Current Books on the Structure

I choose books I feel I ought to learn–both due to the topic or the writer. I then maintain off studying them myself so I can learn them concurrently the scholars. This allows me to react to the books together with them, and for me to recollect the nuances of the books for sophistication dialogue.

The seminar format is to learn 6 books, taking 2 weeks on every guide, with the writer coming to the category throughout the second week to debate the guide. The primary guide is now all the time one in every of mine to make use of as a trial run and to provide the scholars an thought of the place I’m coming from once we focus on the opposite books. When books are longer than 250 pages, I ask the writer to inform me which 250 pages I ought to assign. If I assign way more than 125 pages per week, I concern the scholars will not learn them, or will not learn them rigorously sufficient. To assist guarantee that they do, college students submit one-page summaries of every half of the guide (graded pass-fail). On the day earlier than the writer’s go to, they submit a 5500 character critique of the guide, which I ship to the writer electronically the day earlier than class. (They all learn them.) When the category ends, there isn’t any examination or paper for the scholars to jot down or for me to grade. We’re achieved!

College students constantly inform me that the course is extraordinarily enriching, and helps them develop their crucial expertise. They’re by no means anticipated to learn entire books and barely requested to concisely formulate their very own objections to scholarship. It is usually empowering for them to see how nicely they’re able to discover the holes in a professor’s book-length presentation. I discover that, collectively, the scholars are in a position to nail the weaknesses of each guide (besides mine, in fact).

[Note to law professors: I have a budget to pay for the authors’ travel expenses. But now that we all have access to Zoom teaching, this seminar format can be replicated anywhere at zero cost. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a dozen or more such book seminars around the country? Try it. I promise you will love it.]

Should you click on on READ MORE you will notice why educating this class has been enormously rewarding for me. Supply my heartfelt due to all these authors for trekking to DC to debate their books with my college students.

2024

2023

2022:

2021:

• Ilan Wurman, The Second Founding: An Introduction to the 14th Modification (2020)
• Stephen Halbrook, The Proper to Bear Arms: A Constitutional Proper of the Individuals or a Privilege of the Ruling Class? (2021)
• Donald Drakeman, The Hole Core of Constitutional Concept: Why We Want the Framers (2021)
• Jamal Greene, How Rights Went Unsuitable: Why Our Obsession With Rights is Tearing America Aside (2021)
• David Schwartz, The Spirit of the Structure: John Marshall and the 200-Yr Odyssey of McCulloch v. Maryland (2019)

2020:

2019:

• Neal Devins, The Firm They Preserve: How Partisan Divisions Got here to the Supreme Court docket (2019)
• Larry Lessig, Constancy & Constraint: How the Supreme Court docket Has Learn the American Structure (2019)
• Jonathan Gienapp, The Second Creation: Fixing the American Structure within the Founding Period (2018)
• Rebecca Zietlow, The Forgotten Emancipator: James Mitchell Ashley and the Ideological Origins of Reconstruction (2017)
• Lee Strang, Originalism’s Promise: A Pure Legislation Account of the American Structure (2019)

2018:

• Martha Jones, Birthright Residents: A Historical past of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (2018)
• John Compton, The Evangelical Origins of the Residing Structure (2014)
• Josh Chafetz, Congress’s Structure: Legislative Authority and the Separation of Powers (2017)
• Adam Carrington, Justice Stephen Discipline’s Cooperative Structure of Liberty: Liberty in Full (2017)
• Gerard Magliocca, The Coronary heart of the Structure: How the Invoice of Rights turned the Invoice of Rights (2018)

2017:

• Barry Friedman, Unwarranted: Policing With out Permission (2017)
• Bruce Frohnen & George Carey, Constitutional Morality and the Rise of Quasi-Legislation (2016)
• Geoffrey R. Stone, Intercourse and the Structure (2017)
• Suja Thomas, The Lacking American Jury (2016)
• Thomas G. West, The Political Concept of the American Founding (2017)

2016:

• Carson Holloway, Hamilton versus Jefferson within the Washington Administration: Finishing the Founding or Destroying the Founding? (2015)
• Michael Paulsen & Luke Paulsen, The Structure: An Introduction (2015)
• Thomas Leonard, Intolerant Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics within the Progressive Period (2016)
• Tara Smith, Judicial Evaluate in an Goal Authorized System (2015)
• Ilya Somin, The Greedy Hand: Kelo v. Metropolis of New London and the Limits of Eminent Area (2015)

2015:

• Damon Root, Over Dominated: The Lengthy Battle for the Management of the U.S. Supreme Court docket (Palgrave 2014)
• F.H. Buckley, The As soon as and Future King: The Rise of Crown Authorities in America (Encounter 2014)
• Brad Snyder, The Home of Fact (Oxford 2017) (assigned ms)
• Stephen Garbaum, The New Commonwealth Mannequin of Constitutionalism (Cambridge 2013)
• Laura Donohue, The Way forward for Overseas Intelligence (Chicago 2016) (assigned ms)

