Collegiate Affiliation
I am a legal historian of colonial America and the young United States. Much of my research focuses on the entangled subjects of slavery, constitutionalism, and governance between the Revolution and Reconstruction. Currently, I am completing a book manuscript (The Founding Rules: Slavery and the Creation of American Constitutionalism, 1789-1889) that studies the career of the Founding in constitutional culture over this period. At its heart, this project tells how Americans, in the course of struggles over slavery and state power, produced a constitutionalism that locates vast authority in narratives of original meaning. In explaining how the United States developed an authoritative Founding in law, politics and civic life, this story offers a deep account of the origins of originalism.
As that project concludes, I am working on a new book project that examines American slavery as a "public institution," a regime of governance in which private rule was sustained and circumscribed by layers of state power. Some of my provisional efforts to understand this regime can be found in a series of articles. I also cannot help but pull other reseach threads on the way. Additional topics of investigation include: inter-governmental prosecutions under federalism; popular and legal resolutions of disputed local elections in the 19th century; and the creation of state natural history cabinets. Prior to joining the History Department, I was a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University.
Educational Background & Specialties
Educational Background
- PhD: History, University of California, Berkeley
- JD: Law, Harvard Law School
- BA: History and Political Science, Amherst College
Specialties
- Legal history; American constitutional law and culture; slavery in British America and the United States; history of the state and governance; the Early Republic and Civil War Era
Publications
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Courses