As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, Netflix has launched a sweeping documentary series analyzing the roots of US constitutional democracy and its evolving path to today’s increasingly polarized society. BC Law professors Mary Bilder and Sergio Campos were part of a distinguished group ranging from historians to politicians and tribal chiefs to military experts who were featured in the series, which premiered on June 24.
“The American Experiment” creators approached Bilder and Campos after taking note of the pair’s significant scholarship in the area. Bilder, whose work includes her Bancroft Prize-winning Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention, first appears in Episode 3, which looks at the Revolutionary War, and then the creation and failures of the Articles of Confederation that led up to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. As she set out the stakes of the Convention, Bilder posed the existential questions facing the Framers: “Could a government based on the people without a king survive? Or was this just a temporary experiment, a fluke of history?”
The two scholars also appear in Episode 4, which takes a deep dive on the creation of the Electoral College at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The episode reveals the intense arguments and compromises that went into the Electoral College’s creation. Campos noted the consequential absences of both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams from the Convention, as both were overseas at the time.
Bilder went on to highlight how the trust that so many of the drafters had in President George Washington—who presided over the Convention in a rather ceremonial role—splintered quickly when the subject of who his successor should be was broached. A deep lack of confidence in the popular will permeated the discussion in Independence Hall, resulting in their eschewing a system of direct election of the president by the people. The episode goes on to look at disagreements over the lack of a Bill of Rights in the original Constitution, and the struggle over the issue of enslavement in the early republic, resulting in the Three-Fifths Compromise.
Asked about the significance of the release of the documentary at this historical crossroads for the country, Campos said it “explores the difficulties of creating our uniquely American constitutional democracy, further showing that many of these difficulties persist to the present day. I am happy and honored to have contributed to this timely and important project.”
“The 250th has sparked people’s interest in the Framing Generation and the meaning of liberty and equality in a democratic republic,” Bilder added. “It was an honor to participate in the documentary.”
The five-episode series is now available to watch on Netflix.