Political theorist William B. Allen, editor and translator of a new edition of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws, and Alison LaCroix, author of The Interbellum Constitution: Union, Commerce, and Slavery in the Age of Federalisms, explored the intellectual foundations—from Montesquieu and beyond—of the U.S. constitutional vision and core values from America’s founding through the Civil War. The discussion was moderated by Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center.
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Participants:
William B. Allen is professor emeritus of political philosophy at Michigan State University. He previously served as chairman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights as well as the dean of James Madison College at Michigan State University. He is the author of The State of Black America: Progress, Pitfalls, and the Promise of the Republic (2022), George Washington: America's First Progressive (2008) and Rethinking Uncle Tom: The Political Thought of Harriet Beecher Stowe (2009). He is also the editor and translator of a new critical edition of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (2024).
Alison LaCroix is the Robert Newton Reid Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School and an associate member of the University of Chicago Department of History. She has served as a member of the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History, and she is a member of the editorial advisory boards of the Journal of American Constitutional History and the American Journal of Legal History. Her latest book, The Interbellum Constitution: Union, Commerce, and Slavery in the Age of Federalisms (2024) focuses on U.S. constitutional discourse between 1815 and 1861.
Additional Resources:
- Alison LaCroix, The Interbellum Constitution: Union, Commerce, and Slavery in the Age of Federalisms, 2024
- Montesquieu, ‘The Spirit of the Laws’: A Critical Edition, edited and translated by W. B. Allen, 2024
- The Commerce Clause
- Alison LaCroix, “James Madison v. Originalism,” Project Syndicate (Aug. 26, 2022)
- 10th Amendment
- Andrew Jackson, Proclamation Regarding Nullification, (December 10, 1832)
- Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, (1816)
- Preamble to the Constitution
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