At first glance, these two books seem only superficially connected by dint of a shared focus on the Constitution of the United States. Beau Breslin’s description of a practice of generational constitutional conventions provides a broad and rich counterfactual constitutional history that stretches fully across the history of the United States, even peering into the near future. Jeremy C. Pope and Shawn Treier, by comparison, provide a deep examination of a single summer—albeit a vitally important one – of US constitutional history: they offer a close analysis of the votes of delegates to the Philadelphia convention of 1787 to retell the story of the convention. Breslin’s project is by its nature speculative in method, whereas Pope and Treier’s is driven by data. Breslin invites the reader to imagine “comprehensive constitution change” (p. xviii), whereas Pope and Treier guide the reader to “a renewed attention to … original design” (p. 169). But despite different emphases, the two books join together in two important ways: first, in an attention to the organization of, and thus possibilities for, constitutional conventions, and second, in the convergence of both books on a shared call for an understanding of constitution-making as an intensely political act.

Breslin’s A Constitution for the Living represents something unusual—perhaps even novel—as a piece of political science. In the face of modern political science’s hunger for ever-greater empirical grounding, Breslin steps bravely into a speculative space—but not the speculative space of game theories or rational choice models, of an existence bound by rules and abstract and interchangeable individuals, or of a speculative space seeking normative values by way of analytical philosophy. Instead, Breslin offers the reader a speculative space of a counterfactual constitutional history that is all the more impressive for its deep historical grounding in each of the moments explored. Taking Jefferson’s commitment to generational sovereignty seriously, Breslin asks the question, “What would America’s Constitution have looked like in each major era if Jefferson had convinced Madison, Kercheval, and all the rest in the founding period that each generation ought to draft its own text?” (p. 29). Taking average life expectancy as a guide, the thought experiment produces five conventions, in addition to that of 1787: those of 1825, 1863, 1903, 1953, and 2022. For each new convention, Breslin provides a descriptive account featuring familiar and less familiar historical figures, the likely issues of debate, and the ultimate textual changes secured, as well as the pathways not taken. Breslin expertly captures the political environment of each period and links the relevant convention and subsequent constitutional draft to the modes of politics therein. The result is more than 300 pages of closely drawn and engaging narration of a world that might have been and, through that possibility, an invitation to reimagine what might be. In this sense, the final convention—that of 2022—is a necessary part of the project and perhaps the most striking “counterfactual,” insofar as the narrative not only captures the sizable challenges of the present moment but also draws forth the despondent realization that we are unlikely to even achieve the modest reforms sketched by Breslin.

By contrast, Pope and Treier’s Founding Factions seeks not to speculate on but rather to sharpen our understanding of what took place in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. The authors turn to the voting records of the convention, seeking to gain greater insight into what took place by leveraging the fact that individual delegates voted as individuals but were counted in terms of state delegations. The analysis they present more than justifies attention to this apparently minor fact. At the level of the narrative of the convention itself, Pope and Treier show that, rather than being seen as a contest between large states and small states, the convention can be better understood as the shifting alignments of three coalitional blocs: the “core reform” states, the “Deep South,” and the “small states.” Examined this way, the central dimensions of debate at the convention change from representation and centralization of power to representation, federalism, and executive power (pp. 33, 35).

Those interested in the history of the convention will surely find this revision enlightening, but the broader value of the authors’ analysis lies in the ways in which it reshapes understandings of the process of the convention and, by extension, other political assemblies. Pope and Treier upend accounts of the convention as the strategic jockeying of different sides meeting and voting on discrete but interconnected constitutional questions. Instead, they claim that the convention voting was “the outcome of a deliberative process that was occasionally given to accidental outcomes, something not intended by anyone” (p. 151). The delegates acted, and reacted, within an environment of shifting goals and coalitions, seeking to advance complex agendas in consecutive moments of contingency. A crucial element was the built-in tendency toward a status quo bias that came with requiring a majority to overturn previous agreements (p. 44), which gave rise to the “chaotic nature of the debates where proposals came and went and the Convention simply accepted what could garner a majority under their rules” (p. 127). The result was a convention that saw early votes shape the agenda but in which final outcomes might not match the aspirations of any particular interest. It was, in short, a convention marked both by path dependency and weak intentionality.

Here then, is the meeting of the two books. More than works about the US Constitution, they are really works about the potential of constitutional conventions. Pope and Treier’s recasting of the Philadelphia convention emerges from situating the votes and decisions within the framework provided by the rules and expectations that governed that assembly. They show in impressive and detailed ways how the early votes shaped later ones and how Madison in particular deserves credit for setting an agenda, as opposed to securing a government that matched his intentions. Breslin in a different way shows us how politics might infuse a constitutional convention, presenting them as moments not of entrenching a higher law but instead of reimagining the political life of the nation in correspondence with the demands of the era. Both books call us to reexamine assumptions that the constitutional life of the nation resides in the interpretation of historical texts and to look instead to constitution crafting as moments of accessible political action.

In interesting ways, and perhaps as a consequence of their differing approaches, each book serves as something of a corrective to the other. The close attention to the sequencing of convention votes and the ways in which one vote can have repercussions elsewhere, seen in Pope and Treier, is not as much in evidence in Breslin’s accounts. There, the narratives do build on one another, but the sense of coalitions rising and falling across disparate issues is less well drawn, with each issue dealt with more or less independently. Moreover, there is a tendency for the longer-term consequences of each of Breslin’s conventions to approximate the actual historical experiences of the United States. Thus, the 1825 constitution is followed by the Civil War, the 1863 constitution is followed by the failure of Reconstruction, and the 1903 constitution by the New Deal. Such fidelity to history might be necessary to ensure that the thought experiment resonates, but it also downplays the path dependency and feedback loops that might see small changes generate significantly different critical junctures at later moments. But at the same time, Breslin’s account provides a normative and ideological framework that could bolster Pope and Treier’s analysis. That analysis reinscribes the significance of slavery to the compromises struck at the Philadelphia convention but otherwise offers little in terms of the ideological stakes of the project of constitution-making. Again, this makes sense within the constraints of their project, which is to examine the votes and coalitions, not to justify them. But without that background, Pope and Treier do not offer a compelling account for why the machinations of the convention of 1787 should guide our understanding of ourselves as constitutional actors. If 1787 was a purely political project in the sense of vying interests and coalitions, then what authority does it hold more than 200 years later?

It is in this ironic way that the books come closer together. The distinct approaches and intentions provide not only foils for one another but also support. Pope and Treier offer us a new way of thinking about 1787 and the work of that convention, but one that in subtle ways undermines the value of that event as grounding for contemporary politics. Breslin offers us a way to recommit to the importance of constitutional conventions as cultural and political authorities, but one that in other—and more deliberate—ways prods us to be less enthralled by 1787. The reader comes away from these encounters enthused to take up Breslin’s invitation to imagine a new constitutional settlement. But as they enter the convention hall, they would be wise to stop and tuck a copy of Founding Factions under their arm for future reference.