New books on the constitution

I choose books that I think I should to read – either because of the topic or the author. I then wait to read them so that I can read them at the same time as the students. This way I can respond to the books with them and remember the nuances of the books for class discussion.

The seminar format is to read 6 books and take 2 weeks for each book, with the author coming to class the second week to discuss the book. The first book is now always one of mine to use as a dry run and to give students an idea of ​​where I stand when we discuss the other books. If books are longer than 250 pages, I ask the author to tell me which 250 pages I should assign. If I assign much more than 125 pages per week, I fear students are not reading them or are not reading them carefully enough. To make sure they do, students submit one-page summaries of each half of the book (graded pass/fail). The day before the author visits, they submit a 5500-character critique of the book, which I send to the author electronically the day before class. (They all read them.) When class is over, the students don’t have to take a test or a paper, and I don’t have to do any marking. We’re done!

Students consistently tell me that the course is very rewarding and helps them develop their critical thinking skills. It is also encouraging for them to see how well they are able to find the weak points in a professor’s book-length presentation. I find that collectively, students are able to uncover the weaknesses of any book (except mine, of course).

(Note to law professors: I have a budget to pay for authors’ travel expenses. But now that we all have access to Zoom classes, this seminar format can be reproduced anywhere for free. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a dozen or more such book seminars across the country? Check it out. I promise you’ll love it.)

When you click on “READ MORE” you will see why I have found teaching this course extremely rewarding. I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to all the authors for traveling to Washington DC to speak to my students about their books.

2023

2022:

2021:

• Ilan Wurman, The Second Founding: An Introduction to the 14th Amendment (2020)
• Stephen Halbrook, The Right to Bear Arms: A Constitutional Right of the People or a Privilege of the Ruling Class? (2021)
• Donald Drakeman, The Hollow Core of Constitutional Theory: Why We Need the Framers (2021)
• Jamal Greene, How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession with Rights Is Tearing America Apart (2021)
• David Schwartz, The Spirit of the Constitution: John Marshall and the 200-Year Odyssey of McCulloch v. Maryland (2019)

2020:

2019:

• Neal Devins, The Company They Keep: How Partisan Divisions Came to the Supreme Court (2019)
• Larry Lessig, Loyalty and Coercion: How the Supreme Court Interprets the American Constitution (2019)
• Jonathan Gienapp, The Second Creation: The Reformation of the American Constitution (2018)
• Rebecca Zietlow, The Forgotten Liberator: James Mitchell Ashley and the Ideological Origins of Reconstruction (2017)
• Lee Strang, The Promise of Originalism: A Natural Law Account of the American Constitution (2019)

2018:

• Martha Jones, Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (2018)
• John Compton, The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution (2014)
• Josh Chafetz, The Constitution of Congress: Legislative Authority and the Separation of Powers (2017)
• Adam Carrington, Judge Stephen Fields Cooperative Constitution of Liberty: Liberty in Fullness (2017)
• Gerard Magliocca, The Heart of the Constitution: How the Bill of Rights Became the Bill of Rights (2018)

2017:

• Barry Friedman, Unwarranted: Policing without Permission (2017)
• Bruce Frohnen and George Carey, Constitutional Morality and the Rise of Quasi-Law (2016)
• Geoffrey R. Stone, Sex and the Constitution (2017)
• Suja Thomas, The Missing American Jury (2016)
• Thomas G. West, The Political Theory of the American Founding (2017)

2016:

• Carson Holloway, Hamilton versus Jefferson in the Washington Administration: Completing the Founding or Destroying the Founding? (2015)
• Michael Paulsen & Luke Paulsen, The Constitution: An Introduction (2015)
• Thomas Leonard, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and the American Economy in the Progressive Age (2016)
• Tara Smith, Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System (2015)
• Ilja Somin, The Grasping Hand: Kelo vs. the City of New London and the limits of expropriation law (2015)

2015:

• Damon Root, Over Ruled: The Long War for Control of the U.S. Supreme Court (Palgrave 2014)
• FH Buckley, The Once and Future King: The Rise of the Crown in America (Encounter 2014)
• Brad Snyder, The House of Truth (Oxford 2017) (assigned manuscript edition)
• Stephen Garbaum, The New Commonwealth Model of Constitutionalism (Cambridge 2013)
• Laura Donohue, The Future of Foreign Intelligence (Chicago 2016) (assigned manuscript edition)

2014:

