Richard Albert of the University of Texas at Austin, Nicholas Cole of the University of Oxford, and Alison Lacroix of the University of Chicago Law School compare the legal systems of the United States and the United Kingdom, including including the relationship between the origins of the U.S. Constitution and British law, how courts in both countries decide major issues, and how each constitution gets amended. Lana Ulrich, senior director of content at the National Constitution, moderates.
The program is presented in partnership with the University of Oxford.
Video
Podcast
Participants
Richard Albert is the William Stamps Farish Professor in Law, professor of government, and director of constitutional Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He has published over 20 books on constitutional law and politics, including Constitutional Amendments: Making, Breaking, and Changing Constitutions. Albert is co-president of the International Society of Public Law and the founding director of the International Forum on the Future of Constitutionalism.
Nicholas Cole is senior research fellow at Pembroke College at the University of Oxford. He studies the political thought of the 18th and early 19th century, and is working on a digital project that looks at the way constitutions and treaties have been negotiated over the last 200 years. He was previously a visiting fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello and held positions at St Peter's College and within the history faculty.
Alison LaCroix is the Robert Newton Reid Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, where she is also an associate member of the department of history. She is the author of The Ideological Origins of American Federalism and is currently writing a book about U.S. constitutional discourse between 1815 and 1861. LaCroix has also served on the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History, on the editorial advisory board of the American Journal of Legal History, and on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court.
Lana Ulrich is the senior director of content, constitutional fellow, and senior counsel at the National Constitution Center, where she manages the Center's constitutional content and programming, including podcasts, America's Town Hall programs, exhibits, the online Interactive Constitution, and the Constitution Daily blog. She also assists with any legal matters relating to the Center's operations.
Additional Resources
- Richard Albert, Constitutional Amendments: Making, Breaking, and Changing Constitutions
- Alison LaCroix, The Ideological Origins of American Federalism
- The Quill Project
- United Kingdom Supreme Court
- Ed. Donald Lutz, Colonial Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History
- National Constitution Center, Interactive Constitution, "Article V"
- John Locke, Fundamental Constitutions of the Carolinas (1669)
- National Bureau of Economic Research and the University of Maryland, State Constitutions Project
- The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, History Resources, “A Proposed Amendment to Prevent Secession, 1861”
- Constitute: The World’s Constitutions to Read, Research, and Compare
- Josh Gerstein and Alexander Wood, Politico, “Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows”
- Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, Draft Final Report (2021)
- Human Rights Act of 1998
- U.K. Parliament, House of Lords
- Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639)
- John Winthrop, A Modell of Christian Charity (1630)
- Mary Bilder, Yale Law Journal, “The Corporate Origins of Judicial Review”
- William Eskridge Jr. and John Ferejohn, Duke Law Journal, “Super-Statutes”
- INS v. Chadha (1983)
- Clinton v. City of New York (1998)
- Bowsher v. Synar (1986)
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript may not be in its final form, accuracy may vary, and it may be updated or revised in the future.
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