Claes is Professor of Politics at Catholic University and has written extensively on American constitutionalism. The American Founding Fathers established a Republican form of electing a President through an Electoral College where the number of electors is determined by number of members of Congress. They feared the tyranny of the majority as in the democratic French government of the late 1700’s. The electors would be wise men that had the long term best interest of the US. Claes touches on the intended differences between the current US system and the French Democracy of 1800 in his books (“America the Virtuous” and “The New Jacobinism”).