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Consider the Constitution

The Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution

Consider the Constitution is a podcast from the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier. The show provides insight into constitutional issues that directly affect every American. Hosted by Dr. Katie Crawford-Lackey the podcast features interviews with constitutional scholars, policy and subject matter experts, heritage professionals, and legal practitioners.

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Avg 32 min
English

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S3 · E21
October 21 · 35 min
You Can’t Defer the Maintenance on the Republic
The Constitution created a government. It did not create citizens. Once it took effect, Americans had to figure out what people needed to know to govern themselves, and who should get the chance to learn it. Again and again, their answer was education. Host Dr. Katie Crawford-Lackey talks with Dr. Mark Boonshoft, associate professor of history at Virginia Military Institute, where he directs the constitutional history program, and author of Aristocratic Education and the Making of the American Republic. They look at why the founding generation worried so much about schooling: Benjamin Rush’s call to turn students into “republican machines,” fears about young Americans studying abroad, and a national university that the first six presidents wanted and never got. Boonshoft also takes up the harder side of the story. Jefferson and Madison built the University of Virginia while the state’s common schools went without. The founders’ “aristocracy of merit” often kept power with the same people who held it before. And free Black communities who invested in schools saw their voting rights cut anyway. New York dropped the property requirement for white voters in 1821 and raised it for Black voters. Finally, what cadets at VMI learn from constitutional history: that citizens drive constitutional change, and that the Constitution is something built and kept up, not just read. As Boonshoft puts it, you can’t defer the maintenance on the republic.
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S3 · E20
October 7 · 35 min
The Unfinished Constitution
The Constitution began as an experiment. Once it took effect, Americans had to figure out what it actually meant. They did not agree. Host Dr. Katie Crawford-Lackey talks with Dr. Jonathan Gienapp, professor of history and law at Stanford University and author of The Second Creation and Against Constitutional Originalism. They look at what the word "constitution" meant in 1787, why Madison saw the Articles of Confederation as a treaty rather than a true constitution, and how the First Federal Congress wrestled with questions the document left open: who can remove executive officers, a question the Supreme Court took up again in 2026, and whether Congress could charter a national bank. They also take on the "James Madison problem." Did Madison flip-flop in the 1790s, or did he refine his views through experience? And Gienapp offers advice for anyone who looks to the founders for answers today: assume less, not more.
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S3 · E19
September 23 · 24 min
The Declaration Is Our Inheritance
The Declaration of Independence announced more than a separation from Britain. It made a claim about government itself: that people hold rights government did not grant and cannot take away, and that legitimate power rests on the consent of the governed. Those ideas were unprecedented in 1776. Two hundred fifty years later, they are still unfinished business. Judge Douglas Ginsburg joins Katie Crawford-Lackey to consider what the Declaration has meant at home and abroad. He served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, including a term as chief judge, and hosted the PBS series A More or Less Perfect Union and We Hold These Truths. They trace the document's reach: more than a hundred national founding texts that reference it, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, drafted by Lafayette with Jefferson at his elbow, Ho Chi Minh quoting it word for word. And they trace its use here — Seneca Falls, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr. calling it a promissory note come due. Ginsburg also takes up the harder questions. How a document proclaiming equality emerged from a society built on slavery. Why "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" replaced "property." Whether the Declaration carries legal weight today, and what it would mean for courts to start from a presumption of liberty rather than a presumption that the government is right. The Declaration, he argues, is a yardstick, not a finish line. Every generation has to pick it up again.
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S3 · E18
September 9 · 33 min
You Compromise on Politics, Not on Principles
We know James Madison the thinker. The architect of the Constitution. The author of the Bill of Rights. But Madison was also a working politician — and a very good one. Dr. Matthew Goetz, senior historian at the White House Historical Association, joins Katie Crawford-Lackey to look at the side of Madison we tend to skip. With Jefferson, he built the country's first political party and its first partisan newspaper — then wrote attacks on the Washington administration under a pen name and admitted he found the work grating. Goetz also makes the case for Madison's most overlooked chapter: the War of 1812. The first wartime president in American history never passed a sedition law, never arrested a newspaper editor, and never considered postponing the election. You compromise on politics, he believed. Not on principles. Along the way: a weasel, a mole, and a set of measurements sent to Paris. A deathbed offer Madison turned down. And why the messiest parts of American politics may be exactly what makes the system work.
