Bill of Rights — Bunk History

How We Learned to Love the Bill the Rights

A new book argues that the fetishization of the first ten amendments is a recent thing – and that it comes at a cost.

by Sara Mayeux on February 8, 2018

Chief Justice John Roberts.

The Supreme Court Has Murdered the Constitution

America’s founding document is now an all-but-meaningless scrap of paper. Happy Fourth!

by Ryan Cooper via The American Prospect on July 4, 2024

Painting of Mercy Otis Warren by John Singleton Copley.

Mercy Otis Warren, America’s First Female Historian

At the prodding of John and Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren took on a massive project: writing a comprehensive history of the Revolutionary War.

by Nancy Rubin Stuart via The Saturday Evening Post on March 18, 2024

Japanese Americans stand in a line next to a train car, as U.S. military look on

The New Deal's Dark Underbelly

David Beito has penned one of the most damning scholarly histories of FDR to date.

by Marcus M. Witcher via Law & Liberty on January 23, 2024

Old City Hall, Wall St., New York City.

Originalism and the Nature of Rights

When we try to recover the “original meaning” of constitutional amendments, we begin with deeply engrained premises about the nature of what we're looking for.

by Jud Campbell via The Panorama on November 27, 2023

Collage of Supreme Court and 14th amendment-related images.

Reversing the Legacy of Slaughter-House

A careful examination of the Privileges or Immunities Clause shows what we lost 150 years ago.

by Ilan Wurman via Law & Liberty on April 3, 2023

A picture of the front of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court’s Faux ‘Originalism’

The conservative Supreme Court's favorite judicial philosophy requires a very, very firm grasp of history — one that none of the justices seem to possess.

by Joshua Zeitz via Politico Magazine on June 26, 2022

Picture of the "Words That Made Us."

Context and Consequences

On Akhil Reed Amar’s “The Words That Made Us,” a new history of America’s constitutional conversation.

by Joel Seligman via Los Angeles Review of Books on August 3, 2021

There’s One Heresy That Sets Bernie Apart From All Other Dem Contenders to Unseat Trump

And it’s not simply that he calls himself a socialist.

by Greg Grandin via The Nation on July 16, 2019

Artificial Persons

The long road to "Citizens United."

by David Cole via The Nation on June 6, 2018

How the ‘Hamilton Effect’ Distorts the Founders

Too often, we look to history not to understand it, but to seek out confirmation for our preexisting beliefs. That’s a problem.

by Mike Lee via Politico Magazine on May 30, 2017

Policing the Colony: From the American Revolution to Ferguson

King George's tax collectors abused police powers to fill his coffers. Sound familiar?

by Chris Hayes via The Nation on March 29, 2017

The History Test

How should the courts use history?

by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on March 27, 2017

Were the Framers Democrats?

Review of The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution, by Michael J. Klarman.

by Cass R. Sunstein via The New Rambler on October 31, 2016

The Caging of America

Why do we lock up so many people?

by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on January 30, 2012

Prior Convictions

Did the Founders want us to be faithful to their faith?

by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on April 14, 2008

A drawing of protestors wrestling a tax collector to the ground.

A Prudent First Amendment

Often, the proper scope of the First Amendment can be determined only by considering both text and context.

by David Lewis Schaefer via Law & Liberty on November 7, 2024

A gavel smashing a wooden house.

The Constitutional Case Against Exclusionary Zoning

America is suffering from a severe housing shortage. A crucial tool may lie in the Constitution.

by Ilya Somin, Joshua Braver via The Atlantic on June 12, 2024

When Constitutional-Law Professors Fight

On the folly of relying on history to settle the debate over whether the Fourteenth Amendment should bar Trump from office.

by William Hogeland via Hogeland's Bad History on January 10, 2024

John Hart Ely.

The Liberal Giant Who Doomed Roe

His works underpins the Dobbs decision. His legacy matters enormously to what's next for constitutional law.

by Caitlin B. Tully via Slate on June 25, 2023

Cover of "Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance To Federal Power"

The Little Man’s Big Friends

A new book seeks to explain why many Americans, especially but not exclusively in the South, have understood freedom as an entitlement for white people.

by Eric Foner via London Review of Books on May 24, 2023

An American flag stylized as a ball bearing maze.

The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

How our inability to change America’s most important document is deforming our politics and government.

by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on October 26, 2022

Drawing of a voting booth on top of a gerrymandered district with a saw cutting the floor out from under it.

American Democracy Was Never Designed to Be Democratic

The partisan redistricting tactics of cracking and packing aren’t merely flaws in the system—they are the system.

by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on August 15, 2022

Black and white people sitting at a lunch counter.

When Rights Went Right

Is the American conception of constitutional rights too absolute?

by David Cole via New York Review of Books on March 31, 2022

Picture of the U.S. Supreme Court

Reading the 14th Amendment

A review of three books about Abraham Lincoln, the 14th Amendment, and Reconstruction.

by Earl M. Maltz via National Review on February 3, 2022

Painting of the constitutional convention

Federalism and the Founders

The question of how to balance state and national power was perhaps the single most important and most challenging question confronting the early republic.

by Allen C. Guelzo via National Affairs on January 7, 2022

Luther Martin

For Constitution Day, Let's Toast the Losers of the Convention

Anti-federalist Luther Martin's agenda failed at the Constitutional Convention, but his criticisms of the Founders may still resonate with us today.

by Richard Hall via HNN on September 19, 2021

Portrait of Thomas Jefferson

Sunrise at Monticello

Jefferson and his connection to partisanship in early America.

by Michael Liss via 3 Quarks Daily on July 19, 2021

"JOIN, or DIE" political cartoon with illustration of a severed snake

The Memes That Made Us

The origin story of “one nation, indivisible.”

by Akhil Reed Amar via Lapham’s Quarterly on May 24, 2021

COVID-19 particles with the bill of rights written over them

The Forgotten Third Amendment Could Give Pandemic-Struck America a Way Forward

An overlooked corner of the Constitution hints at a right to be protected from infection.

by Alexander Zhang via The Atlantic on October 21, 2020

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