Recent books on the Constitution

I choose the book I think is best. should Maybe my students don’t want to read a book because of the subject matter or the author. I postpone reading it myself and read it with my students. This way I can respond to the book together with my students and remember the nuances of the book for class discussion.

The format of the seminar is that we read six books, spending two weeks on each book, and in the second week the author comes to class to discuss the book. The first book, now always one I wrote, is used as a trial and gives students my thoughts on it when discussing the other books. If the book is over 250 pages, I ask the author which 250 pages to assign. If I assign more than 125 pages per week, I worry that students won’t read, or won’t read carefully enough. To ensure that students read carefully enough, students submit a one-page summary for each half of the book (graded pass/fail). The day before the author’s visit, students submit a 5500-word book critique, which I send electronically to the author the day before class. ( all Once the class is over, there are no exams or papers for students to write or for me to grade. That’s it.

Students consistently say that the course is very informative and helps develop their critical thinking skills. They also gain confidence from seeing how well they can spot flaws in a professor’s book-length presentation. Overall, I think students are able to spot weaknesses in all books (except mine, of course).

[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.]

Click “Read More” to find out why teaching this class was so rewarding for me: I’d like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of the authors who traveled to Washington, DC to discuss their books with my students.

2023

2022:

2021:

• Ilan Wurman, The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment (2020)
• Stephen Halbrook, The Right to Bear Arms: A Constitutional Right of Citizens or a Privilege of the Ruling Class? (2021)
• Donald Drakeman, The Hollow Core of Constitutional Theory: Why We Need Framers (2021)
• Jamal Green, Why Rights Are Wrong: Why Our Obsession with Rights is Dividing America (2021)
• David Schwartz, The Spirit of the Constitution: John Marshall and the 200-Year Journey of McCulloch v. Maryland (2019)

2020:

2019:

• Neil Devins, Their Own Friends: How the Supreme Court Became Partisan (2019)
• Larry Lessig, Faithfulness and Constraint: How the Supreme Court Has Interpreted the US Constitution (2019)
• Jonathan Ghinapp, The Second Creation: Amending the American Constitution in the Founding Era (2018)
• Rebecca Zietlow, The Forgotten Liberator: James Mitchell Ashley and the Ideological Origins of Reconstruction (2017)
• Lee Strang, The Promise of Principles: A Natural Law Explanation of the American Constitution (2019)

2018:

• Martha Jones, Birthright: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (2018)
• John Compton, The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution (2014)
• Josh Chaffetz, Congressional Constitution: Legislative Power and the Separation of Powers (2017)
• Adam Carrington and Justice Stephen Field’s “The Constitution of Cooperative Liberty: Complete Freedom” (2017)
• Gerald Magliocca, The Heart of the Constitution: How the Bill of Rights Became a Bill of Rights (2018)

2017:

• Barry Friedman, “Unjust Policing” (2017)
• Bruce Fronen & George Carey, Constitutional Morality and the Rise of Quasi-Law (2016)
• Jeffrey R. Stone, Sex and the Constitution (2017)
• Suja Thomas, The Missing American Juror (2016)
• Thomas G. West, The Political Theory of the Founding of America (2017)

2016:

• Carson Holloway, Hamilton vs. Jefferson in the Washington Administration: Completing or Destroying the Founding? (2015)
• Michael Paulsen & Luke Paulsen, Introduction to the Constitution (2015)
• Thomas Leonard, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and the American Economy in the Progressive Era (2016)
• Tara Smith, Judicial Review in Objective Legal Systems (2015)
• Ilya Somin’s “Gripping Hands”: Kero v. City of New London The limits of eminent domain (2015)

2015:

• Damon Root, Over Ruled: The Long War for the Control of the US Supreme Court (Palgrave 2014)
• F.H. Buckley, Once and Future King: The Rise of Monarchy in America (Encounter 2014)
• Brad Snyder, The House of Truth (Oxford 2017) (manuscript specified)
• Stephen Gerbaum, A New Federal Constitutional Model (Cambridge, 2013)
• Laura Donohue, The Future of Foreign Intelligence (Chicago 2016) (request manuscript)

2014:

• Clark Neily, Terms of the Contract: How Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government (Encounter 2013)
• Thomas Healy, The Great Dissent: Oliver Wendell Holmes’ Change of Heart and the History of Free Speech in America (Metropolitan Books, 2013)
• John McGinnis & Michael Rapaport, Fundamentalism and the Good Constitution (Harvard, 2013)
• Stephen Griffin, The Long War and the Constitution (Harvard University, 2013)
• Garrett Epps, The American Epic: Reading the United States Constitution (Oxford, 2013)
• Louis Michael Seidman, On Constitutional Disobedience (Oxford 2012)

