Current: Volume 2, Issue 3 - Summer 2024
A Body Without a Head: Revisiting James Bryce’s The American Commonwealth on the Place of the President in the 19th Century Federal Government
by Noah A. Rosenblum
August 13, 2024
James Bryce’s monumental 1888 treatise remains of special interest to present-day scholars of American public law because it directly affected subsequent developments in American political theory, public administration, and legal doctrine, by shaping how American public law reformers understood American politics.Designed to Ameliorate the Condition of People of Color: The Reconstruction Republicans and the Question of Affirmative Action
by Kate Masur & Gregory Downs
August 13, 2024
What we confront here is not the familiar (to us) struggle between competing historically and archivally grounded interpretations but something quite different: a confrontation between historical practitioners and their widely held understandings of both historical method and of historical analysis, and opportunistic lawyers seeking support for contemporary policies they preferResuscitating a Forgotten Fourteenth Amendment
by Anne Twitty
August 13, 2024
Mark Graber’s portrait of a forgotten Fourteenth Amendment presents a formidable challenge to existing interpretations, with significant implications for how we tell the story of Reconstruction and constitutional reform.The Reconstruction Amendments, American Constitutional Development, and the Quest for Equal Citizenship
by Rogers M. Smith
August 13, 2024
If we accept that the Reconstruction Amendments are the central hinge and bridge in American constitutional development, then we must conclude that a quest to secure equal citizenship for all should be taken as the lodestar of the American constitutional project, not just in the past but in the present and future.Finding Meaning in the Congressional Globe: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Problem of Constitutional Archives
by Rachel A. Shelden
August 13, 2024
In Punish Treason, Reward Loyalty, Mark Graber takes a comprehensive look at the 39th Congress, that drafted the Fourteenth Amendment, through the Congressional Globe. Yet the Globe was far from an accurate depiction of congressional business, and it ultimately may tell us just as much about the public meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment as it does about legislative intent.- More Issue 3 - Summer 2024 posts
- More Second Founding Symposium (Part I) posts