The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution

In this timely discussion Mark Peterson charts the history of the American constitution from its origins in an agrarian past to the crisis we face today, drawing on his recently published book, The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand-Year History (March 2026).

The American Revolution occurred at a time when Britain’s constitutional order failed to adapt to the extraordinary growth of its colonies. The framers designed an American constitution to succeed where Britain’s had faltered, planning for continuous population and territorial expansion that would eventually cross the continent. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, it was already ill-suited for an increasingly urban, industrialized society, and the transformations of the twentieth century have pushed it to a breaking point. 

A specialist in early North America and the Atlantic world, Peterson traces the American constitutional tradition to the control of land in medieval England, showing how the founders incorporated the aspirations of Magna Carta with the administrative principles of the Domesday Book, a meticulous survey and valuation of landed property commissioned by William the Conqueror. This framework encouraged the growth of democratic self-government in a young nation. It also institutionalized the colonization of territory and the expulsion of Indigenous peoples, establishing a legal blueprint for transforming tribal lands into revenue-yielding real estate for settlers. With a riveting narrative, Peterson paints an arresting picture of a dynamic republic whose government has changed enormously to meet the challenges of the modern age, but whose written constitution has changed very little.