CCCG Postdoctoral Fellow Luke Foster and Notre Dame Political Science PhD candidate Jack Bevacqua recently attended the “America 2026 New Perspectives on Constitutions in the Era of Revolutions” International Conference. The conference was organized as part of the America 2026 consortium, and participants met at the Château de Tocqueville in Normandy, France, between May 16-17, to present their research on American and French constitutionalism in the tradition of Alexis de Tocqueville.
The conference’s participants were tasked with providing new perspectives on late 18th-century Western constitutions ito contribute to current debates on the limits of constitutionalism. The conference's goal was to draw a contrast between various constitutional models, with a heightened focus on the French and American examples and their strengths and weaknesses. Featured scholars included Jack Rakove of Stanford University, an eminent scholar of the American Revolution; Céline Spector of Sorbonne University, a scholar of Montesquieu; and Eric Slauter of the University of Chicago, a literary expert.
Foster, CCCG Postdoctoral Research Scholar from 2022-24, submitted a paper titled “Federalism in Mexico: Lucas Alamán and Tocqueville on the Particularity of the American Constitution.” He presented on May 17 during the panel on “New Perspectives on Constitutions: A Political Approach.” Foster’s paper compared Alamán, a nineteenth-century Mexican statesman, to Tocqueville. Both men argued that Mexico could not similarly adopt the American constitution of 1789 and retain a republic successfully. Foster’s paper will soon be published in The Political Science Reviewer.
Bevacqua, a Constitutional Studies and political theory PhD student and fellow conference participant, presented on the same panel, discussing his paper “Alexis de Tocqueville and the Politics of Self-Forgetting.” As the only graduate student invited to participate in the event, Bevacqua offered an interpretation of Tocqueville’s view of modern political psychology. Placing the Frenchman in dialogue with thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Bevacqua sought to examine the role human desires play in modern democratic politics. According to Bevacqua, “having these kinds of opportunities at this stage in our career–and in such an incredible setting–is quite rare, and I think I can speak for both of us in saying I found it very rewarding.”
The panel was chaired by Jennifer Pitts of The University of Chicago and included a third submission from Emilie Mitran of Aix-Marseille University. Mitran delivered a paper on Gouverneur Morris’ assessment of the French Revolution during his time as ambassador to France. According to Foster, “The theme of constitutional particularity—that institutions need to be adapted to different places, times, and circumstances, and are not one-size-fits-all—united all three papers.”
The conference began on Thursday, May 16, with an introduction from Robert Morrissey of the University of Chicago. Morrissey was followed by the conference’s keynote speaker, Jack Rakove of Stanford University. Rakove delivered a talk titled “The Whole Object of the Present Controversy: The Invention of American Constitutionalism.”
With the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution set to be celebrated in 2026, America 2026 is a four-year program of events and publications dedicated to the history and memory of American independence, achieved with French help, in comparison to European perspectives.
Foster remarked that “the CCCG has the mission of cultivating the qualities of good citizenship in the American constitutional tradition, in light of the larger heritage of Western civilization and especially the Catholic understanding of the dignity of the human person. Understanding French constitutionalism is integral to that mission; France is the great modern country where the Church first confronted the challenge of secularism.”
Sponsors of this conference included the University of Chicago’s International Institute of Research in Paris, the Karla Scherer Center, Sorbonne University, the Tocqueville Foundation, the University of Caen-Normandie, the American Philosophical Society, the David Library of the American Revolution, and ERIBIA.
This article was contributed by CCCG Writing Fellow Madelyn Stout.