amendments to the Constitution and then shows how they can be blocked by a very small percentage of the American people because of how our representation doesn't mirror our population. But I'll turn it over to Julian. Really? Yeah, I think we're at a critical inflection point with how we imagine this, right? I think there's a certain amount of past dependency here, right, where because things have operated for so long in a particular way, even imagining the political will it would take to reverse course seems like a daunting task, right? And I think another thing that we have to consider is many of the problems that I talked about with malacortion districts has gotten worse with algorithmic data, right? With the nature in which people are playing with census data. There is metadata now where political strategists are essentially manipulating district boundaries down the corners at city blocks. It's more sophisticated now than it's ever been. And in that way, I think people have been reluctant to think intently about how we might report things in large part because they've doubled down on old strategies. So one of the things I think that we need to strongly consider, which is also chock full of its own complexities is creating independent nonpartisan state based boards or commissions to draw district boundaries, right? It might be a possibility. If the constitution mandates that state legislatures have the authority to draw political districts, they might have the constitutional authority or be given the constitutional authority to allow another organization to do the job because it's clear. Given not just the long history, but the recent history, that partisan actors are incapable of gerrymandering themselves out of power, right? Julian, thank you. And I might just add that I would recommend to the viewers today that if they want to learn more about the problem of gerrymandering, there was a case in the Supreme Court called Rucho versus Common Cause a year or two ago and it's not too hard to get a copy of the decision where the conservatives on the court and the liberals on the court engaged in a knockdown, drag out fight about what the constitution had to do with gerrymandering and for better force, the conservatives won and they announced that the constitution didn't have anything to do with gerrymandering. But the case contains some great examples of the sophistication that Julian was talking about in terms of the way gerrymandering is being done because it's possible for a political party that loses the popular vote in a state and that with a substantial majority of the congressional seats in that same state. That's a great examples in the court case, right? I recommend that. So let's talk a bit more now about this question though of how to achieve reform. We've said that it's very difficult to achieve it under the current constitution. I advocate a new convention, which I think needs to be a popular convention, but I know that a lot of people and I said earlier that a lot of people have reservations about that and concerns about it. And David, this is something I know you've given a lot of thought to. So maybe you'd start us off and talk about what concerns you have or you think others legitimately have about a convention. Julian, you're welcome to join in on this. Yeah, so let me start with, first I wanna stress that I think George makes a compelling argument in the book for why we need a new constitutional convention and I applaud him for starting this conversation because the kind of premise of his book is that we're heading towards crisis and we're gonna have to do this at some point. So we need people systematically thinking about how this might work. But let me share my reservations about imagining what happens if we replace the constitution of 1787. And again, we're doing this at an event sponsored by the National Archives that showcases the constitution. I have great reverence for it. It's a wonderful site. I wanted my family to see it, my son. So what happens if we replace it with an entirely new American constitution? How can we in this currently divided nation legitimate a new constitution? That's the challenge. And moreover, how do we inculcate civic awareness of the structural framework that contemporary Americans are much more comfortable as I suggested earlier, discussing individual rights. When we launched Constitution Day, the government sent to many universities this bookmark for the constitution and it was literally the Bill of Rights. It wasn't the structural part. But why the conversation about the new convention is so important is it forces all of us to discuss what we value about our constitutional heritage. What are those values that we wanna see a new constitution champion? But that's why this is such an important conversation that we don't want to either engage in the idea of simply kind of worshiping the founders or just trashing the founders as people who lived in a very different time with different sensibilities. But what can we take from that original constitution? And I would add, for me, our constitutional heritage, it's absolutely essential to come to terms with the vision of the post-Civil War 1860s that I don't wanna talk only about the constitution of 1787, for me, you have to talk about the 14th Amendment where we actually, you know, finally wrote in the idea of quality before the law into the document. So for me, as somebody, and like Julie, I'm also an historian by training, I don't wanna lose what I think is so valuable about our heritage, our tradition, the values that we'd wanna ensure. And I really think the idea of having this conversation forces people to come to terms and list what it is they value. George talked about some of those values in the opening. He has concerns that separation of powers no longer works the way it should. But I think we have to have that discussion about the kind of system we want and who we are as Americans. And if we don't do this, I'm afraid, we're losing our belief in democracy. And also, if we keep just coming up with workarounds or if we're gonna rely on the Supreme Court to give us our answers, the constitution and these values are gonna lose legitimacy. My fear, and I always tell this to students, is I don't