• Clark Neily, Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitutional Promise of Limited Government (Encounter 2013)
• Thomas Healy, The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind – and the History of Free Speech in America (Metropolitan Books, 2013)
• John McGinnis & Michael Rappaport, Originalism and the Good Constitution (Harvard 2013)
• Stephen Griffin, Long Wars and the Constitution (Harvard 2013)
• Garrett Epps, American Epic: Reading the U.S. Constitution (Oxford 2013)
• Louis Michael Seidman, On Disobedience to the Constitution (Oxford 2012)

2012 (Autumn):

• Gerard Magliocca, John Bingham: America’s Founding Son (NYU, 2013) (assigned manuscript edition)
• Akhil Reed Amar, America’s Unwritten Constitution (Basic Books, 2012)
• John Inazu, Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly (Yale 2012)
• Justice Antonin Scalia, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts (West, 2012)
• Abner Greene, Against Commitment (Harvard 2012)
• Sandy Levinson, Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Government Crisis (Oxford 2012)

2012 (Spring)

• Michael J. Gerhardt, The Power of Precedent (Oxford 2008)
• Robert Bennett and Lawrence Solum, Constitutional Originalism (Cornell 2011)
• Gary L McDowell, The Language of Law and the Foundations of American Constitutionalism (Cambridge 2010)
• Eric Segall, Myths about the Supreme Court: Why the Supreme Court is not a court and its justices are not judges (Praeger 2012)
• Michael Greve, The Inverted Constitution (Harvard 2012)
• Alexander Tsesis, The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution and American Liberty (NYU 2004)

2011:

• H. Jefferson Powell, Constitutional Conscience (Chicago, 2008)
• Jeremy A. Rabkin, Law Without Nations? (Princeton, 2005)
• Christian G. Fritz, American Sovereigns (Cambridge, 2007)
• Timothy Sandefur, The Right to Earn a Living (Cato Institute, 2010)
• Sonu Bedi, Rejection of Rights (Cambridge, 2009)
• Alison LaCroix, The Ideological Origins of American Federalism (Harvard, 2010)

2010:

• David Bernstein, Rehabilitating Lochner (Chicago 2011) (assigned manuscript)
• Brian Tamanaha, The Formalist-Realist Divide: The Role of Politics in Judgment (Princeton, 2009)
• Earl Maltz, Slavery and the Supreme Court, 1825-1861 (Kansas, 2009)
• Michael Vorenberg, Freedom at Last: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (Cambridge, 2004)
• George Thomas, The Madisonian Constitution (Johns Hopkins, 2008)
• David Strauss, The Living Constitution (Oxford, 2010)

2007:

• Alex Aleinikoff, The Appearance of Sovereignty: The Constitution, the State, and American Citizenship (Harvard, 2002)
• Dan Farber, Withheld by the People: The “Silent” Ninth Amendment and the Constitutional Rights Americans Don’t Know They Have (Perseus, 2007)
• Jim Fleming, Securing Constitutional Democracy: The Case for Autonomy (Chicago, 2006)
• Mark Graber, Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil (Cambridge, 2006)
• Keith Whittington, Political Foundations of Judicial Supremacy: The Presidency, the Supreme Court, and Constitutional Leadership in U.S. History (Princeton, 2007)

2006:

• Philip Hamburger, Separation of Church and State (Harvard, 2002)
• Kermit Roosevelt, The Myth of Judicial Activism: Understanding Supreme Court Decisions (Yale, 2006)
• Elizabeth Price Foley, Liberty for All: Reclaiming Individual Privacy in a New Era of Public Morality (Yale, 2006)
• John Yoo, The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Policy After September 11 (Chicago, 2005)
• Sanford Levinson, Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Fix It) (Oxford, 2006)

2005 (Taught when I was a guest at Georgetown. Only Mark Tushnet, who was still a lecturer at Georgetown University at the time, was present. His visit to the class gave me the idea to invite all authors in the future):

• Mark Tushnet, Taking the Constitution from the Courts (Princeton, 2000)
• Cass R. Sunstein, One Case at a Time: Judicial Minimalism at the Supreme Court (Harvard, 2001)
• Larry D. Kramer, The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (Oxford, 2004)
• Daniel A. Farber, Suzanna Sherry, Desperate for Certainty: The Misguided Search for the Foundations of the Constitution (Chicago, 2004)
• James R. Stoner, Common Law Liberty: New Reflections on American Constitutionalism (Kansas, 2003)