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The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them
An eye-opening account of how Americans came to revere the Constitution and what this reverence has meant domestically and around the world.
Some Americans today worry that the Federal Constitution is ill-equipped to respond to mounting democratic threats and may even exacerbate the worst features of American politics. Yet for as long as anyone can remember, the Constitution has occupied a quasi-mythical status in American political culture, which ties ideals of liberty and equality to assumptions about the inherent goodness of the text’s design. The Constitutional Bind explores how a flawed document came to be so glorified and how this has impacted American life.
In a pathbreaking retelling of the American experience, Aziz Rana shows that today’s reverential constitutional culture is a distinctively twentieth-century phenomenon. Rana connects this widespread idolization to another relatively recent the rise of US global dominance. Ultimately, such veneration has had far-reaching despite offering a unifying language of reform, it has also unleashed an interventionist national security state abroad while undermining the possibility of deeper change at home.
Revealing how the current constitutional order was forged over the twentieth century, The Constitutional Bind also sheds light on an array of movement activists—in Black, Indigenous, feminist, labor, and immigrant politics—who struggled to imagine different constitutional horizons. As time passed, these voices of opposition were excised from memory. Today, they offer essential insights.
Some Americans today worry that the Federal Constitution is ill-equipped to respond to mounting democratic threats and may even exacerbate the worst features of American politics. Yet for as long as anyone can remember, the Constitution has occupied a quasi-mythical status in American political culture, which ties ideals of liberty and equality to assumptions about the inherent goodness of the text’s design. The Constitutional Bind explores how a flawed document came to be so glorified and how this has impacted American life.
In a pathbreaking retelling of the American experience, Aziz Rana shows that today’s reverential constitutional culture is a distinctively twentieth-century phenomenon. Rana connects this widespread idolization to another relatively recent the rise of US global dominance. Ultimately, such veneration has had far-reaching despite offering a unifying language of reform, it has also unleashed an interventionist national security state abroad while undermining the possibility of deeper change at home.
Revealing how the current constitutional order was forged over the twentieth century, The Constitutional Bind also sheds light on an array of movement activists—in Black, Indigenous, feminist, labor, and immigrant politics—who struggled to imagine different constitutional horizons. As time passed, these voices of opposition were excised from memory. Today, they offer essential insights.
817 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 16, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
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May 21, 2025So much here. A thoroughgoing reevaluation of the mythology in constitutional history, presenting the avenues where real liberation and democratization have been repressed and decimated, and in doing so, showing how we can take them up again.
August 16, 2025
A titanic achievement, one that recontextualizes a large swath of American history and discourse.
Rana’s question—how the US Constitution came to be venerated in political speech across the spectrum, despite mighty disagreements throughout most of US history—is a really powerful lens to look at the burgeoning imperialism of the late 19th century, efforts to shore up the state after World Wars 1 & 2, and more.
The fulcrum comes in chapter 13, where a Cold War consensus comes to define constitutional veneration as a moderate anchor, and ideological disagreements across the spectrum as under the blanket term of “populism” (despite the claimed commonalities not holding at all). In the process, they erased the alternative traditions of imagining constitutional change, part of a larger project to wipe out the Left that was finally consummated in the ‘70s.
Judging from Rana’s earliest descriptions of the book from years ago, this is also where the project started—with earlier chapters serving to enumerate the possibilities that were erased. He also finishes up by looking at the last gasp of constitutional imagination in the early ‘70s.
The size and heft of the book can be pretty imposing, but it’s incredibly well-written and actually pretty swift for the range of material covered. It does feel like a book that’s too big and too good to really be digested in the discourse—one reason why you haven’t heard too much about it despite coming out last year. (The Dig’s interview about the book ended up sprawling almost nine hours long!)
The best book I’ve read since Grandin’s The End of the Myth, and an instant favorite.
Rana’s question—how the US Constitution came to be venerated in political speech across the spectrum, despite mighty disagreements throughout most of US history—is a really powerful lens to look at the burgeoning imperialism of the late 19th century, efforts to shore up the state after World Wars 1 & 2, and more.
The fulcrum comes in chapter 13, where a Cold War consensus comes to define constitutional veneration as a moderate anchor, and ideological disagreements across the spectrum as under the blanket term of “populism” (despite the claimed commonalities not holding at all). In the process, they erased the alternative traditions of imagining constitutional change, part of a larger project to wipe out the Left that was finally consummated in the ‘70s.
