Secrecy and Transparency in Early America, with Katlyn Carter

Modern representative democracy was born in darkness. Transparency in representative bodies can spur unintended consequences for freedom, while secrecy in those bodies can lead to optimal outcomes for the public.

These are uncomfortable truths that emerge from the history of the US and French revolutionary experiences. Many of our governance challenges today, from malign misinformation to persistent leaks to skepticism toward authority, derive in part from the fact that fundamental issues about how to manage openness in a representative deomcracy remain unresolved.

David Priess chatted with Katlyn Carter, assistant professor of history at Notre Dame and author of the new book Democracy in Darkness: Secrecy and Transparency in the Age of Revolutions, about the concepts of reflective representation and insulated representation, how to understand and research the will of the people, the Continental Congress's secrecy, the closed-door policy of the Constitutional Convention, the consequences of its secrecy for the doctrine of originalism, the crucial cases of the Jay Treaty and the Alien and Sedition Acts, James Madison's evolving views about representation and openness, the difficult realization that open dialogue and debate do not always lead to truth, and Thomas Jefferson's complicated legacy.

Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.

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