ever wanna be in a place where we have a democratic constitution and a Republican constitution. That would be disastrous, that we need some way to have a shared United States constitution. But I'm really interested to hear Julian's thoughts. Yeah, can I take a slightly, I wanna bring up a slightly different set of questions about this discussion, if you don't mind. The question is, in this hyper politicized environment, how can we have this conversation without people interpreting it or misinterpreting it as anti-American, right? That no one's doubting that the constitution isn't full of wonderful revisions, right? I mean, the flavor is a lot, baked into the constitution, right? The apparatus that allowed people to look like me, the ability to disestablish the slave system. I mean, it's brilliant in that way. But there's as much myth and saga around the constitution as the records, as there are actual wonderful provisions. And my question is, we struggle to come to terms with the distinctions between America's state of democratic claims and its actual political practices, right? And how do we have a discussion about constitutional reform in a hyper politicized environment where people can't even seem to speak to one another across their political differences, right? So if it seems okay, I mean, I think you both raised questions that I probably should try and take a crack at. Julian, let me just start off by saying for the viewers benefit that the history that you were describing, history of urbanization, of demographic change, and so on is absolutely fundamental to understanding why the constitution doesn't work today. Because the framers had no idea that we would end up with a country 100 times as large and almost totally urbanized compared to the country they lived in and the rules they created didn't anticipate those changes. So they worked, the rules work differently today on structural issues like the ones you're talking about than they did at the time. So that's, I just encourage viewers to really take on board what Julian was saying about these issues. As far as the concerns that Julian and David have raised about constitutional reform and how to get there in a convention and so on, these are very legitimate concerns. And I'll try and just quickly take on sort of one by one. The first thing I wanna say is I don't advocate the total replacement of the 1787 Constitution. There are things I like about a lot about it and I don't think that any convention is at all likely to say, let's just throw it out, what the heck, start over. That's not gonna happen, that's just not gonna happen. And part of the reason it's not gonna happen is that I envision the convention process as a process with political safeguards. One of which is that if people wanna go off and do crazy stuff, they might as well stay home because it isn't going to get ratified. One thing we know about the original Constitution is that delegates wanted to make some changes that they did not make because they knew the Constitution would be rejected. And so they were well aware that they had to have the Constitution ratified. So there was a political safeguard built in. There would be today. I don't think it makes any sense to set up a convention that doesn't require a popular supermajority to ratify its work. So first of all, I'll throw it all out. I don't think any convention will. Second of all, in terms of legitimating the convention's work, that's what the ratification process is all about. It's the same kind of debate that took place in 1787 where in every state, people get to start throwing rocks and whenever a convention comes up with and they talk about what it's gonna do and how it's gonna work, and then they decide. And so that is a legitimating process, the process of debate. It's why Congress holds hearings on legislation. I don't just announce on Tuesday or Wednesday they're gonna pass a big bill because they try to legitimate their work. In the ratification process, I think we'll do the same thing. As to Julie's concern about hyper-politizization, which I think is a legitimate concern, there's a sense in which it's a counsel of despair because if you say, look, we're really politically divided so what's the point of having this conversation or trying to find a way to make it work? Then we're quitting before we start because we think we're gonna fail. And my view is that the convention is actually one of the few places that can overcome that process because you can make a grand bargain where I get some of what I want, you get some of what you want, right? Nobody is entirely thrilled with the results but the issues have been dealt with in a way that everybody recognizes is how we're gonna move forward. This same process actually, Julie, happened and I talk about this in my Confederation book right before the 1787 convention. Congress was completely deadlocked in 1786 at the end of 1786 because half the country wanted to create a treaty with Spain that would benefit the heck out of New England and would destroy a good part of the South. And the South was like, we're not gonna do this. So these guys were unable to legislate about anything that mattered whatsoever and if you wanted to see a politicized environment, all you had to do is to look at how these people felt about each other at the time. I mean, there are people from the North who could not have crossed the river and gone south 1786 and so on, right? So I think hyperpolitization is something that happens from time to time. The convention is actually, I think, one of the best methods of overcoming that problem because we're gonna choose delegates in a pre and open process. They're gonna have a chance to decide what issues they really wanna focus on because they can't focus on everything and because if they do, they'll lose anyway. So I think we can get past that. I think that civic awareness and values debates, that's exactly what I think the convention will do. This will force people, not just to debate these issues in the abstract, but to say, well, if you really believe in voting rights, then you have to be willing to support these rules for who gets to vote and how they get to vote. And when a consensus forms around issues like that, it's powerful enough that