Breaking Points: Constitutional Crises in American History

This set of 4 lectures will examine a series of constitutional crises in US history – critical points in time where our constitutional system was sorely tested. For all of them, a constitutional system survived – but in each case its fundamentals and trajectory were altered, sometimes subtly, other times profoundly. Some examples we will explore include the presidential elections of 1800, 1860, 1876, 1932 and 2020, as well as the Nullification Crisis of 1832 and the Watergate scandal. In these and in other cases, a constitutional form of government survived – but in each case, crisis changed it and left critical issues unresolved, laying the seeds for later crises.