Michael Klarman

Bill Cosby goes back to court in April, but his retrial on sexual assault charges will unfold in a very different America than his first. Since then, the #MeToo movement has established that women who individually once feared their accusations would be discounted or dismissed can find corroboration and power when they come forward as a group...There has long been a debate on just how much judges are, or should be, swayed by public opinion...Others, such as the Harvard law professor Michael Klarman have argued that certain landmark rulings like Brown v. Board of Education would never have been possible if judges had not been reflecting shifting social mores. In some ways, Mr. Cosby paved the way for the #MeToo moment as he battled accusations for years that he had hidden a history of mistreating women behind his comforting pose as America’s Dad.

Last month, representatives from 22 states gathered in Arizona to plan the nation’s first constitutional convention since 1787...“Our Constitution needs some pretty important repair and it’s absolutely clear Congress is never going to propose it,” says Lawrence Lessig, a left-leaning Harvard law professor and convention enthusiast. “In my view, [a convention] is the only option.”...For instance, says Harvard law professor Michael Klarman, “we have this Electoral College system which allows you to become president even though your opponent won two percent more of the vote — which is a lot of votes, 3 million votes.”

It’s one thing for President Donald Trump to criticize a sitting judge because he disagrees with a ruling the judge has made, legal historian Michael J. Klarman said Friday as he wound up a history presentation about the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education. It’s quite another to attack a judge, Klarman said, calling the president’s remarks after a travel ban ruling “disgraceful.” “You’re going to see more attacks on the judiciary” by Trump, Klarman said to roughly 300 Kansas judges and justices from Kansas appellate and district courts during the Kansas Judicial Conference in Topeka.

What is it about our U. S. Constitution that gets everyone so stirred up? It is among the most referred to documents in recent history. It is a secular document but it holds an almost religious sacredness to it...In his new book, "The Farmers' Coup, The Making of the United States Constitution," Harvard Law professor Michael J. Klarman, PhD points out that even in its conception, the U.S. Constitution was drafted from ordinary things (including human limitations) much like today. He told this reporter, when asked what are some of the misconceptions people today still have? "I think people tend to think of the Constitution as reflecting timeless principles of governance, whereas, in fact, there was a great deal of interest-group bargaining over both the drafting and ratification of the Constitution."

Last year, on a presidential debate stage opposite Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump vowed, once president, to appoint “pro-life judges” to the Supreme Court. After enough of them, he said, the reversal of Roe v. Wade—the 44-year-old opinion that made abortion legal throughout the United States—would “happen automatically.”...“There’s a lot of reason to be concerned if you’re a big fan of women’s reproductive rights,” says Michael Klarman, a professor at Harvard Law School. “As soon as you overturned the trimester framework in Roe, you’re no longer in the realm of being bound by precedent.”

Seven finalists were named for the $50,000 George Washington Prize — which recognizes works written about the founding era in American history — and six of the works have authors with New England ties...Three Harvard professors are also among the finalists. Annette Gordon-Reed, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, wrote “ ‘Most Blessed of the Patriarchs’: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination” with Peter S. Onuf. Historian Jane Kamensky published “A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley,” and law professor Michael J. Klarman was cited for “The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution.”

As President Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Neil M. Gorsuch seems like an unlikely friend for many at Harvard Law School. ...As a judge, Gorsuch has similarly not explicitly shared controversial views. Law School professor Michael J. Klarman wrote in an email that Gorsuch’s views on a number of contentious legal topics remain unclear. “We don't know, based on his judicial opinions, what are Gorsuch's views on lots of issues, but he has given speeches suggesting courts have played too large a role on issues such as abortion and gay marriage, and he has rendered decisions suggesting broad support for religious exemptions with regard to statutes that impose unwanted burdens on religious practices,” Klarman wrote. Klarman wrote that while he would have preferred Merrick B. Garland ’74, former President Barack Obama’s nomination to the Supreme Court whose confirmation was blocked by Republican senators, he didn’t have any particular preference about who Trump nominated. “I regard Justices as largely fungible votes. Any Trump appointee would vote the same way on abortion, affirmative action, gun control, etc., as any other,” Klarman wrote.

“No matter whether the country follows the flag or not, the Supreme Court follows the election returns,” wrote the Chicago humorist and author Finley Peter Dunne in 1901. More than a century later, many legal scholars and historians take Dunne’s famous quip—which identified a relationship between Supreme Court decisions and popular opinion—as gospel...However, it may be important to distinguish between the ability and the willingness of justices to make sweeping decisions that challenge the status quo. Michael Klarman, a legal historian and professor at Harvard Law School, told the HPR that in a majority of cases, “[justices] have a lack of inclination to do things that are dramatically contrary to public opinion.” Klarman attributes this reluctance to a variety of reasons.

Over the last few weeks, We the People has featured programs held at the National Constitution Center last fall. This week, that review concludes with Michael Klarman, Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and author of The Framers’ Coup, and Patrick Spero, Librarian of the American Philosophical Society and co-editor of The American Revolution Reborn, who offer new perspectives on the American Revolution and the Founding era. Tom Donnelly, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Constitution Center, moderates.

...In his new book The Framers’ Coup, Michael J. Klarman explains how this brief, geographically isolated, and seemingly thwarted uprising fundamentally shaped American governance. The Bancroft Prize-winning legal historian and Kirkland & Ellis professor of law writes, “Shays’s Rebellion played a critical role in the creation of the Constitution.”

A desire to learn more about three subjects led me to read the five new books I most enjoyed this year. In this moment of high anxiety about the state of American politics one can receive useful perspective by studying Michael Klarman’s magisterial “The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution.”

The Electoral College polarized Americans from its inception. Created by the framers of the Constitution during the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the College was put forth as a way to give citizens the opportunity to vote in presidential elections, with the added safeguard of a group of knowledgeable electors with final say on who would ultimately lead the country, another limit on the burgeoning nation’s democratic ideals..."[Southerners] wanted slaves to count the same as anyone else, and some northerners thought slaves shouldn’t be counted at all because they were treated as property rather than as people," says author Michael Klarman, a professor at Harvard Law School. In his recently released book, The Framers’ Coup, Klarman discusses how each framer’s interests came into play while creating the document that would one day rule the country. “One of two biggest divisions at the Philadelphia convention was over how slaves would count in purposes of apportioning the House of Representatives," he explains. The issue vexed and divided the founders, presenting what James Madison, a slave owner, called a “difficulty…of a serious nature."

The increasing dominance of Republicans inside statehouses across the nation has spurred talk that a constitutional convention — the very meeting that crafted the US Constitution — could be more than just a Hail Mary thrown to conservatives. Conservative groups and Republican lawmakers have been planning for the possibility for years, although it picked up steam three years ago after a group of state lawmakers met at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, just outside Washington...Under the current Constitution, if they could get enough states to approve opening a convention, any changes made in the convention would still have to be approved by at least 38 states — the three-fourths majority of states. But they could also rewrite the rules entirely — like the original framers of the Constitution did in 1787. Mike Klarman, Kirkland and Ellis professor of law at Harvard Law School and a constitutional historian, notes that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 had rules they had agreed on and were only supposed to tinker with the existing Articles of Confederation.

Michael Klarman, Harvard Law Professor and author of The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution, and Patrick Spero, Librarian at the American Philosophical Society and editor of The American Revolution Reborn, discuss their new books, putting a human face on America’s Framers and reassessing the clashes that helped define the Founding era. Tom Donnelly, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the National Constitution Center, moderated the discussion on Monday, November 14.