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S3 · E17
August 26 · 33 min
The Chapter Between the Revolution and the Constitution
We tend to jump straight from the Revolution to the Constitutional Convention — from a young James Madison to the Father of the Constitution. But the years in between are where the promises of independence collided with the hard work of governing. Dr. Frank Cogliano, professor of American history at the University of Edinburgh and author of A Revolutionary Friendship: Washington, Jefferson, and the American Republic, joins Katie in the studio to walk through that chapter. They start with the question of who the Revolution actually included — enslaved people, Native nations, women, common people, loyalists — and what independence meant to each. Then they follow Madison home to Montpelier: the Orange County Committee of Safety, the Virginia Convention of 1776, Jefferson's Governor's Council, and a Congress whose failures taught him exactly what needed fixing. Along the way, Cogliano makes the case that Madison's willingness to change his mind is a strength, not hypocrisy. He explains why the Madison–Washington partnership may be more interesting than the famous Madison–Jefferson friendship. And he leaves us with a challenge for the semiquincentennial year: live up to the words, and relearn how to disagree without hating each other.
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S3 · E16
August 12 · 31 min
More Than Decoration: What Montpelier's Objects Reveal About Power and Slavery
What can a bird's nest, a set of porcelain ice cream vases, and a portrait of Confucius tell us about the early American republic? In this episode, host Dr. Katie Crawford-Lackey sits down with Dr. Lisa Goff, Associate Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Virginia and former director of its Institute for Public History, to explore how historians read objects as evidence. Lisa walks us through the furnishings, art, and tableware inside James and Dolly Madison's Montpelier home — from European landscape paintings and portraits of foreign rulers to Dolly's elaborate porcelain ice cream service — and what they reveal about the Madisons' global ambitions, Dolly's political skill as a hostess, and the enslaved labor that made it all possible. We talk about the dining room as a stage for both diplomacy and denial, the archaeology behind the mansion's restoration, and the objects enslaved individuals at Montpelier owned and chose for themselves. Lisa also previews her forthcoming book, Stories in the Soil: Recovering Black and White Histories at James Madison's Montpelier, out this April.
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S3 · E15
July 29 · 37 min
The Man Behind "We the People": Recovering James Wilson
The three most famous words in American government — We the People — were written by a founder most Americans have never heard of. Host Dr. Katie Crawford-Lackey sits down with author and journalist Jesse Wegman to recover the story of James Wilson: a Scottish immigrant who arrived in 1765, signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, drafted the Constitution's opening words, and sat on the first Supreme Court — then vanished almost entirely from national memory. Wegman's new book, The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People's Constitution, is the first full-length biography of Wilson in more than seventy years. Wilson was the convention's fiercest advocate for popular sovereignty. He pushed for proportional representation, one-person, one-vote, and the direct election of the president — positions bold enough to unsettle many of his peers. We owe to him not only We the People but the Necessary and Proper Clause and the Supremacy Clause, the architecture of a strong national government. His 1768 essay on parliamentary authority reached Thomas Jefferson's desk and echoes in the Declaration itself. His end was as dramatic as his rise. A ruinous addiction to land speculation left Wilson holding four million acres he could not pay for. He was jailed twice for debt — the only Supreme Court justice ever imprisoned — and died in 1798 in the back room of a North Carolina tavern, delirious and destitute, with no funeral and scarcely a mention. Wegman explains why Wilson's ideas about equality and self-government still matter, and what we lose when the stories we tell about the founding get too simple.
