Join Tom Ginsburg, Leo Spitz Professor of International Law, Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Research Scholar, and Professor of Political Science, for this stimulating program: The founding fathers were political theorists of the highest order, and launched the modern era of constitutional design. Their project of embodying a set of fundamental principles in a discrete written constitution has been phenomenally successful. But how have their more particular propositions fared over the course of the subsequent two centuries, in which over 900 national constitutions have been written? This lecture summarizes empirical work on constitutions relevant to the founders' conjectures about design.