Blackhawk on Time and the Constitution

Maggie Blackhawk, New York University School of Law, has posted Foreword: The History of the Constitution is Our Future, which is forthcoming in the Michigan Law Review:

As constitutional interpretation becomes rooted ever more deeply into the past the Constitution seemingly has less and less to say about our present. It seems to offer little principled direction for navigating what many describe as a constitutional crisis. On questions ranging from birthright citizenship and territorial acquisition to aggressive federal immigration enforcement, executive intervention beyond U.S. borders, and the “history and tradition” of annexed territories such as Hawai’i, the Constitution’s familiar sources of authority and traditional narratives seem to falter. These domains appear to tread into empty constitutional landscapes and newly discovered territory.  

Scholars have increasingly traced this backward-looking orientation to conservative legal movements of the last half century. But the impulse to seek constitutional meaning in the past is not new. Long before the Supreme Court embraced originalism, and long before the modern turn to “history and tradition,” jurists and scholars assumed that the Constitution could not be understood apart from its origins and development. Constitutional meaning was thought to emerge from historical inquiry. The question, then, was not whether constitutional interpretation should engage with the past, but which past—and through what historical method. 

This Foreword argues that our present constitutional impasse stems, at least in part, not solely from excessive attention to the past but from fixation on a particular kind of past. Modern constitutional theory, I suggest, has been increasingly bounded by what scholars in the historical and social sciences call a methodological nationalism. By nationalism, I do not mean to invoke familiar federalism debates. Nor do I use the term nationalism as a pejorative or a critique of those whose research centers the United States and its founders. 

Rather, I seek to draw attention to a shared theory of the Constitution as the legal expression of a bounded people, unfolding within a stable territorial space, and progressing through a coherent national narrative over time. Within this account, constitutional history exalts moments of founding, amendment, and judicial interpretation, resting on the premise that the nation sprung, whole cloth, from those moments. This account presses to the periphery histories that fall outside the modern nation-state—including, for example, the movement and establishment of borders, the acquisition and governance of new lands and peoples, and processes of development that led to stable borders and the presumed homogeneity of institutions, peoples, and laws over time. 

This Foreword recovers an alternative approach to constitutional history, one developed by the founders of American history and since largely abandoned, but once central to constitutional thought. Because these earlier methods developed before the consolidation of a stable nation, they did not take the modern nation-state as their starting point. Instead, they examined how the Constitution was used to produce the nation itself: to draw and redraw borders, to acquire and govern territory, to organize and govern non-subject populations, to determine the terms of political membership, and to authorize the projection of power across the continent and beyond. 

By centering a constitutional history that unsettles the presumption of timeless nationalism, this Foreword shows that many of the most pressing constitutional controversies are not beyond the reach of the Constitution but are, instead, at its core. 

--Dan Ernst 

JACH (Winter 2026)

The Winter 2026 issue of the Journal of American Constitutional History is now available online:

Sovereign Power and the Sweeping Clause
John Mikhail

Contemporary disputes involving the separation of powers take on a different light when they are framed in terms of powers of the Government of the United States itself. The “all other powers” provision of the Necessary and Proper Clause distinguishes government powers from executive powers and gives Congress distinct legislative authorities with respect to each of these categories.

Symposium: A Tribute to Kenneth Kersch

Ken Kersch and the New Legal History: Beyond the Internalist/Externalist Divide
Dennis J. Wieboldt III

For Ken Kersch, developments in twentieth-century American constitutional law could not be adequately explained by either neat doctrinal evolution or the raw exercise of political power.

Ken Kersch as a Scholar of “The Other”
Sanford Levinson

Ken Kersch’s remarkable scholarship generates profound questions about the difficulties—and even limits—of truly engaging with those who do not share certain ontological or epistemological commitments.