Judging from Rana’s earliest descriptions of the book from years ago, this is also where the project started—with earlier chapters serving to enumerate the possibilities that were erased. He also finishes up by looking at the last gasp of constitutional imagination in the early ‘70s.
The size and heft of the book can be pretty imposing, but it’s incredibly well-written and actually pretty swift for the range of material covered. It does feel like a book that’s too big and too good to really be digested in the discourse—one reason why you haven’t heard too much about it despite coming out last year. (The Dig’s interview about the book ended up sprawling almost nine hours long!)
The best book I’ve read since Grandin’s The End of the Myth, and an instant favorite.
August 5, 2025
Unlike other books I’ve read of a similar length there was never a moment where I felt it was dragging. Just a complete evolutionary narrative that gives so much insight into American political history and culture through the place of the constitution.
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January 4, 2025My interview with Aziz Rana on "The Constitutional Bind" for The Armen Show:
http://www.armenshirvanian.com/podcas...
http://www.armenshirvanian.com/podcas...
June 15, 2025
This book is simultaneously one of my favorite books of historical political analysis I have ever read and also such a tough book to recommend to people.
On one hand, Aziz Rana has done something spectacular here. He has recontextualized the core beats of American history and political transformation through how different movements have engaged with the central pillar of our democracy - the 1787 Constitution written by the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia. The 1787 Constitution was a compromise document written by mostly slave-owning settler capitalists who needed to find a way to maintain their settler empire amidst deep political economic tensions between them. The result was a profoundly anti-democratic and rigid document that is dramatically resistant to popular input, political and economic equality, government action, and is intentionally incredibly difficult to amend. But the world has changed immensely since 1787, and popular movements have demanded that their government transform with it. Some of these movements have made their marks on the Constitution, but their biggest effect was a transformation in how the Constitution was understood - not as a slaveholder settler compromise document, but as a "creedal constitution", a document whose vagueness and inconsistencies can be the basis of reinterpretation to meet the moment and allow for expansion of political rights and government service. Under this view, the 1787 Constitution doesn't need to be amended or rewritten to provide justice or equality, because it already does! This interpretation difference served as a release valve that stunted various movements' efforts to amend or even completely rewrite the Constitution, as was becoming popular during moments of Constitutional crisis (the pre Civil War era, the early 1900s, and the 1930s). Alongside this reinterpretation came a nationalistic understanding of the 1787 Constitution as a sort of secular holy text that guides the country - making criticisms of its flaws intrinsically anti-patriotic. This also became a critical part of popular support for American imperialist foreign policy, as many began to see America as intrinsically so democratic and free that intervention abroad cannot be viewed as imperialism, but as simply expanding democracy and freedom abroad. These "creedal constitution" perspectives did yield meaningful material differences for many people, but they failed to produce structural changes that could protect said transformations, paving the way for the moment we reside in today. The New Deal coalition and the Civil Rights Movement were unable to enshrine their victories into constitutional provisions, and the reliance on judicial interpretation meant that the structural flaws of the 1787 Constitution (state-based instead of people-based representation mechanisms in the Senate and Electoral College, a small judiciary with lifetime appointments that gave itself the power of judicial review, and the inability to hold national constitutional referenda) could lay the groundwork for the political apathy and frustrations that elected Trump the first time and helped him win the second time. Alongside all of this, however, have been popular movements from the oppressed to seek a more emancipatory and democratic popular compact, one that encourages mass popular engagement with the questions of the day while also protecting civil liberties and allowing for economic redistribution. Rana argues that while the 1787 Constitution has deep structural flaws, there is a value in pushing for a true popular emancipatory constitutionalism - we just have to think beyond the hero worship of an 18th century document that was never meant to handle the needs of our society today.
On the other hand, this book is very dense and detailed and will be a very hard book to convince others to read. Which is deeply unfortunate, because I think this book is an excellent work of analysis that really helps contextualize why we are in the moment we are in and why certain movements and changes failed or never happened here. Normally, I could recommend a podcast interview about a book, but even the podcast interview about this book is 4 parts long and has combined run time of almost 9 hours.
Still, I think this is a book that folks really should take their time to engage with. It's a massive work because it attempts something very bold and expansive, and it sticks the landing. But be prepared - you are not just getting a simplistic easy story here. You will see American history and politics in a different light thanks to this book, and I believe that is worthwhile.
