Volume 2, Issue 3 – Summer 2024
Articles
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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. 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.
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Designed to Ameliorate the Condition of People of Color: The Reconstruction Republicans and the Question of Affirmative Action
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.
Symposium
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Resuscitating a Forgotten Fourteenth Amendment
By Anne TwittyBy Anne Twitty. 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.
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The Reconstruction Amendments, American Constitutional Development, and the Quest for Equal Citizenship
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…
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Finding Meaning in the Congressional Globe: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Problem of Constitutional Archives
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…