Ken Kersch and the Meaning of Development: Law, Ideas, and the Politics of Constitutional Change
Michael A. Dichio and Paul E. Herron

Ken Kersch showed us that constitutional development is not a story of inevitable progress, but of contested traditions, shifting coalitions, and the discontinuous, non-linear unfolding of political development.

Broadening The Terrain of Political and Constitutional Thought, Unmasking Delusional Constitutional Arguments
Carol Nackenoff

By broadening the terrain of political and constitutional thought, Kersch brilliantly examined how constitutional faiths are forged and “law stories” are woven to create common identities.

The Roberts Court and the Past and Future of Religion as a Constitutional Concern
Julie Novkov

The Roberts Court’s reconfiguration of free exercise and anti-establishment doctrine is not a simple conservative backlash. Rather, it creates a viable path for empowering a right-wing religious political project.

The Roberts Court’s Reconstruction of Church and State
George Thomas

Chief Justice John Roberts’s opinion in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer (2017) breaks with past understandings of the Free Exercise Clause by merging a state discriminating against religious individuals with a state declining to fund religious institutions.

Five Lessons from Ken Kersch’s Conservatives and the Constitution for the Present Moment
James E. Fleming and Linda C. McClain

Ken Kersch’s Conservatives and the Constitution helps us see the second Trump Administration, not as an aberration, but as the fulfillment of certain conservative ideas that have been “hiding in plain sight.”

Forgetting Nothing, Learning Nothing: Constitutional Scholarship and the Political Development of the Modern Supreme Court
Calvin TerBeek

The "Lochner Era" was invented decades after the fact, and the 1970s were legal liberalism's zenith, not its decline. Constitutional law professors' standard story of legal liberalism gets it wrong on the front and back ends.

States’ Rights and Civil Rights: Barry Goldwater, Bill Buckley, Richard Nixon, and Southern Realignment
Sean Beienburg

Did invocations of states’ rights by southern segregationists permanently discredit constitutional federalism? A re-examination of the 1960s political realignment suggests Americans can embrace—or re-embrace—this feature of our Constitution, while remembering state autonomy is a strong presumption but one that has always been checked by the Constitution’s rights guarantees.

The Phenomenal Constitution
Austin Steelman

In Conservatives and the Constitution, Ken Kersch demonstrated that the continually reimagined Constitution is a “phenomenon” in American life, not an epiphenomenal result of more substantial politics.

Orthodox Originalism and Conservative Identity after Ken Kersch
Logan Everett Sawyer III

Kersch’s Conservatives and the Constitution showed not just that the conservative political movement shaped arguments about the Constitution, but that arguments about the Constitution were key to transforming a varied group of interests disaffected by New Deal and Great Society Liberalism into a coherent political identity and thus a powerful political order.

Penningroth in Conversation at the University of Nebraska

[We have the following announcement from our friends at the U.S. Law and Race Initiative of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  DRE.]

Join us this Friday, Feb 20 from 1:30-2:30pm (cst) for an in-depth conversation between Dylan Penningroth and Will Thomas on the power of family and local archives in telling Black legal histories. Register now to join the discussion via zoom.

Ancient Criminal Law: A Global Perspective

Modern Criminal Law Review has announced Ancient Criminal Law: A Global Perspective, an international workshop to be held at 12 PM ET on June 24, 2026, featuring contributors a special issue, guest edited by Clifford Ando, University of Chicago.  Other participants include Beth Berkowitz, Columbia University; Ari Bryen, Vanderbilt University; Ernest Caldwell, St. Mary’s, London; Benjamin Gallant, Harvard University; Adriaan Lanni, Harvard University; Mark Letteney, University of Washington; Seth Richardson, University of Chicago; and Andrew Wolpert, University of Florida.  The organizers add:

To join us for this free online event, please register here. Registration is encouraged, but not required; if you prefer to join the event directly, head over to the MCLR+ YouTube channel at the time of the event (please note the time zone). All attendees will have the opportunity to post questions and comments via YouTube live chat.

