Book Review: An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution
Why Charles Beard's assessment of our governing charter should help guide our thinking today
Estimated read time is 3 minutes — enjoy!
As I begin my series on constitutional reform, the interest biases of our founding charter have rarely felt clearer. In just the past few weeks, we’ve seen the Republican Party pass a spending bill that rewards the wealthy while punishing the working class—many of whom, sadly, voted for the very politicians who turned around and gutted their benefits. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court, no longer constrained by institutional norms or any meaningful concern for public legitimacy, has opened the door to a form of autocratic rule that will once again serve those at the top. These developments aren’t aberrations. In many ways, they’re an extreme version of the Constitution functioning exactly as it was designed to—just without the democratic guardrails that earlier generations worked to impose, however imperfectly.
That got me thinking about one of the most important books ever written about the Constitution: Charles Beard’s An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States.
Beard, writing in 1913, didn’t argue that the Framers were evil or unintelligent—far from it. He believed they were brilliant political thinkers. But he also insisted that they were, almost without exception, wealthy men who knew exactly what was at stake. Merchants, plantation owners, bankers, and lawyers—men of capital whose property and privilege had been threatened, first by the British, and then by the instability that followed under the Articles of Confederation. They wanted order. They wanted protection. And they got it.
What they didn’t want was too much democracy. So they built a system with three layers: a little monarchy (the presidency), a lot of aristocracy (the Senate and the courts), and just enough democracy to keep the masses from revolting (the House of Representatives—originally the only directly elected institution). It was, from the start, a structure designed to insulate power. To protect property from populism. To shield capital from redistribution. And to buffer elites from the unpredictable demands of ordinary citizens.
Corporations barely existed in the 1780s, but the logic of elite protection was already baked in. So when the corporate form became the dominant business structure in the late nineteenth century, the Constitution was ready for it. In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886), the Supreme Court effectively extended Fourteenth Amendment protections to corporations—treating them, in most respects, as people under the law. From that point on, the system’s protective functions shifted—dramatically—to favor corporate power. And it has barely changed since. No other advanced democracy has gone this long without a structural overhaul. Now, as the norms that once softened the Constitution’s sharp edges collapse, we’re seeing the original design emerge in full: a system that shelters the wealthy, frustrates democratic impulses, and renders meaningful reform nearly impossible.
Beard’s work has been challenged over the years—especially by those aligned with corporate and institutional power—but his core insight remains as urgent as ever. We cannot build a fairer society without first acknowledging that our founding document was designed to keep real power out of the people’s hands. That doesn’t mean we tear it all down. But it does mean we need to face the Constitution for what it is: an economic document, crafted to preserve wealth and privilege. Until we democratize its structures—until we shift the balance away from corporations and toward ordinary citizens—no amount of policy reform will fix what’s fundamentally broken.
COMING NEXT WEEK: Without the option of amending the Constitution, we’ll almost certainly need to reform the federal courts—and fortunately, doing so is easier than most people think.