The Debate over an Economic Interpretation of the Constitution: Where has Beard taken us and where are we after McGuire’s “New” Interpretation? Since 1913, developing a complete analysis on the creation of the American Constitution necessarily requires a thorough consideration of economics. Until Charles A. Beard published his An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913), the standard account of the Founding Era was that the Framers acted out of idealism – a disinterested, public-regarding impulse to promote democratic ideals for which the Revolution was fought and the American Republic was founded. Beard challenged this idealistic view of the Framers that had, since the adoption of the Constitution, been the accepted understanding of the beginning of America. Beard offered a harsh, more realistic understanding of the framing of the American Constitution that to this day is regarded as labeling the Framers’ motives “anti-democratic” and Charles A. Beard as a “Marxist.” For roughly forty years, Beard’s economic interpretation reigned supreme. It became accepted that the Founding Fathers acted out of “selfish class interests” when drafting the Constitution. Not until the 1950’s, after the 1913 publication of An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, and the subsequent 1935 edition, did the economic and historical academic communities rushed to critique Beard’s analysis and offer their own; each claiming a more developed understanding and interpretation. In the last fifty years, some of the more outspoken academics on the subject have included scholars such as Gordon Wood, Forrest McDonald, Shlomo Slonim, and Robert McGuire. This paper will first develop an understanding of where the debate began, where it has been, and finally where it currently stands. More importantly, this paper will provide an understanding as to how the debate progressed and where and in what form Beardianism currently stands. Section I of the paper introduces Beard’s analysis and understanding of the creation of the Constitution as the beginning of economic considerations in the context of the Founding Fathers. Section II provides an evolution of the debate through some of the competing theories of the economic interpretation of the Constitution with an overview of the Beardian approach. Section III examines the new economic interpretation from Robert McGuire in his book To Form a More Perfect Union (2003). Section IV considers a response to McGuire’s new interpretation as it fits into the debate among scholars. Section V considers where “Beardianism” is left after McGuire’s new interpretation and what is left of Beard’s original thesis. Finally Section VI evaluates Beard’s true impact on the debate and whether Beardianism is truly “dead.” My contention is that Beard’s classic thesis - that the contest over the American Constitution reflected a conflict between economic interest groups that were affected in differing ways by the adoption of the Constitution - in its most vulgar form is “dead” as many scholars believe, but Beard’s questions and analysis have retained importance at the core of a highly controversial debate about the motivations of our beloved Framers at Philadelphia. That is to say that his original claim that the Framers’ intentions and considerations in drafting the Constitution were motivated self-interest remains at the core of the debate.