--Dan Ernst

Sunday Roundup

• NYU Law's notice of Ashraf Ahmed, Lev Menand, and Noah Rosenblum's article, "The Making of Presidential Administration,” upon its naming as winner of the annual Award for Scholarship in Administrative Law from the American Bar Association Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice. The notice also includes a Q&A with Rosenblum. 

• Historical research figured prominently in the decision of Judge Chad F. Kenney, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, turning aside a challenge to the qui tam provisions from the False Claims Act on unitary executive grounds (JDSupra). 

• A notice of UC Berkeley professor David Henkin's legal-history-laden course on love, sex and marriage. 

• In March, SWOP NSW will host walking tours of Sydney’s historic "red light district."  “With 8 speakers each evening, the tour will cover both the personal anecdotes of those involved in sex work and the legislation that has shaped their lives. Speakers will share their stories on various topics, including current, historical, and future laws that aim to protect sex workers, as well as the advocates who have been instrumental in achieving these legal advancements." 

• Vice President Mike Pence and former Deputy Assistant to the President Greg Jacob are teaching the course, The Character of the American Constitution, at George Mason’s Schar School of Policy and Government.  The first class “walked students through the origins of the Declaration of Independence, exploring what the Declaration meant and where the writers got the ideas.”  (GMU).

--Dan Ernst 

Weekend Roundup

• Via H-Net: a University of Chicago job posting for an "Instructional Professor in Law, Letters, and Society."  

• Daniel Kuehn discusses a paper W. E. B. Du Bois wrote when he was a Harvard graduate student that, Kuehn argues, anticipated important insights in marginalist wage theory (AEA).

• The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia has opened a new gallery, titled “America’s Founding.” Per local reporting, it "provides attendees with an interactive experience on the early conflicts leading up to the creation of the U.S. Constitution, including early protests, the American Revolution and the adoption of the Bill of Rights." 

• The National Constitution Center has announced the appointment of Jon Meacham as its Semiquincentennial Scholar, "a one-year appointment designed to anchor the Center’s intellectual and civic programming celebrating the nation’s 250th anniversary" (NCC).

• In related news, the ARC Justice Clinic at Penn Carey Law, representing the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition and The Black Journey, has filed an amicus brief in City of Philadelphia v. Burgum, et al. As the Clinic's website explains, "[t]he case concerns the removal of educational exhibits about slavery from the President’s House Site near Independence Hall, where President George Washington enslaved nine people in the late eighteenth century." Read the brief here. 

• From In Custodia Legis: an invitation to "watch a recording of a Kluge Center Event 'Testing for Witches in 16th Century Germany.'"  

• Rory Cox on Hittite Laws of War, summarizing a chapter in the fourth volume of Laws of Yesterday’s Wars (Brill), edited by Samuel White.   

• Alexandra Natapoff, Harvard Law School, has launched Rule of Law 101, a free, ten-part video series, which "features world-class legal experts from top law schools around the nation explaining and analyzing important decisions by the Supreme Court" (Harvard Law Today).  

• Jud Campbell, Jonathan Gienapp, and Orin Kerr discuss originalism before Stanford Law students in a recording appearing in the Institute for Justice's Short Circuit Podcast. 

•  On April 14, 2026 at 10:00am (EDT), the Modern Criminal Law Review will hold a book forum live on YouTube on  David Garland’s Law and Order Leviathan: America’s Extraordinary Regime of Policing and Punishment (Princeton 2025).  In addition to Professor Garland, the panelists include Amna Akbar, University of Minnesota, Law; Patricia Faraldo Cabana and José Ángel Brandariz García, University of A Coruña, Law; Katja Franko, University of Oslo, Criminology, Rocío Lorca, University of Chile, Law; and Sara Wakefield, Rutgers University, Criminal Justice.  Register here.

• ICYMI: Six Black Legal Trailblazers (Solove Law).  Trailblazing Black Ohio Lawyers (CNO).  The descendants of Plessy and of Ferguson at Tulane Law.   

Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

Christensen-Nugues on Forced Marriages and the Apostolic Penitentiary

Charlotte Christensen-Nugues, Lund University, has published, open-access,  Consent and Coercion: Forced Marriages in Supplications to the Apostolic Penitentiary, 1484-92, in the Journal of Medieval History:

In the late Middle Ages, hundreds of Christians from all over Europe sent supplications to the Papal Curia to be freed from promises made under duress. This article analyses the supplications about forced marriages that were submitted to the Apostolic Penitentiary during the pontificate of Pope Innocent VIII (1484–92). The study is based on mainly unedited source material that has not been investigated before. The article examines who turned to the Penitentiary for annulment because of force (age, gender, and social status), who was designated as the compelling party, and, finally, what kind of coercion the petitioners had been subjected to. Particular focus is given to the narrative strategies of the petitioners and how their stories relate to legal theory and cultural norms in late medieval society.

--Dan Ernst 

Cahn, Eichner, and Ziegler on Parental Consent and Minors' Rights

Naomi Cahn, University of Virginia School of Law, Maxine Eichner, University of North Carolina School of Law, and Mary E. Ziegler, University of California, Davis School of Law, have posted "For Their Benefit": The Lost History of Parental Consent and Minors' Rights:

The principle of parental involvement in children’s lives has achieved surprising consensus across blue and red states. Meanwhile, the goal of children’s wellbeing has become a touchstone for legal reform efforts across a variety of domains. The apparent embrace of both the goal of children’s wellbeing and parents’ right to be involved conceal deeply contested questions about when, why, and how the law should require parental consent of minors’ decisions.

Drawing on archival material housed at six different universities, we make sense of present-day conflicts about parental approval by revisiting the long legal history of parental involvement, from early common-law cases to struggles of the civil rights era. We show that contrary to widespread assumptions, from the very beginning, strict requirements of parental involvement were compartmentalized to particular areas and inconsistently applied in others. Further, what is often portrayed as a relatively recent, evolving consensus in favor of using children’s wellbeing rather than parental involvement as the guiding principle in the regulation of children is instead a continuation of a longstanding tradition. At common law, we demonstrate, in determining whether a minor could bind themselves to an agreement without parental involvement, courts often asked whether an agreement was beneficial to the child’s interests (and therefore either voidable or binding, depending on the judge or jurisdiction) or prejudicial to the child’s interests and therefore void.

Building on a rich literature on child wellbeing, we then use lessons from this history to construct a framework for determining when legislators and judges today should require parental involvement and when minors should be allowed to make their own decisions. We begin with a presumption, drawn from the lessons of common law, that parental involvement should be required for most types of important decisions. Yet decision-makers should impose exceptions to the general rule of parental involvement when: (1) parental involvement requirements impede access to care or resources critical to minors’ wellbeing; or (2) the decision at issue is integral to minors’ autonomy over their bodies and their futures. We consider how this framework would address four current controversies relating to minors: (1) abortion and abortion-related travel; (2) gender-affirming medical care; (3) access to social media; and (4) mental-health treatment. Our framework, we hope, will be faithful to the basic principles that animated the common law and better able to illuminate when parental involvement is beneficial—and when it may have harmful consequences for the minors it is supposed to protect. 

--Dan Ernst 

James's "Laws of All the Greeks"

Jesse James, Grinnell College, has published Laws of All the Greeks: International Law as Social Reality in Ancient Greece (Oxford University Press):

The ancient Greek world was permeated with international law, the binding rules of behavior that Greeks across the Mediterranean followed and enforced for centuries. But why was international law effective in this world? Laws of All the Greeks offers an original answer rooted in contemporary social theory, presenting a definitive account of ancient Greek international law while delving into the social and psychological foundations that made it potent and durable.

