LSE: The Ballpark | American constitutional failure with Professor Jack Rakove
President Donald Trump’s two terms in the White House have seen the president criticize judges who make rulings he disagrees with, threaten military action, raise tariffs, and shutter federal agencies and departments all without congressional approval. These actions and others have led to warnings from many commentators that America is in a state of constitutional crisis.
In September 2026, the Phelan US Centre spoke to Jack Rakove, the William R. Coe Professor of History and American Studies and professor of Political Science and (by courtesy) Law, emeritus, at Stanford University. For Professor Rakove, we have moved beyond a state of constitutional crisis to a time of what he terms, constitutional failure. In our conversation, we talked about how constitutional failure is a product of President Trump’s policies, leadership, and how he has used executive power, the role of political polarization, and the links with what many see as the US’ recent decline in democracy and the erosion of democratic norms.
This episode was produced by Chris Gilson and Avan Fata.
Further reading and resources
- Professor Rakove’s articles at the Washington Monthly
- Rakove, Jack N. The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979; reprinted by Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.
- Rakove, Jack N. Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. Winner of the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for History
- Rakove, Jack N. Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.
- Rakove, Jack N. The Ticklish Experiment: A Political History of the Constitution, 1789–2024. Forthcoming.
- Barber, Sotirios A. Constitutional Failure. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014.
- Brandon, Mark E. Free in the World: American Slavery and Constitutional Failure. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.
- Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown, 2018.
- May, Ernest R. "Lessons" of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973
- Neustadt, Richard E., and Ernest R. May. Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers. New York: Free Press, 1986
- Maier, Pauline. From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972
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