Jack Rakove in conversation with Larry Kramer

Is America experiencing a constitutional crisis, or have we reached the point of constitutional failure? At this LSE Phelan US Centre event on 29 September 2026, leading scholar on American constitutional history, Professor Jack Rakove, explored this question in a wide-ranging conversation about the state of the US Constitution in the age of Trump with LSE’s President and Vice Chancellor, Professor Larry Kramer.

Jack Rakove is the William R. Coe Professor of History and American Studies and professor of Political Science and (by courtesy) Law, emeritus, at Stanford University. After completing his Ph.D. in History at Harvard University, Rakove joined the faculty of Colgate University in 1975, then moved to Stanford five years later. He is the author of eight books, including The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress (1979); Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (1996), which won the Pulitzer Prize in History; and Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America (2010), which was a finalist for the George Washington Prize. He has edited seven other books, including The Cambridge Companion to The Federalist (2020). Rakove is a past president of the Society for the History of the Early American Republic and a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Larry Kramer has been President and Vice Chancellor of LSE since April 2024. A constitutional scholar, university administrator, and philanthropic leader, he was previously the President of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Dean of Stanford Law School.

This event recording was produced by Chris Gilson and Avan Fata.