In celebration of the firm's 150th anniversary, Morgan Lewis and the National Constitution Center present a program exploring the text, history, and legacy of the Reconstruction Amendments. The program begins with a conversation featuring historian Christopher Brooks of East Stroudsburg University on the legal profession in the late 19th century, including the career of John S. Rock—the first African American admitted to the Supreme Court bar. Then, award-winning historians Allen Guelzo of Princeton University and Manisha Sinha of the University of Connecticut discuss the history surrounding 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments and their enduring legacy. Thomas Donnelly, chief content officer at the National Constitution Center, moderates. Introductory remarks are provided by partners Terry Johnson and Michelle Park Chiu of Morgan Lewis.
This program is presented in partnership with Morgan Lewis, a founding member of the National Constitution Center, in celebration of the firm’s 150th anniversary.
Video
Participants
Christopher Brooks is a professor of history at East Stroudsburg University. His current research deals with John S. Rock, the first African-American attorney admitted to argue before the US Supreme Court, and Brooks has worked with the Institute for Justice and National Constitution Center on the topic.
Allen Guelzo is senior research scholar in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University. He is the author of numerous books on the Civil War and early 19th-century American history, the most recent of which is Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment.
Manisha Sinha is the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina; The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition; and her forthcoming book is The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920.
Thomas Donnelly is chief content officer at the National Constitution Center. Prior to joining the Center in 2016, he served as counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, as a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, and as a law clerk for Judge Thomas Ambro on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Additional Resources
- Morgan Lewis 150 Years
- John Stewart Rock--A Trailblazed Life. A lecture by Christopher Brooks
- Allen Guelzo, Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment
- Manisha Sinha, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920
- Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution
- The Slaughter-House Cases (1873)
- National Constitution Center’s Interactive Constitution, The 14th Amendment
- Brief of professors of history and law as amici curiae in support of respondents
- Strauder v. West Virginia (1880)
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