The Institute for Constitutional History sponsors or co-sponsors a variety of events during the academic year. Here is a partial list of upcoming and recent events:

Upcoming Events

 

Summer Research Seminar at Stanford Law School
July 7–13, 2013

The Institute for Constitutional History is pleased to announce a residential summer research seminar for advanced graduate students and junior faculty, which will be co-sponsored by the Stanford Constitutional Law Center. This year’s seminar is entitled Public and Private.

INSTRUCTORS

Hendrik Hartog is the Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty and the Director of Princeton University’s Program in American Studies. He holds a Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization from Brandeis University (1982), and a J.D. from the New York University School of Law (1973). His publications include Public Property and Private Power: The Corporation of the City of New York in American Law, 1730–1870 (1983), Man and Wife in America: A History (2000), and Someday All This Will Be Yours: A History of Inheritance and Old Age (2012). He is the editor of Law in the American Revolution and the Revolution in the Law (1981) and the coeditor of Law in Culture and Culture in Law (2000) and American Public Life and the Historical Imagination (2003). For a decade he coedited Studies in Legal History, the book series of the American Society for Legal History.

Larry Kramer became President of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, California, in September 2012. Before joining the Foundation, Mr. Kramer served from 2004 to 2012 as Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean of Stanford Law School, and, previous to that, he held the position of professor of law at the University of Chicago and University of Michigan law schools and Associate Dean for Research and Academics and Russell D. Niles Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. His teaching and scholarly interests include American legal history, constitutional law, federalism, separation of powers, the federal courts, conflict of laws, and civil procedure. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review.

PROGRAM CONTENT

The notion that private freedoms are constituted and structured through legal rules, and especially constitutional decisions, is conventional wisdom. But how have the boundaries between public and private been negotiated in constitutional controversies? How have understandings of private selves and private institutions and private rights changed as they confronted or engaged with the demands of constitutional law? We are interested in studies across American history and across the full range of potential intersection: “new” and “old” property, public lands and private resources, charters and franchises and corporations, regulation of wealth and health and sex and family, regulation versus outsourcing, public schools versus charter schools, taxes versus regulation, as well as the full range of civil liberties articulated across American constitutional history. We are also interested in hearing about work that attempts to articulate what it means to describe an American constitutional order as distinctively (or indistinctly) capitalistic.

The seminar will meet at Stanford Law School, from July 7–13, 2013. The Institute for Constitutional History will reimburse participants for their travel expenses (up to $350), provide accommodation at the Munger Graduate Residence on the Stanford campus, and offer a modest stipend to cover food and additional expenses. Seminar enrollment is limited to fifteen participants.

APPLICATION PROCESS

Applicants for the seminar should send a copy of their curriculum vitae, a brief description (three to five pages) of the research project to be pursued during the seminar, and a short statement on how this seminar will be useful to them in their research, teaching, or professional development. Materials will be accepted until April 15, 2013, and only by e-mail at MMarcus@nyhistory.org. Successful applicants will be notified soon thereafter.

FURTHER INFORMATION

For further information, please contact Maeva Marcus at (202) 994-6562 or send an e-mail to MMarcus@nyhistory.org.

ABOUT THE STANFORD CONSTITUTIONAL LAW CENTER

The Stanford Constitutional Law Center grows out of the long and distinguished tradition of constitutional law scholarship at Stanford Law School. The Center seeks to carry on that tradition by directing attention to the most fundamental questions of constitutional order, especially the allocation and control of governmental power through law. The Center advances this mission through events and activities that foster scholarship, generate public discussion, attempt to transcend ideological divides, and provide opportunities for students to engage in analysis of the Constitution.

 

ASSESSING THE US CONSTITUTION:TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY RESPONSES TO EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ASSUMPTIONS

September 12, 19, October 3, 10, 24, and November 7

The Institute for Constitutional History is pleased to announce another Robert H. Smith seminar for advanced graduate students and junior faculty!

 

INSTRUCTOR
Sanford Levinson is the W. St. John Garwood Jr. Centennial Chair in Law, University of Texas Law School, and Professor of Government, University of Texas at Austin. Among other books, he has written: Constitutional Faith (Princeton U. Press, 1988, 2nd ed. 2011) and Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It) (Oxford U. Press, 2006, pb. Ed. 2008). He is also the co-editor of a widely used casebook, Processes of Constitutional Decision Making (5th ed. 2006). He has written over 350 articles in law reviews as well as more general venues. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001.

PROGRAM CONTENT
The United States Constitution was drafted at least in part under the sway of particular conceptions of government and politics (putting entirely to one side the role that out-and-out political bargaining played at the Philadelphia Convention). This seminar will examine some of these central assumptions, particularly concerning the nature of what the Constitution itself calls a “Republican Form of Government” and ask to what degree we—or, more accurately, you as students within the seminar—agree in 2013 with the assumption set out, often with both candor and eloquence, in 1787–88. Course materials will be drawn almost entirely from primary sources, including materials collected in Philip Kurland and Ralph Lerner, eds., THE FOUNDERS’ CONSTITUTION and The Federalist, though it is also likely that Professor Levinson’s recent book Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance will also be assigned. Reading will not be particularly heavy in quantity, but the assumption is that what is assigned will be read and then discussed quite intensely.

