Harvard Club of New York

HLS Professor Michael Klarman on the Making of the United States Constitution

Americans revere their Constitution. Yet, most of us are unaware how tumultuous the drafting and ratification processes were – George Washington’s uncertainty about whether to attend the Philadelphia Convention; Gunning Bedford’s threat to turn to a European prince if the small states were denied equal representation in the Senate; Hamilton’s quasi-monarchist speech to the Convention; and Patrick Henry’s herculean efforts to defeat the Constitution in Virginia through demagoguery and conspiracy theories. Michael Klarman, Professor of Constitutional law at Harvard Law School, returns to the Club this fall to discuss the democratic legitimacy of the Constitution’s content and its ratification process.

Prof. Klarman received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, his J.D. from Stanford Law School, and his D. Phil. in legal history from the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He clerked for the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and is consistently recognized for his teaching and scholarship, which are primarily in Constitutional Law and Constitutional History. 

Prof. Klarman’s latest book, The Framers’ Coup: the Making of the United States Constitution, is available for preorder on Amazon.com.