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S3 · E14
July 15 · 39 min
Sacred Words: Jefferson, Madison, and the Language of Religious Freedom
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison agreed on almost everything when it came to religious freedom. But they talked about it in completely different ways. Historian Dr. John Ragosta joins Dr. Katie Crawford-Lackey to unpack that difference — Jefferson's intellectual, almost deistic case for separating church and state, and Madison's surprisingly reverential, scripture-laced language defending the same principle. Ragosta walks through the Memorial and Remonstrance, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and Madison's presidential vetoes on church matters, showing how two founders reached identical conclusions from very different starting points. The conversation closes on why that distinction still matters — and why separation of church and state was never, for either man, an attack on religion itself.
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S3 · E13
July 1 · 19 min
Becoming Madison
We know James Madison as the Father of the Constitution. But who was he before that? In this special episode, Dr. Katie Crawford Lackey takes the guest seat to explore the formative years that made Madison who he is. At 25, Madison was the youngest major figure of the founding era — small, sickly, quiet, and easy to overlook. He never commanded armies or delivered rousing speeches. What he had were ideas, and a framework for thinking about power, human nature, and government that no one else in the room quite possessed. Where did that framework come from? The answer lies in three Scottish Enlightenment-influenced teachers, a frontier Virginia upbringing, and an unconventional choice to attend the College of New Jersey — the institution we know today as Princeton — rather than William and Mary, where every other wealthy Virginia man of his generation enrolled. Dr. Crawford-Lackey traces Madison's intellectual development from the schoolroom of Donald Robertson, where a 70-mile horseback journey opened a young boy's mind to Locke, Milton, and Montesquieu, through his years under John Witherspoon at Princeton — where he experienced the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party not as distant news, but as live confirmation of everything the Scottish Enlightenment had taught him about human passion and the limits of reason. Madison wasn't born a Founding Father. He was made — by a rigorous education, a world in crisis, and the hardest question anyone could ask on the eve of a revolution: What kind of people is government meant to govern? The answer he arrived at still shapes American democracy today.
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S3 · E12
June 17 · 32 min
Making the Constitution Readable: PBS' Ben Sheehan on Civics, Comedy, and Closing the Knowledge Gap
What does the Constitution actually say — and why haven't most of us read it? Ben Sheehan, bestselling author and award-winning digital creator, joins host Dr. Katie Crawford Lackey to talk about the civic knowledge gap and how he used his background in comedy to make one of the most important documents in American history genuinely readable. Ben traces his own constitutional education — from dinner table civics lessons with his mom, a Senate staffer, to his years at Funny or Die and the Upright Citizens Brigade, to writing OMG WTF Does the Constitution Actually Say? He makes the case that Congress is more powerful than we're taught, that the Bill of Rights is the work of one person who lived on the very land where this episode was recorded, and that civic engagement doesn't have to mean doomscrolling — just ten minutes a day across the federal, state, and local level. Ben is also the host of Civics Made Easy on PBS, now being taught in 40,000 classrooms nationwide.
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#11
June 3 · 32 min
250 Years Later: The Philosopher Who Made It Possible
The words are familiar — life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness — but do we really know what they meant to the men who wrote them? As America marks 250 years of independence, Dr. Katie Crawford Lackey sits down with Dr. Lynn Uzzell, Julia Van Geest, and T.C. Le, co-authors of the forthcoming book Locking and Unlocking the Declaration of Independence: An Introduction to Jefferson's Philosophy on Revolution, to trace the ideas behind America's founding document back to their source: 17th-century English philosopher John Locke. The conversation unpacks how Jefferson both borrowed from and departed from Locke on consent, revolution, property, and happiness — and why those differences still shape how we understand American democracy today.
