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constitutional history



  • What Conservative Justices Get Wrong About the Founders

    by Timothy C. Leech

    It's preposterous to argue that the Founders, men of the Enlightenment generation, would have intended for the constitution they drafted to be immutable and unchanging. 



  • How Rights Went Right

    by David Cole

    Is an all-or-nothing view of constitutional rights at the root of growing cultural clashes pitting civil rights against the free exercise of religion? A new book suggests alternatives. 



  • Teaching the 26th Amendment With The New York Times

    by Jennifer Frost

    A historian of the 26th Amendment offers a lesson plan for using newspapers as primary sources to teach how young Americans succeeded in lowering the voting age to 18. 


  • The Problem with a Self-Pardon

    by Robert J. Spitzer

    It is likely that the issue of a president's ability to pardon himself will be contested in short order. A constitutional scholar of the presidency explains why such an action cannot be countenanced in a society of law. 



  • Review: Was the Constitution a Pro-Slavery Document?

    by Gordon S. Wood

    Gordon Wood says James Oakes's new book examines the dialectical relationship between 19th century interpretations of the Constitution as a pro-slavery and anti-slavery document and argues that that debate steered Lincoln toward a commitment to racial equality as inextricable from abolition.



  • The Turley Dilemma

    by Andrew Meyer

    If we look at Jonathan Turley's argument against impeachment, we can see the outlines of a dilemma that faces the president, the Republican Party, and by extension the entire country.