On one hand, Aziz Rana has done something spectacular here. He has recontextualized the core beats of American history and political transformation through how different movements have engaged with the central pillar of our democracy - the 1787 Constitution written by the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia. The 1787 Constitution was a compromise document written by mostly slave-owning settler capitalists who needed to find a way to maintain their settler empire amidst deep political economic tensions between them. The result was a profoundly anti-democratic and rigid document that is dramatically resistant to popular input, political and economic equality, government action, and is intentionally incredibly difficult to amend. But the world has changed immensely since 1787, and popular movements have demanded that their government transform with it. Some of these movements have made their marks on the Constitution, but their biggest effect was a transformation in how the Constitution was understood - not as a slaveholder settler compromise document, but as a "creedal constitution", a document whose vagueness and inconsistencies can be the basis of reinterpretation to meet the moment and allow for expansion of political rights and government service. Under this view, the 1787 Constitution doesn't need to be amended or rewritten to provide justice or equality, because it already does! This interpretation difference served as a release valve that stunted various movements' efforts to amend or even completely rewrite the Constitution, as was becoming popular during moments of Constitutional crisis (the pre Civil War era, the early 1900s, and the 1930s). Alongside this reinterpretation came a nationalistic understanding of the 1787 Constitution as a sort of secular holy text that guides the country - making criticisms of its flaws intrinsically anti-patriotic. This also became a critical part of popular support for American imperialist foreign policy, as many began to see America as intrinsically so democratic and free that intervention abroad cannot be viewed as imperialism, but as simply expanding democracy and freedom abroad. These "creedal constitution" perspectives did yield meaningful material differences for many people, but they failed to produce structural changes that could protect said transformations, paving the way for the moment we reside in today. The New Deal coalition and the Civil Rights Movement were unable to enshrine their victories into constitutional provisions, and the reliance on judicial interpretation meant that the structural flaws of the 1787 Constitution (state-based instead of people-based representation mechanisms in the Senate and Electoral College, a small judiciary with lifetime appointments that gave itself the power of judicial review, and the inability to hold national constitutional referenda) could lay the groundwork for the political apathy and frustrations that elected Trump the first time and helped him win the second time. Alongside all of this, however, have been popular movements from the oppressed to seek a more emancipatory and democratic popular compact, one that encourages mass popular engagement with the questions of the day while also protecting civil liberties and allowing for economic redistribution. Rana argues that while the 1787 Constitution has deep structural flaws, there is a value in pushing for a true popular emancipatory constitutionalism - we just have to think beyond the hero worship of an 18th century document that was never meant to handle the needs of our society today.
On the other hand, this book is very dense and detailed and will be a very hard book to convince others to read. Which is deeply unfortunate, because I think this book is an excellent work of analysis that really helps contextualize why we are in the moment we are in and why certain movements and changes failed or never happened here. Normally, I could recommend a podcast interview about a book, but even the podcast interview about this book is 4 parts long and has combined run time of almost 9 hours.
Still, I think this is a book that folks really should take their time to engage with. It's a massive work because it attempts something very bold and expansive, and it sticks the landing. But be prepared - you are not just getting a simplistic easy story here. You will see American history and politics in a different light thanks to this book, and I believe that is worthwhile.
December 14, 2024
You can also see this review, along with others I have written, at Mr. Book's Book Reviews.
Mr. Book just finished The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came To Idolize a Document That Fails Them, by Aziz Rana.
This book was published in April 2024.
I had very high hopes for this one, but it turned out to be a huge disappointment. This book is a candidate for the most boring book I’ve ever read on the Constitution. I can’t figure out how at least half of it is even relevant to the topic.
I give this book an F.
Goodreads requires grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an F equates to 1 star. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).
This review has been posted at Mr. Book’s Book Reviews, and Goodreads.
Mr. Book finished reading this on December 14, 2024.
Mr. Book just finished The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came To Idolize a Document That Fails Them, by Aziz Rana.
This book was published in April 2024.
I had very high hopes for this one, but it turned out to be a huge disappointment. This book is a candidate for the most boring book I’ve ever read on the Constitution. I can’t figure out how at least half of it is even relevant to the topic.
I give this book an F.
Goodreads requires grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an F equates to 1 star. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).
This review has been posted at Mr. Book’s Book Reviews, and Goodreads.
Mr. Book finished reading this on December 14, 2024.
Want to Read
June 17, 2025342.7302 Ran
January 8, 2025
Total masterpiece, author is a total beast on the breadth and scope of his research and argument
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews