Daily: BORN IN CRISIS How constitutions are created

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Society & Culture, Politics, Government

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2021

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Constitutions are the rulebooks of government, but how does each country get its own peculiar arrangements? Linda Colley, author of The Gun, The Ship, And The Pen: War, Constitutions And The Making Of The Modern World, tells Ros Taylor about the extraordinary circumstances – from Napoleon to Catherine the Great to America’s Founding Fathers – that produced the operating systems for states. Why was America’s sacred Constitution less of a high-minded document and more of “a grimly necessary plan by a group of men who felt themselves under siege”? And does a British Constitution even really exist? “The US Constitution was driven by short-term necessity rather than highfalutin’ ideas.” “One Law Lord once described the British Constitution as a trackless desert.” Presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Logo and branding by Mark Taylor. Music: Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. The Bunker is a Podmasters production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved
0:05.5	photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.
0:11.8	Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?
0:13.0	I loved going to college.
0:14.0	It's good you can retrain and do something.
0:16.0	Yeah, yeah.
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0:55.3	look after theirs with dental life. Pick up dental life in the pet food aisle. Hello and welcome to the bunker I'm Ros Taylor. If you enjoyed Hamilton the musical you may well enjoy today's
1:14.6	podcast. I'm talking to Linda Collie the author of the gun, the ship and the pen a
1:19.4	new book about constitutions and how they were written. We'll be chatting about an obscure pro- about the US Constitution and how war rather than fine ideas about
1:34.8	democracy was often the engine for new constitutions.
1:38.8	Linda, welcome to the bunker.
1:40.4	Very good to be here.
1:41.7	You moved from a country that nowadays is not terribly bothered about its lack of a written constitution, the UK in other words, to live in America and you're now at Princeton.
1:51.0	Remind us of some of the ways that the US Constitution plays out in daily life there.
1:56.9	Well, I suppose I should begin by saying I'm not sure if we can assume that written
2:01.9	constitutions are not going to be bobbing more to the
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