Following the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, ordinary Americans and statesmen alike continued to wrestle with weighty questions over the nature of government. Preeminent legal scholar Akhil Reed Amar of Yale Law School and host of the Amarica’s Constitution podcast joins National Constitution Center President and CEO Jeffrey Rosen for a discussion about the biggest constitutional questions early Americans wrote and spoke about, as described in his groundbreaking new book, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840.
Participants
Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law in both Yale College and Yale Law School. He is also the host of the Amarica's Constitution podcast. Amar is the author of numerous landmark works on constitutional law and history, the most recent of which is: The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
- Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840
- National Archives, Founders Online
- Library of Congress, Chronicling America
- Colonial Williamsburg, "Thomas Hutchinson"
- Bill of Rights Institute, "James Otis"
- The White House, "John Adams"
- James Otis, "Against the Writs of Assistance"( Feb. 24, 1761)
- Akhil Amar, "The Fourth Amendment, Boston, and the Writs of Assistance"
- Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776
- Constitution Daily Blog, “The story behind the Join or Die snake cartoon”
- McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
- Constitution Daily Blog, “On This Day: The first Federalist Paper is published”
- New York Times Company v. Sullivan (1964)
- Amarica's Constitution Podcast
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