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S3 · E10
May 20 · 35 min
The Constitution Before the Constitution with Dr. Zachary Deibel
Before the Declaration of Independence, before the Constitutional Convention, colonists were already debating the meaning of a constitution — and it didn't look anything like the document we know today. Dr. Zachary Deibel, assistant professor of history at the Virginia Military Institute, joins Dr. Katie Crawford Lackey at Montpelier to trace the constitutional ideas that shaped the American Revolution. Drawing on the writings of John Dickinson, the legacy of the Glorious Revolution, and the colonial charters that defined the relationship between the King and his American subjects, Deibel unpacks why the dispute with Britain wasn't simply about taxes — it was a fundamental disagreement over the meaning of liberty itself. He also explores a theme that resonates well beyond the 18th century: when two sides decide there is nothing left to learn from each other, that's when the shooting starts. This episode is supported in part by the Virginia Law Foundation.
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S3 · E9
May 6 · 29 min
The Temple and the Republic: Architecture, Liberty, and Madison's Legacy
This episode is part of a special five-part miniseries examining James Madison's role in the American Revolution and the founding of the United States. As part of Montpelier's commemoration of the 250th anniversary of American independence, this series is funded by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission, in partnership with Virginia Humanities. In this final installment, Dr. Katie Crawford-Lackey sits down with Chris Pasch, Montpelier's archaeology field director, to examine one of the property's most symbolically charged structures: the Temple. Built around 1810 while Madison was serving as president, this open-air classical structure draws on Greco-Roman architectural tradition to embed the ideals of Enlightenment, liberty, and self-government directly into the landscape. Pasch brings both archaeological evidence and architectural history to what the Temple reveals about Madison's world. This episode closes the miniseries with a reminder that the Temple's meaning endures: informed, active citizenship is the foundation on which the American experiment still stands. This episode is supported in part by the Virginia Law Foundation.
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S3 · E8
April 22 · 34 min
Women and the Constitution
When the Constitution was drafted in 1787, women weren't explicitly excluded — they were simply not addressed. Dr. Catherine Allgor, historian and former President of the Massachusetts Historical Society, joins host Dr. Katie Crawford Lackey at Montpelier to unpack what that silence actually meant — and why it wasn't accidental. At the center of the conversation is a word every listener will want to know: coverture. The legal doctrine that erased a woman's identity at marriage — subsuming her personhood, her property, her wages, even her children into her husband — was never abolished by the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Dr. Allgor traces coverture from the founding era through Abigail Adams's famous "Remember the Ladies" letter, the suffrage movement, and the ERA debate, arguing that its legacy is still very much alive today. A bracing, eye-opening conversation for the 250th anniversary year — and a reminder that the republican experiment is still a work in progress. This episode is supported in part by the Virginia Law Foundation.
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S3 · E7
April 8 · 26 min
Promises to Keep: Madison, Self-Government, and the Citizen's Responsibility
This episode is part of a five-part miniseries examining James Madison's role in the American Revolution and the founding of the United States. Part of Montpelier's commemoration of the 250th anniversary of American independence, this series is funded by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission in partnership with Virginia Humanities. What does it actually take to sustain a republic — not just to build one, but to keep it alive across generations? In this episode, part of a special five-part miniseries commemorating America's 250th anniversary, Dr. Katie Crawford-Lackey speaks with Professor Colleen Sheehan of Arizona State University, one of the foremost scholars of James Madison's political thought. Drawing on her books The Mind of James Madison and James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government, Professor Sheehan explains why Madison believed the greatest threat to the republic wasn't foreign invasion or economic collapse, but something far more internal — the capacity of citizens to deliberate well, check their own impulses, and honor what Madison called a "debt of protection" we owe to one another. From the Federalist Papers to Robert Frost, this conversation illuminates why Madison remains essential to understanding what self-government actually demands of us — and what the 250th anniversary asks of us today.
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S3 · E6
March 25 · 31 min
The Supreme Court's Credibility
The Supreme Court has no army, no budget, and no way to enforce its own rulings. Its power rests entirely on the credibility of its words. Attorney and author Peter Cohen joins Dr. Katie Crawford Lackey to explore what happens when you go straight to the source — reading the justices' opinions directly rather than relying on outside interpretation. Drawing on his book In the Supreme Court's Own Words, Cohen walks through two centuries of landmark decisions in which the court checked presidential power, explains why dissenting opinions like Justice Harlan's in Plessy v. Ferguson can become the law of the land decades later, and makes the case that Supreme Court decisions are far more accessible than most people assume. From Lincoln and habeas corpus to Truman and the steel mills to the constitutional questions playing out in real time today, this conversation is a reminder that the framers feared monarchy — and built a system designed to prevent it. This episode is supported in part by the Virginia Law Foundation.
