A week before the anniversary of the start of the Constitutional Convention on May 25, 1787, scholars Richard Albert of the University of Texas at Austin, Jonathan Gienapp of Stanford University, and Colleen Sheehan of Arizona State University delve into the key texts, authors, and sources the founders looked to when drafting the Constitution. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.
Participants
Richard Albert is professor of World Constitutions and Director of Constitutional Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He has authored or contributed to over 20 books, including Constitutional Amendments: Making, Breaking, and Changing Constitutions. He is also the Book Reviews Editor for the American Journal of Comparative Law, a Distinguished Academic Associate at the Centre for Law & Religion at Cardiff Law School, and holds fellowships at Center for Jurisprudence and Constitutional Studies at Kabarak University in Kenya and the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy at Boston College.
Jonathan Gineapp is assistant professor of history at Stanford University. He is the author of The Second Creation: Fixing the Constitution in the Founding Era, which was awarded the 2017 Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize from Harvard University Press and the 2019 Best Book in American Political Thought Award from the American Political Science Association and was a finalist for the 2019 Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians.
Colleen Sheehan is the Director of Graduate Studies at the Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. She is author of The Mind of James Madison: The Legacy of Classical Republicanism and James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government. She is a former member of the PA House of Representatives, and was also a contributor to the National Constitution Center’s initiative, A Madisonian Constitution for All.
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
- Colleen Sheehan, The Mind of James Madison: The Legacy of Classical Republicanism
- Donald Lutz, The American Political Science Review, “The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thought”
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Baron de Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat"
- Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws
- Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce
- John Locke, Two Treatises of Civil Government
- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
- Jonathan Gienapp, The Second Creating: Fixing the Constitution in the Founding Era
- Federalist 37
- Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations
- Wikipedia, Luther Martin
- Federalist 49
- Plutarch, Eminent Lives
- Aristotle, The Politics, Book V
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Henry Lee (1825)
- William Blackstone, Commentary on the Laws of England
- Edward Coke, Selected Writings
- Michael McConnell, The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution
- National Constitution Center, We the People podcast, "President Biden's Executive Orders"
- John Locke, The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina (1669)
- Jane Austen, Emma
- David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary
- Polybius, The Histories
- Bryn Mawr College, Quakers and Slavery, “John Woolman”
- Richard Albert, Comparative Perspectives on the Fundamental Freedom of Expression, "The Unamendable Core of the United States Constitution"
- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
- Abraham Lincoln, Selected Speeches
- James Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved
- The Anti-Federalist Papers
- The Articles of Confederation (1777)
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