The United States is home to the world’s oldest national constitution. Stability defines the document. Americans have never convened to replace the Constitution and rarely amended or fundamentally reinterpreted the document. What explains the American Constitution’s longevity? This book proposes that state constitutional revision resolves national constitutional controversies. With lower barriers to amendment and replacement, the American state constitutions invite reform, addressing national constitutional controversies. This state constitutional reform discourages national constitutional re ... More

The United States is home to the world’s oldest national constitution. Stability defines the document. Americans have never convened to replace the Constitution and rarely amended or fundamentally reinterpreted the document. What explains the American Constitution’s longevity? This book proposes that state constitutional revision resolves national constitutional controversies. With lower barriers to amendment and replacement, the American state constitutions invite reform, addressing national constitutional controversies. This state constitutional reform discourages national constitutional revision and quiets conflict between the branches of the national government, guiding American political development. The book elaborates this claim using original datasets of all 12,000 proposed federal constitutional amendments and all 411 state constitutional revision bodies from 1776-2020. Using detailed, chronological case studies from the Revolution to the present, the book shows that state constitutionalism guides national politics. This frequent, popular revision grants the state constitutions a democratic legitimacy that the national Constitution lacks.