Constitutions everywhere represent the nexus of civic hope and political reality. Nearly 300 professors, lawyers, and judges from 64 countries gathered in Austin, Texas, last month to compare notes during the third Global Summit on Constitutionalism. But a high school student, an atypical but welcome attendee, best captured the event's purpose.
I attended the Summit to offer 12 minutes about U.S. amendment cycles in a concurrent session, but I gained so much more as an attendee for all three event days. Some highlights:
We’re not so different after all: The conference was formally comparative across borders, but the participants expressed notable similarities about pursuing aspirations while guiding actual governance. At a time when constitutional democracies are battling backsliding, the voices of those who toil with the language of democracy offered many reminders of why we do so.
Constitutions are real words in the real world: Judges shared some of the harshest realities. For example, hearing from those whose courts kept Jair Bolsonaro off the ballot again in Brazil or canceled Calin Georgescu’s plurality victory in the Romanian presidential election due to electoral violations bordered on the chilling. They offered courageous reminders that constitutional language can prove critical to daily lives.
Aspirations also Matter: As expected, there was much talk of rights. But the topics were expansive: the right to dignity, the right to truth, the right to be governed by humans, and even the right to hope. Such rights may never find expression in the U.S. Constitution, but we shouldn’t forget that it took more than three generations of diligent work for women to gain the right to vote in this country.
Another twist to rights: The U.S. Constitution frames democracy as majority rule that also protects the rights of the minority. It was fascinating to contemplate a slight revision: majority rule constrained by human rights. Decades ahead, could such an orientation shape American views of how we shape our governing policies and structures?
English: My embarrassment about only knowing the program's language quickly gave way to a love for the different syllabic emphasis that speakers might use. It was striking, if not surprising, to hear a Brazilian professor say after dinner that his most important piece of advice to an aspiring comparative law student was to learn English.
And politics matter: Mark Graber, who teaches at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore, offered the following reminder that his audience may not have liked to hear: constitutions and the law “cannot escape politics.” Indeed, politics is all about navigating our different ways of envisioning what we hope for in the public realm, and constitutions frame the endpoints, the goals. That is what unites us as citizens.
On the last day, conference host and organizer Richard Albert happened by my lunch table and marveled at what he saw: a Ghanaian lecturer, an Iraqi researcher, a judicial magistrate from Bangladesh, and an American writer, all with one common interest – constitutions worth following, defending, and revising. Albert teaches at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin and is an expert in constitutional design and comparative scholarship; what he saw cannot have been all that unusual for him. But here’s how he explained his reaction: “The Summit’s mission is to build bridges across the fault lines that divide us. So far it is working: We are talking to each other, learning from each other, and breaking bread with each other. It is truly inspiring to witness."
He was right. And it became even clearer when the high school student mentioned above stepped to the microphone. She was the last audience member to ask a question during the closing plenary. Questioners throughout the conference were frequently reminded to start their question by mentioning their professional position and sometimes location. She said confidently, “I am a high school junior from Chicago.” Before she could say another word, the audience erupted in applause. By simply being there and representing the future, she reminded everyone of why we had gathered.
We can be thankful to have our Constitution, despite its increasing number of flaws. Updating it may seem daunting today, as is the need to avoid misinterpreting it. But think of how much worse things would be if we didn’t have it to change. Yes, doing so means thinking long term, about the next generation and the next.
The Constitution reminds us that we can and must do this.
Rick LaRue writes about constitutional electoral structure and amendments at Structure Matters.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.