America's Jeffersonian experiment

by Laura J. Scalia

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, friends and fellow statesmen, had radically different views about constitutionalism. While Madison worried that frequent amendments would endanger the security of rights, Jefferson recommended subjecting constitutions and their embedded principles to regular popular scrutiny. Scalia argues that, when revising state constitutions during the post-founding period, Americans enacted Jefferson's vision, boldly experimenting to broaden the franchise and to secure democratic government. Through careful analysis of hundreds of speeches for and against the greater empowerment of ordinary citizens, Scalia examines constitutional reform in seven states: Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, Louisiana, Ohio, and Iowa. Exploring the wider implications of Jeffersonian democracy, Scalia shows how these state constitutions not only remade the states but also expressed careful deliberation about citizenship, popular sovereignty, individual rights, and Am