it does reaffirm values, okay? When if you think about the Constitution, and I'm sure many of our viewers know this, but you guys certainly do, there was no bill of rights in the Constitution as it was originally proposed to the voters in 1787. There was no bill of rights. And the public was unhappy enough about this, but that alone nearly defeated the original Constitution. And so once they cut through by the skin of their teeth, they realized, we have to fix this. So there was a very extensive debate in Congress about values behind the bill of rights. Madison lost on one of the main religious freedom issues that he was pushing, and it just died at that point because the values debate was pretty conclusive. And people said, we're putting this stuff into the Constitution. It's part of the values that we're gonna support. So, I think the convention process makes people nervous, but it has huge potential. George, can I push back Jitley on this, by the way? Sure. I think the demographic patterns that have characterized the last few decades have led to, I think one of the beauties of the Constitution, federalism, is that, forgive me if I'm wrong here, moderates the fringe, by the way, in some ways. Washington has a way of moderating the fringe. At least it has, right? But now as it stands now in relationship to malabar rights, there's a small number of people who are making decisions for a larger number. Who's choosing the delegates is my ultimate question. And how do we... That's fair. In the book, I talk a lot about how the delegates should be chosen because you're exactly right. I think using the current rules, the game is over. That's right. In a lot of ways, the game is over. Okay, so we're gonna have to start out with the understanding that we have to choose delegates with a more democratic system than the Constitution would normally dictate. I apologize, but our time for discussion is up. And so we said we would take questions from viewers and I think it's not come that time. Okay, so here's a question from a viewer. Let me click on it so I can read it. Would term limits and other administrative policies help address the issues related to racial and class inequality? So the question is term limits and racial and class inequality. One of the two of you likes to take that? Oh, so whether term limits is something... There are two issues that I think are always important. One, we want to talk about what's constitutionally permissible like what you can do. And then the second part is having a discussion about whether we think of policy is a good or bad idea. So we always wanna start on the issue of what's constitutionally permissible and in our, where our system works now that ultimately it becomes a determination of the majority of the nine people on the Supreme Court. My own sense is that we want as many options to be things that we have debates about as people about whether we think they're a good or bad idea that we should test, that we should be experimental. My own understanding of how term limits have worked and this is at the state level and I'm from a small state, Nevada, is it's been enormously difficult to have continuity and to run the system that so much of it is based on the connections and knowledge we have, a system that we meet every other year. So I think there are arguments both for and against. Term limits, I'm not sure it's gonna address the concerns that Julian has, particularly if you have political parties that are really kind of running the process, you're gonna, I think, continue to replicate some patterns we've seen. But I'm interested to hear Julian's response. I agree, that's my response. Okay, next question. There's a chain in the chat asking, why do we not enforce laws on the books before creating new ones? So if it's all right with you, I'd like to take that question. Sure. Okay, a lot of what we've been talking about here are structural problems that have nothing to do with enforcing the law. Nobody argues that the existing constitution says every state get two senators and that they have equal votes in the Senate. What we're saying is that's a huge problem. So on the one hand, as someone who was engaged in law enforcement in part of my past career, I favor much stronger law enforcement than we have today, but unfortunately it is not gonna solve a lot of the core problems that have to do with a really weak social safety net and enormous inequalities both in wealth and in the way the criminal justice system works. Enforcement will improve things marginally, but it's not gonna get to the heart of our problems is what I think. Here we go. Apparently we did such a good job that the audience doesn't have any further questions. So I'd like to review all, have some concluding remarks you'd like to offer. Why don't we do that? And then I have a couple of things I'd like to add based on the discussion today. Yeah, if I may, I'll just quickly on the last question about law enforcement. You say one of the really interesting things about leading up to the constitution of 1787, you know, James Madison was enormously concerned that states were passing too many laws. They weren't allowing people to know what they were. They were changing them. He had enormous concerns about this idea that you need predictability, some stability in lawmaking. So the original constitution, you know, Madison's vision is not only strengthening how the federal government will go, but it was also an attempt to think about how we can create systems where states operate better. But in terms of, you know, kind of closing remarks on the conversation that we had. David, let me just say, stop you there for a moment. It turns out we got an additional question. Oh, yeah. There's a viewer who would like to know what is a runaway convention? And would either of you like to take a break about it or shall I? Sure, I'm happy to just say what's interesting about the idea of a runaway convention is that they're not gonna follow, you know, kind of a preset instructions. And when you think about the original constitution, that they're being sent there to just amend the Articles of Confederation and then they pretty early on decide that makes no sense that we need a new system. So when people I think talk about a