The Constitution, the Common Good, and the Ambition of Adrian Vermeule

Authors

Sotirios Barber, University of Notre Dame.Follow
Stephen Macedo, Princeton University
James E. Fleming, Boston University School of LawFollow

Author granted license

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-26-2021

Language

en-US

Abstract

Public trust in the U.S. government has declined steadily over the last sixty years, from 73% in 1958 to 17% in 2018 (Pew 12/9/20). Public support for the U.S. Constitution has remained higher. When support for the government dipped to an all-time low of 15% in 2010, support for the Constitution stood at 74%. But the gap has narrowed. From 2010 to 2017 support for the Constitution fell from 74% to around 50%—a drop of 24 points in seven years (AP/NCC 8/12; Rasmussen 2017). These figures suggest that if Americans continue to believe that their government isn’t working, they’ll eventually believe that their constitution isn’t working.

Recommended Citation

Sotirios Barber, Stephen Macedo & James E. Fleming, The Constitution, the Common Good, and the Ambition of Adrian Vermeule , in The Constitutionalist (2021).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/2827