In this compelling study, which unites the fields of constitutional theory and comparative politics, John E. Finn examines how the efforts of two western liberal democracies, the United Kingdom and the Federal Republic of Germany, to cope with domestic terrorism threatens their constitutional integrity. Finn argues first that widespread political violence challenges the presuppositions of constitutional authority in any liberal democracy, namely that reason and deliberation, and not passion or will, can be the basis of political community. Terrorism therefore constitutes both a specific type of constitutional emergency and a challenge to the more general enterprise of constitutional maintenance. He then proceeds to review the efforts of the United Kingdom and Germany to control political violence through emergency legislation, and considers to what extent such measures comport with the demands of constitutionalism and the rule of law.

The U. S. Constitution begins with the soaring words "We the People," but we, the people, have little to do with the document as most of us have come to know it. When most people think of the constitution they think of it as a legal instrument, the province of judges and lawyers, who alone possess the expertise and knowledge necessary to discern its elusive and complex meaning.

This book outlines a very different view of the Constitution as a moral and philosophical statement about who we are as a nation. This "Civic Constitution" constitutes us as a civic body politic, transforming "the people" into a singular political entity. Juxtaposing this view with the legal model, the "Juridic Constitution," John E. Finn offers a comprehensive account of the Civic Constitution as a public affirmation of the shared principles of national self-identity, and as a particular vision of political community in which we the people play a significant and ongoing role in achieving a constitutional way of life. The Civic Constitution is the constitution of dialogical engagement, of contested meanings, of political principles, of education, of conversation.

"Peopling the Constitution" seeks nothing less than a new interpretation of the American constitutional project in an effort to revive a robust understanding of citizenship. It considers the entire constitutional project, from its founding and maintenance to its failure, with insights into topics ranging from the practice of deliberative democracy and the meaning of citizenship, to constitutional fidelity, civic virtue, the separation of powers, federalism, and constitutional interpretation. The Civic Constitution, in Finn's telling, is primarily a political project requiring an active, engaged, and most importantly, constitutionally educated citizenry committed to the civic virtues of civility and tending. When we as citizens are unwilling or unable to tend to and sustain the Constitution, and when constitutional questions reduce to legal questions and obscure civic interests, constitutional rot results. And in post-9/11 America, Finn argues, constitutional rot has begun to set in.

With its multi-dimensional vision of constitutional governance, Finn's book stands as a corrective to accounts that locate the Constitution in and conceive it essentially as a legal instrument, making a powerful and impassioned argument for restoring the people to their rightful place in the politics and practice of the Constitution.

Many in the radical right, including the Tea Party, the militia movement, the Alt-right, Christian nationalists, the Oath Keepers, neo-Nazis, and a host of others, brand themselves as constitutional patriots. In Fracturing the Founding: How the Alt-Right Corrupts the Constitution, John E. Finn, one of America's leading constitutional scholars, argues that these professions of constitutional devotion serve an important function in mainstreaming the radical right's ideological and policy agenda: to camouflage its racism, bigotry, and sexism to appeal to a broader audience. The constitution the extreme right holds as its faith is an odd admixture of the forgotten, the rejected, the racist, and the bizarre. Finn illuminates the central precepts of the Alt-constitution and shows how and where it differs from the (true) American Constitution. The differences are disturbing. The Alt-constitution emphasizes absolute rights and unassailable liberties (especially for freedom of speech and guns, no matter the public interest), states' rights and a corresponding suspicion of the federal government, racial classifications recognized and legitimated by law, and privilege for white Christians. Finn's book will appeal to all readers interested in contemporary American politics, the contemporary radical right, the Founding and the history of America's constitution.