runaway convention, what they're afraid of is these people are gonna do, there's no constraints, there are no limits, there are no safeguards, they're gonna do something that we don't want. And part of what George's argument is that the ultimate safeguard that protects us against if you think a runaway convention is frightening is if it requires supermajority support to ratify it, to make it the law of the land, that protects us from the fear that they're gonna do something that we, the people, don't want. When I hear runaway convention, I think people are concerned that they're gonna come up with something where suddenly there's no freedom of speech, no freedom of press, that it's like the initial concern that why would I trust these people with so much power? Right, Julie, would you like to add to that or? No, no, you can go ahead, George. Okay, let me just emphasize that this is a concern that lots of people have about runaway conventions. For example, the people who support a balanced budget amendment. And there are a number of states that are calling for a convention just limited to a balanced budget amendment, right? They have tried to do handsprings to find ways to prevent that convention from considering anything else other than a balanced budget amendment. It's actually a crime in a couple of states for a delegate to a convention to consider the balanced budget amendment to agree to talk about anything else. That's how nervous people are about this. But I think they're kind of missing the point and David, I think, really made it. It's legal safeguards aren't going to solve these kinds of problems. My book spends a lot of time talking about the legal issues and you can read all that, but what I basically conclude is that this is a political process. And as a result, if you're happy with the political safeguards, the legal details are something you can leave for somebody else to fight about in a court. And so a runaway convention, which is absolutely the 1787 convention was a runaway convention. And they knew it and they knew that as a result they had to come up with proposals that would gain ratification in the enough states to change the way things were being done. And part of their concern and part of Madison's concern actually was not that states were passing too many laws although he didn't think that, but also that states were refusing to obey confederation treaties, not just laws, but treaties that the confederation had made with foreign governments. And Madison didn't think that better enforcement was going to solve that problem. He thought a new government was needed to solve it. I think that's where we are on some pretty fundamental concerns that people have. So I don't see any additional questions, so gentlemen, closing remarks. David was mid-free, my thought made him continue, by the way. So I'm just gonna close since I have an image of George Washington behind me. So part of the kind of magic and success of the original convention was that George Washington agreed to participate. His prestige was enormously important. He presides over the convention and it's part of that process of giving it legitimacy. So what I'm interested in and it's really a question for George and the viewers is if we can imagine somebody, and it goes to Julian's concerns about how divided we are, if we can imagine a living American right now who could preside over a new constitutional convention where the vast majority of Americans would say that person is somebody I trust, I believe in if he or she is putting their career or their legacy behind this and I'm having a hard time imagining who would play that role, say we did this in 2026. But that might be just going back to Julian's point about past dependency, that if you think you can't change circumstances, then you tend to think you're in a better position than you are. So as part of this kind of imagining who plays that role, it's something I've been thinking about and I should say to his credit in the book George lists Americans who he thinks you don't need, you can't replace Washington with one that George has about 12 people who should be part of the process of saying we need to have a convention and raise the funds but just kind of thinking on that point of are there people in the United States today that Americans can look at and say these are people who I trust? So that's where I'll end my comments. Thank you, David. Thank you very much, Julian. I would say, and I'm the sound of it like a broken record here that actions that don't seem political can have political implications and these demographic shifts that I keep bringing up are some of the most profound demographic shifts that have happened in recent human history. The world has become more urban and the strategies that we devise to meet those types of challenges are going to require a political re-imagination of epic proportions. And I think we have to leave open the possibility that the ways that we are living our lives in the 21st century. And if these trends continue at pace, they're going to demand that we think very intently about how we interact with one another in political spaces. And we may not have a choice in the future. If many of the more ominous trends that are on the horizon continue, we might have to come to the table one way or the other to think very intently about our relationship to one another in the political arena. Okay, I think with that, and thank you both very much for those comments and for participating, I wanna leave our viewers with the following. The archives, if you haven't been there, the archives is a wonderful place. And there are important things you can see there in addition to the originals of the Constitution and the Articles of Confederation. And they include a really significant civil rights exhibit that was put together between the archives and our private contributors, which I really would encourage parents with schooling for kids to visit if they are able to go to the archives. So the archives is a great national institution. And we, I personally very much appreciate the willingness to host this and to talk on my previous book. And I wanna thank our viewers again for their time today. And with that, I guess we'll sign off. Thank you. Thank you.