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S3 · E6
March 11 · 27 min
Madison's Revolutionary Legacy: From Virginia Rights to the War of 1812
This episode is part of a special five-part miniseries examining James Madison's role in the American Revolution and the founding of the United States. As part of Montpelier's commemoration of the 250th anniversary of American independence, this series is funded by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission, in partnership with Virginia Humanities. James Madison's participation in the American Revolution shaped not only his political philosophy but his entire approach to governance. In this episode, Dr. Katie Crawford Lackey sits down with Dr. Jay Cost to explore how Madison's revolutionary experiences—from his work on Virginia's Declaration of Rights at age 25 to his presidency during the War of 1812—reveal a leader committed to proving that self-government could work. Dr. Cost explains how Madison viewed the Revolution as an opportunity for fundamental reform based on liberal principles, and how his deep distrust of British authority influenced his diplomatic and military decisions decades later. The conversation illuminates Madison's unique talent for translating revolutionary ideals into practical political action, including his pragmatic leadership in creating the Bill of Rights and his determination to secure American sovereignty through what he saw as a "second war for independence."
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S3 · E4
February 25 · 35 min
The Foundation of Legislative Politics
When Congress can't pass laws, is the problem in the Constitution—or in the rules that govern how legislators actually do their work? In this episode, Dr. Katie Crawford-Lackey welcomes back Dr. Lauren Bell to discuss her new book, Transatlantic Majoritarianism: How Murder, Migration and Modernity Transformed 19th Century Legislatures. Dr. Bell reveals how 19th-century lawmakers in both the United States and Britain wrestled with a fundamental democratic dilemma: how to allow majority rule without descending into chaos or obstruction. From the "vanishing quorum" that paralyzed the House of Representatives to Irish members weaponizing parliamentary procedure in the House of Commons, Bell traces the parallel crises that forced both nations to rethink legislative power. This episode is supported in part by the Virginia Law Foundation.
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S3 · E3
February 11 · 36 min
Loyalists, Patriots, and the Reality of Revolution
This episode is part of a special five-part miniseries examining James Madison's role in the American Revolution and the founding of the United States. As part of Montpelier's commemoration of the 250th anniversary of American independence, this series is funded by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission, in partnership with Virginia Humanities. Dr. Katie Crawford Lackey sits down with historian Dr. Jim Ambuske to explore the complicated landscape of Revolutionary Virginia. Rather than a simple Patriots-versus-British narrative, the American Revolution was fundamentally a civil war that divided neighbors, families, and communities. Discover how religion, economics, and geography shaped whether Virginians supported independence or remained loyal to the Crown. Learn how enslaved people, indigenous nations, and women navigated this period of upheaval, making strategic choices amid profound danger and opportunity. From Scottish merchants in Norfolk to Madison's concerns about slave conspiracies, from the calculations of the Haudenosaunee to women asserting new political rights, this episode reveals the messy, perilous reality behind the founding.
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S3 · E2
January 28 · 27 min
Forging the Revolution: Montpelier's Blacksmith Shop and the Hidden Network of the American War
What can 500 pounds of slag reveal about the American Revolution? In this episode, Dr. Katie Crawford-Lackey talks with Dr. Matt Reeves, Montpelier's Director of Archaeology, about the blacksmith shop that powered James Madison Sr.'s plantation during the Revolutionary War. Through archaeological evidence and surviving ledger books, they uncover a regional network of production, the expertise of enslaved artisans like Moses, and how this industrial operation supplied the Continental Army—while transforming the economic and social landscape of Revolutionary Virginia.
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