LOGISTICS
Thursday evenings, 6–8 pm, September 12, 19, October 3, 10, 24, and November 7 . The seminar will meet at The George Washington University Law School, 2000 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20052.

APPLICATION PROCESS
The seminar is designed for graduate students and junior faculty in history, political science, law, and related disciplines. All participants will be expected to complete the assigned readings and participate in seminar discussions. Although the Institute cannot offer academic credit directly for the seminar, students may be able to earn graduate credit through their home departments by completing an independent research project in conjunction with the seminar. Please consult with your advisor and/or director of graduate studies about these possibilities. Space is limited, so applicants should send a copy of their c.v. and a short statement on how this seminar will be useful to them in their research, teaching, or professional development. Materials will be accepted only by email at MMarcus@nyhistory.org until August 15, 2013. Successful applicants will be notified soon thereafter. For further information, please contact Maeva Marcus at (202) 994-6562 or send an email to MMarcus@nyhistory.org.

FURTHER INFORMATION
There is no tuition or other charge for this seminar, though participants will be expected to acquire the assigned books on their own.

 

MODERN CONSTITUTIONAL WAR POWERS

October 16, 23, 30, November 6, 13, 20, 2013

 

INSTRUCTORS
Martin S. Lederman is Associate Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. He was Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2009 to 2010, and an Attorney Advisor in OLC from 1994–2002. In 2008, with David Barron, he published a two-part article in the Harvard Law Review examining Congress’s authority to regulate the Commander in Chief’s conduct of war. He has been a regular contributor to several blogs and web sites, including Balkinization, SCOTUSblog, Opinio Juris, and Slate, writing principally on issues relating to separation of powers, war powers, torture, executive branch lawyering, and the First Amendment.

Edward A. Purcell Jr. is the Joseph Solomon Distinguished Professor at New York Law School and one of the nation’s foremost authorities on the history of the United States Supreme Court and the federal judicial system. He is the author of several books, including Originalism, Federalism, and the American Constitutional Enterprise: A Historical Inquiry (Yale University Press, 2007), and Brandeis and the Progressive Constitution: Erie, the Judicial Power, and the Politics of the Federal Courts in Twentieth-Century America (Yale University Press, 2000).

PROGRAM CONTENT
The six-week seminar concerns the evolution of the distribution of war powers from the beginning of the Twentieth Century to the present day. The Founders endeavored to create a federal system in which a separation and blending of powers would make the legislature the preeminent source of military authority and thus prevent the executive from unilaterally entangling the nation in costly belligerent adventures. Conventional wisdom has it that practical developments over the past 100 years—most significantly, the creation of a powerful standing army and intelligence establishment, the development of nuclear weapons, and the emergence of a much more robust role for the United States as a superpower responsible for the defense of Europe and other allies in a post-nuclear age—have rendered the original constitutional design obsolete, such that Congress and the courts have largely ceded war-making authority to an all-powerful, virtually unchecked President. In this interdisciplinary course, using conventional legal materials as well as recent historical and political science accounts of the distribution of war powers, we will examine whether and to what extent this conventional account is accurate, and will more broadly discuss whether the current balance of powers ensures sufficient checks on misguided adventurism and abuse of individual liberties.

LOGISTICS
Wednesday afternoons, 3–5 pm, October 16, 23, 30, November 6, 13, 20. The seminar will meet at the New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York City.

APPLICATION PROCESS
The seminar is designed for graduate students and junior faculty in history, political science, law, and related disciplines. All participants will be expected to complete the assigned readings and participate in seminar discussions. Although the Institute cannot offer academic credit directly for the seminar, students may be able to earn graduate credit through their home departments by completing an independent research project in conjunction with the seminar. Please consult with your advisor and/or director of graduate studies about these possibilities. Space is limited, so applicants should send a copy of their c.v. and a short statement on how this seminar will be useful to them in their research, teaching, or professional development. Materials will be accepted only by email at MMarcus@nyhistory.org until September 15, 2013. Successful applicants will be notified soon thereafter. For further information, please contact Maeva Marcus at (202) 994-6562 or send an email to MMarcus@nyhistory.org.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
There is no tuition or other charge for this seminar, though participants will be expected to acquire the assigned books on their own.

ABOUT ICH
The Institute for Constitutional History (ICH) is the nation’s premier institute dedicated to ensuring that future generations of Americans understand the substance and historical development of the U.S. Constitution. Located at the New York Historical Society and the George Washington University Law School, the Institute is co-sponsored by the American Historical Association, the

Organization of American Historians, and the American Political Science Association. The Association of American Law Schools is a cooperating entity. ICH prepares junior scholars and college instructors to convey to their readers and students the important role the Constitution has played in shaping American society. ICH also provides a national forum for the preparation and dissemination of humanistic, interdisciplinary scholarship on American constitutional history.

 

 

The Graduate Institute for Constitutional History is supported, in part, by the Saunders Endowment for Constitutional History and a
“We the People” challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.