Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution

The lectures analyze how fundamental constitutional principles must be reconsidered in light of dramatic social and economic change. They contrast an eighteenth-century world of local, self-sufficient communities with a modern national economy whose complex machinery of production and distribution leaves individuals dependent and vulnerable. The author argues that government now must regulate and safeguard these systems as well as preserve order, while also confronting the rise of mass collective bargaining and concentrated corporate power. He examines how party machines and campaign finance have distorted representative institutions and calls for adapting laws to maintain individual liberty and private property amid new collective needs.