collage of the continental congress, a picture of We the People, a Civil Rights protest, and the logo for Journal of American Constitutional History

Current Issue: Spring 2025

Articles

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    Dictatorship in the American Founding

    by Adam Lebovitz

    Throughout the Revolutionary War, America experimented extensively with forms of emergency governance explicitly modeled on the Roman dictatorship, at both the national and the state levels. Surprisingly, America’s leading authors and statesmen rejected dictatorship in the Constitution, not primarily from fear of concentrated authority, but because they deemed this institution ill-suited to the rigors of modern statecraft.

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    Originalism and the Path to Partisan Jurisprudence: The Guidelines on Constitutional Litigation inside the Reagan Administration

    by Logan Everett Sawyer III

    Documents from the National Archives and elsewhere reveal why Reagan’s DOJ first adopted originalism, and then transformed it to serve a deeply contested, partisan legal-policy agenda.

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    Infringed

    by Daniel D. Slate

    The legal concept of “infringement” at the time of ratification of the Second Amendment in 1791 meant that a right could be regulated—that is, given more definitive shape or partially curtailed or restricted—if the process by which the regulation came about was regulated through a duly elected legislature acting with the public good in mind.

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    Farm-Bloc Federalism: The Rise, Fall (and Rise Again?) of a Constitutional Coalition

    by Roderick M. Hills, Jr.

    Between 1832 and 1932, politicians from a “farm bloc” of states in the South, Midwest, Prairie, and Mountain West embraced and then rejected the idea that the Constitution limited the federal government’s power over a variously defined set of issues. This history of federalism’s ups and downs illustrates how political parties generally craft doctrine to achieve stability in the face of disagreement about values and interests.

Recent Issue: Winter 2025

Book Review Symposium

The following essays review David Pozen’s The Constitution of the War on Drugs (Oxford University Press, 2024).

Editorial Board

Editor-in-Chief

  • David S. Schwartz

Senior Editorial Advisors

  • Mary Sarah Bilder
  • Jud Campbell
  • Jonathan Gienapp
  • Risa Goluboff
  • Alison L. LaCroix
  • John Mikhail
  • Farah Peterson
  • Richard Primus
  • Aziz Rana
  • Bertrall Ross
  • Rachel Shelden
  • Franita Tolson
  • Robert L. Tsai

Managing Editor

  • Jennifer Hanrahan

Editors

    • Gregory Ablavsky
    • Richard Albert
    • Jack M. Balkin
    • Samantha Barbas
    • William Baude
    • Maggie Blackhawk
    • Pamela Brandwein
    • Holly Brewer
    • Tomiko Brown-Nagin
    • Christine Kexel Chabot
    • Andrew Coan
    • Saul Cornell
    • Mary L. Dudziak
    • Max Edling
    • Laura F. Edwards
    • Sam Erman
    • Daniel R. Ernst
    • William B. Ewald
    • Martin S. Flaherty
    • Matthew L.M. Fletcher
    • William E. Forbath
    • Maeve Glass
    • Sarah Barringer Gordon
    • Mark A. Graber
    • Joanna Grisinger
    • Ariela Gross
    • Roderick Hills
    • Daniel Hulsebosch
    • Martha S. Jones
    • Laura Kalman
    • Andrea Scoseria Katz
    • Andrew Kent
    • Michael J. Klarman
    • Heinz Klug
    • Felicia Kornbluh
    • Anna O. Law
    • Thomas H. Lee
    • Sanford Levinson
    • Gerard Magliocca
    • Jane Manners
    • Maeva Marcus
    • Julian Davis Mortenson
    • Cynthia L. Nicoletti
    • Victoria Nourse
    • William J. Novak
    • James E. Pfander
    • Jack N. Rakove
    • Gautham Rao
    • Christopher W. Schmidt
    • Sarah A. Seo
    • Jed Shugerman
    • Reva Siegel
    • Rogers M. Smith
    • Brad Snyder
    • Clyde S. Spillenger
    • Matthew Steilen
    • Karen Tani
    • George Thomas
    • Mark Tushnet
    • Anne Twitty
    • Michael Vorenberg
    • Rosemarie Zagarri
    • Mary Ziegler