Autumn 2012

• Gerald Magliocca, John Bingham: Founding Father of the United States (New York University, 2013) (required manuscript)
• Akhil Reed Amar, America’s Unwritten Constitution (Basic Books, 2012)
• John Inazu, Freedom Retreat: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly (Yale University, 2012)
• Justice Antonin Scalia, Reading the Law: Interpreting Legal Documents (West, 2012)
• Abner Greene, Against Duty (Harvard University, 2012)
• Sandy Levinson, Framed: America’s 51 Constitutional and Governance Crises (Oxford 2012).

Spring 2012

• Michael J. Gerhardt, The Power of Precedent (Oxford 2008)
• Robert Bennett and Lawrence Sorum, “Constitutional Fundamentalism” (Cornell 2011)
• Gary L. McDowell, The Language of Law and the Foundations of American Constitutionalism (Cambridge, 2010)
• Eric Segal, The Supreme Court Myth: Why the Supreme Court is Not a Court and Its Justices Are Not Judges (Praeger 2012)
• Michael Grebe, The Upside-Down Constitution (Harvard University, 2012)
• Alexander Tsesis, The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom (New York University, 2004)

2011:

• H. Jefferson Powell, The Conscience of the Constitution (Chicago, 2008).
• Jeremy A. Rabkin, Law Without the State? (Princeton, 2005)
• Christian G. Fritz, American Sovereigns (Cambridge, 2007)
• Timothy Sandefur, The Right to a Living (Cato Institute, 2010)
• Sonu Bedi, Denial of Rights (Cambridge, 2009)
• Alison Lacroix, The Ideological Origins of American Federalism (Harvard University, 2010)

2010:

• David Bernstein, The Rehabilitation of Lochner (Chicago 2011) (manuscript specified)
• Brian Tamanaha, The Formalism-Realism Divide: The Role of Politics in Judgment (Princeton, 2009)
• Earl Maltz, Slavery and the Supreme Court, 1825-1861 (Kansas, 2009)
• Michael Vorenberg, The Last Freedom: The Civil War, Abolition, and the Thirteenth Amendment (Cambridge, 2004).
• George Thomas, The Madison Constitution (Johns Hopkins University, 2008)
• David Strauss, The Living Constitution (Oxford, 2010)

2007:

• Alex Aleynikov, Representations of Sovereignty: Constitutions, States, and American Citizenship (Harvard University, 2002)
• Dan Farber, Held by the People: The “Silent” Ninth Amendment and the Constitutional Rights Americans Don’t Know About (Perseus, 2007).
• Jim Fleming, Securing Constitutional Democracy: The Case for Self-Government (Chicago, 2006).
• Mark Graeber, Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil (Cambridge, 2006)
• Keith Whittington, The Political Foundations of Judicial Supremacy: Presidents, the Supreme Court, and Constitutional Leadership in American History (Princeton, 2007)

2006:

• Philip Hamburger, Separation of Church and State (Harvard University, 2002)
• Kermit Roosevelt, The Myth of Judicial Activism: Understanding Supreme Court Decisions (Yale University, 2006)
• Elizabeth Price Foley, Liberty for All: Restoring Personal Privacy in a New Era of Public Morality (Yale University, 2006)
• John Yoo, Power of War and Peace: Constitutional and Diplomatic Policy after 9/11 (Chicago, 2005)
• Sanford Levinson, Our Undemocratic Constitution: What’s Wrong with It (and How We, the People, Can Fix It) (Oxford, 2006)

I taught it in 2005 (when I was a visiting professor at Georgetown University; only Mark Tushnet, then still on the Georgetown faculty, attended; his class visit gave me the idea to invite all authors in future).

• Mark Tushnet, Taking the Constitution from the Courts (Princeton, 2000)
• Cass R. Sunstein, One Case at a Time: Judicial Minimalism on the Supreme Court (Harvard University, 2001)
• Larry D. Kramer, The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (Oxford, 2004)
• Daniel A. Farber and Susanna Shelley, Desperately Seeking Certainty: The Misguided Quest for Constitutional Foundations (Chicago, 2004).
• James R. Stoner, Common Law Liberty: Rethinking American Constitutionalism (Kansas, 2003)