Below you will find the title, abstract, and (where available) linked drafts for the projects I’m currently working on. Feel free to contact me with any questions about the status of these papers or inquiries about citation.

• “Trapped by Time? The Democratic Dilemmas of the Dead Hand”:This essay identifies and diagnoses the problem of political persistence in the context of the contemporary American state, a phenomenon that extends beyond the “dead hand” problem first articulated by Thomas Jefferson and developed in his correspondence with James Madison. Jefferson’s critique of intergenerational binding, rooted in his belief that present generations should not be constrained by the decisions of their predecessors, clashed with Madison’s emphasis on stability and the practical needs of good governance. While this debate framed the American Constitution’s approach to change—enshrining an arduous amendment process and generally encumbering collective political action—the challenges of intergenerational democracy have deepened over time. We argue that these challenges are not limited to questions about constitutional endurance or rigidity but are compounded by salient dynamics of political development. Specifically, we identify three phenomena—path dependence, institutional thickening, and kludgeocracy—that limit the ability of present majorities to enact meaningful political change by fundamentally constraining the agenda, reducing the range of viable alternatives, and narrowing the scope of democratic agency. Situating the Jefferson-Madison debate within broader developmental context, we reveal how the historical construction of politics subverts democratic empowerment and effects a democratic deficit distinct from conventional accounts of the dead hand.
• “Constitutional Hypocrisy”: Despite substantial scholarly interest in the nature, role, and consequences of hypocrisy in liberal politics, its constitutional dimensions have yet to be adequately assessed. As a result, a large swathe of salient political conduct remains under-theorized and its significance misunderstood. To remedy this and to facilitate further positive and normative analysis, this essay advances a refined conception of constitutional hypocrisy, defined as a species of constitutional translation that emerges in the course of constitutional politics as political actors advance inconsistent constructions of constitutional meaning. Drawing on examples from presidential impeachments, judicial confirmations, and federalism, the essay critiques existing theories of hypocrisy in constitutional politics and distinguishes constitutional hypocrisy from conventional hypocrisy, which is characterized by a discrepancy between professed commitments and associated conduct. This refined conception reveals that even as constitutional hypocrisy can contingently promote deliberation over constitutional meaning, standards, and requirements, it can also subvert constitutional values and purposes.
• “Toward a Unified Theory of Constitutional Crisis”: Fears of constitutional crisis are nearly as old as the American Constitution itself. But despite its ubiquity in both political and scholarly discourse, significant disagreement remains about what exactly such crises entail. At the heart of this confusion is a conundrum: To the extent that constitutional crisis presages constitutional failure, proof of its existence marks the expiration of its descriptive usefulness; and if failure never materializes, then such a crisis was never present. In this way, under extant conceptions constitutional crises can be identified only retrospectively, calling into question its diagnostic utility. This essay seeks to resolve some of these challenges by offering a broader conception of constitutional crisis, one that emphasizes the temporal extension of the factors that bear on constitutional health and vitality. Loosening the conception of crisis to capture the risk—rather than the reality—of constitutional failure reveals three distinct genres of constitutional crises: those concerning process, performance, and political culture. After offering an overview of scholarly accounts of constitutional crisis and discussing the functions played by its invocation, this essay advances an account of each genre of crisis with reference to episodes from American political history, ranging from the Civil War and Watergate to the Trump presidency. In so doing, it seeks to reclaim the diagnostic utility of constitutional crisis by recentring considerations of constitutional health and identity in assessments of constitutional politics.