About
Christopher Armitage is a legal scholar and journalist, and the founder and publisher of The Existentialist Republic.
The Existentialist Republic is a civic affairs publication covering constitutional law, federalism, executive power, and government accountability. His research covers the powers state governments hold under their own constitutions to resist unlawful federal action, a framework he calls oppositional federalism. He wrote the first systematic legal framework for soft secession: states building their own institutions and financial capacity so they depend less on a federal government that is breaking the law.
His legal commentary has appeared in Verfassungsblog, a constitutional law journal where scholars document democratic backsliding worldwide, and in JURIST, the legal news service based at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. State Court Report, a project of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, published his analysis of the capacity-building powers states already hold. His research papers are available on SSRN, the academic research database, and include Sophist Originalism: The Fraud at the Heart of the Federalist Society and Oppositional Federalism: A Taxonomy of State Constitutional Postures Under Authoritarian Capture.
Scholars at the Brookings Institution, the Washington think tank, cited his soft secession article in their 2025 analysis of federalism. His work has been covered by PBS and The Nation. He is the author of The American Reformation and Toppling Tyrants.
He was born in Newark, New Jersey, and served in the United States Air Force, where he deployed twice to the Middle East as a security forces base defense operations controller and worked as a first responder, including regular shifts as a 911 operator. He earned a master’s degree in homeland security on the GI Bill during those deployments. Before he turned to writing, he worked as a corrections officer and a military police officer. He also spent time in the social work fields, with behaviorally challenged youth. He writes about American institutions as someone who served inside them and watched them fail in real time.
He lives in Spokane, Washington.