2014:

• Clark Neily, Phrases of Engagement: How Our Courts Ought to Implement the Structure’s Promise of Restricted Authorities (Encounter 2013)
• Thomas Healy, The Nice Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Adjustments His Thoughts – and the Historical past of Free Speech in America (Metropolitan Books, 2013)
• John McGinnis & Michael Rappaport, Originalism and the Good Structure (Harvard 2013)
• Stephen Griffin, Lengthy Wars and the Structure (Harvard 2013)
• Garrett Epps, American Epic: Studying the U.S. Structure (Oxford 2013)
• Louis Michael Seidman, On Constitutional Disobedience (Oxford 2012)

2012 (Fall):

• Gerard Magliocca, John Bingham: America’s Founding Son (NYU, 2013) (assigned ms)
• Akhil Reed Amar, America’s Unwritten Structure (Fundamental Books, 2012)
• John Inazu, Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Meeting (Yale 2012)
• Justice Antonin Scalia, Studying Legislation: The Interpretation of Authorized Texts (West, 2012)
• Abner Greene, In opposition to Obligation (Harvard 2012)
• Sandy Levinson, Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Disaster of Governance (Oxford 2012)

2012 (Spring)

• Michael J. Gerhardt, The Energy of Precedent (Oxford 2008)
• Robert Bennett & Lawrence Solum, Constitutional Originalism (Cornell 2011)
• Gary L McDowell, The Language of Legislation & the Foundations of American Constitutionalism (Cambridge 2010)
• Eric Segall, Supreme Myths: Why the Supreme Court docket Is Not a Court docket and Its Justices Are Not Judges (Praeger 2012)
• Michael Greve, The Upside-Down Structure (Harvard 2012)
• Alexander Tsesis, The Thirteenth Modification and American Freedom (NYU 2004)

2011:

• H. Jefferson Powell, Constitutional Conscience (Chicago, 2008)
• Jeremy A Rabkin, Legislation With out Nations? (Princeton, 2005)
• Christian G. Fritz, American Sovereigns (Cambridge, 2007)
• Timothy Sandefur, The Proper to Earn a Residing (Cato Institute, 2010)
• Sonu Bedi, Rejecting Rights (Cambridge, 2009)
• Alison LaCroix, The Ideological Origins of American Federalism (Harvard, 2010)

2010:

• David Bernstein, Rehabilitating Lochner (Chicago 2011) (assigned ms)
• Brian Tamanaha, The Formalist-Realist Divide: The Position of Politics in Judging (Princeton, 2009)
• Earl Maltz, Slavery and the Supreme Court docket, 1825-1861 (Kansas, 2009)
• Michael Vorenberg, Closing Freedom: The Civil Battle, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Modification (Cambridge, 2004)
• George Thomas,The Madisonian Structure (Johns Hopkins, 2008)
• David Strauss, The Residing Structure (Oxford, 2010)

2007:

• Alex Aleinikoff, Semblances of Sovereignty: The Structure, the State, and American Citizenship (Harvard, 2002)
• Dan Farber, Retained by the Individuals: The “Silent” Ninth Modification and the Constitutional Rights People Do not Know They Have (Perseus, 2007)
• Jim Fleming, Securing Constitutional Democracy: The Case of Autonomy (Chicago, 2006)
• Mark Graber, Dred Scott and the Downside of Constitutional Evil (Cambridge, 2006)
• Keith Whittington, Political Foundations of Judicial Supremacy: The Presidency, the Supreme Court docket, and Constitutional Management in U.S. Historical past (Princeton, 2007)

2006:

• Philip Hamburger, Separation of Church and State (Harvard, 2002)
• Kermit Roosevelt, The Delusion of Judicial Activism: Making Sense of Supreme Court docket Selections (Yale, 2006)
• Elizabeth Worth Foley, Liberty for All: Reclaiming Particular person Privateness in a New Period of Public Morality (Yale, 2006)
• John Yoo, The Powers of Battle and Peace : The Structure and Overseas Affairs after 9/11 (Chicago, 2005)
• Sanford Levinson, Our Undemocratic Structure: The place the Structure Goes Unsuitable (and How We the Individuals Can Appropriate It) (Oxford, 2006)

2005 (Taught once I was a customer at Georgetown. Solely Mark Tushnet, who was then nonetheless on the Georgetown school, appeared. His class go to gave me the concept to ask all of the authors sooner or later):

• Mark Tushnet, Taking the Structure Away from the Courts (Princeton, 2000)
• Cass R. Sunstein, One Case at a Time: Judicial Minimalism on the Supreme Court docket (Harvard, 2001)
• Larry D. Kramer, The Individuals Themselves: In style Constitutionalism and Judicial Evaluate (Oxford, 2004)
• Daniel A. Farber, Suzanna Sherry, Desperately Searching for Certainty: The Misguided Quest for Constitutional Foundations (Chicago, 2004)
• James R. Stoner, Frequent Legislation Liberty: Rethinking American Constitutionalism (Kansas, 2003)