University of Wisconsin–Madison

Tag: Volume 2

A Regime of Statutes: Building the Modern President in Gilded Age America (1873-1921)

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By Andrea Scoseria Katz. At a time when the Supreme Court is turning its sights on the administrative state and enhancing the profile and powers of the president, it is worth recalling that behind our national complex of agencies lies a one-hundred-and-thirty-year regime of statutes, a finely wrought constitutional settlement designed not only to release power, but also to contain it. We upset this balance at our peril.

Conservative Constitutionalism Reconsidered

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By Dennis J. Wieboldt III. Leading scholars have uniformly overlooked one of the most significant philosophical influences on conservative legal thought in the United States: natural law. With the publication of his Conservative Thought and American Constitutionalism Since the New Deal, Jonathan O’Neill has made a welcome entry into this historiographical lacuna.

A Body Without a Head: Revisiting James Bryce’s The American Commonwealth on the Place of the President in the 19th Century Federal Government

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By Noah A. Rosenblum. 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

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By Kate Masur & Gregory Downs. 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 prefer.

The Reconstruction Amendments, American Constitutional Development, and the Quest for Equal Citizenship

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By Rogers M. Smith. 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

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By Rachel A. Shelden. 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.