Making a Constitution : Montesquieu and the Challenges of the American Founding

The most comprehensive account of Montesquieu’s influence on the debates over the Constitution during the American founding.

Few thinkers loom larger over the American founding than Montesquieu. The Framers repeatedly invoked his authority while drafting, debating, and ratifying the Constitution—yet the true depth and complexity of his influence has never been fully explained. In Making a Constitution, Zachary K. German offers the most definitive account to date, revealing how Montesquieu’s political philosophy shaped not just familiar concepts like separation of powers but the very logic of American constitutional design.

German argues that Montesquieu’s central insight—the need to tailor laws and institutions to a people’s distinctive “spirit”—was foundational to how the Framers understood the possibilities and limits of republican government. Drawing on Montesquieu’s spiritoriented approach, German reframes the core problems of constitutionalism: how to reconcile liberty with republican rule, how to divide power vertically between levels of government, and how to separate power horizontally among institutions. He then shows how Federalists and AntiFederalists alike, all steeped in Montesquieu’s thought, reached sharply different conclusions about how best to preserve liberty within the particular character and circumstances of the American people.

As the “spirit” of the American people has changed in profound ways since the founding, so too has our understanding of the Constitution. German reminds us that Montesquieu’s insights remain perennially relevant. At a moment of renewed controversy over constitutional meaning, this book offers a vital framework for rethinking the enduring challenges of American constitutionalism.