Challenging recent claims that international law did not exist in the Greek world, Laws of All the Greeks makes a robust case not only for its existence, but for the importance of taking ancient Greek international law as an historical subject in the first place. It provides an updated history of select elements of that law, including the right to private self-help; judicial treaties known as symbola; and piracy.

Combining the findings of recent scholarship on Greek history, identity, and social networks, novel readings of documentary and literary sources, and the lessons of sociology and psychology, Jesse James demonstrates how the webs of identity binding the Greek world together affected both the rules of international law and their effectiveness at guiding legal and economic behavior. This study thus complicates and enriches prevailing approaches that emphasize formal institutions, structural features, or economic rationalism, offering instead a model for applying legal sociology to the historical study of international law.

--Dan Ernst 

Li's "Supreme Pressure"

Victor Li has published Supreme Pressure: The Rejection of John J. Parker and the Birth of the Modern Supreme Court Confirmation Process (Palgrave Macmillan): 

This book examines the 1930 Supreme Court nomination of John J. Parker, a turning point in American judicial politics. Alarmed by some of his past statements and opinions, labor and civil rights groups mounted a fierce campaign to block his confirmation. Not only was control of the Supreme Court hanging in the balance, but Parker's nomination symbolized a profound clash of ideologies, political agendas, economic doctrines, and interpretations of the Constitution. Their efforts sparked a dramatic Senate revolt, marking the first successful grassroots campaign to block a Supreme Court nominee.

By exploring the circumstances of Parker’s rejection, this book traces how that battle laid the foundation for today’s highly partisan and contentious confirmation process. The book also reintroduces Parker as a consequential but largely forgotten figure in American jurisprudence—one whose rulings helped shape the South’s legal response to Brown v. Board of Education. Beyond the nomination fight, it delves into Parker’s political campaigns, judicial opinions, and relationships with key public figures, charting his dramatic rise, humiliating defeat, and enduring influence.

Packed with intrigue, strategy, and the clash of competing ideologies, this is the story of how one nomination forever changed the rules of the game.

--Dan Ernst

 

Notre Dame Graduate Legal History Colloquium

We have word that the Notre Dame Graduate Legal History Colloquium will reconvene on March 7, 2026, from 10 AM to 3 PM on the Notre Dame Law School campuses in South Bend, Indiana, and Chicago, Illinois. The organizers write that "All students and faculty, regardless of institutional affiliation, are welcome," that all "presenters and attendees will receive complimentary lunch and refreshments," and that virtual opportunities to participate will be available for those unable to attend in-person.  

Those wishing to attend should register here, a form that reproduces the schedule for March 7 at right.  More information about the Colloquium can be learned here or via email to Dennis Wieboldt at dwiebold@nd.edu. 

--Dan Ernst

Fritz on the States as Monitors of the Federal Government

Christian G. Fritz, emeritus at the University of New Mexico School of Law, has published Sounding the Alarm: The Role of States in Monitoring the Federal Government.  It is in a series on political ideas and issues for school teachers published by the Center for the Study of Federalism.  From the introduction:

 In December 2025, more than 40 bipartisan state legislative leaders from over 30 states, working through the National Conference of State Legislatures, issued a resolution titled “Federalism Restoration and State Empowerment.” This resolution reflects an important tradition that dates back to the founding and deserves attention in K-12 classrooms.

The distinctive feature of American federalism has long been understood to be the distribution of powers between the national and state governments. James Madison captured this idea of shared authority or sovereignty when he said the Constitution created a “compound republic” (Federalist 51). The compound republic distributes power both among the branches of the national government (separation of powers) and between the national government and the state governments (federalism). Madison envisioned a double security for liberty in which the states played a prominent role in monitoring and checking the power of the national government and the national government could check the states.

This foundational element of our system of government—shared sovereignty—warrants revisiting by K-12 teachers and students. Although states may attempt to limit national power in ways such as withholding cooperation, exerting political pressure, and challenging federal authority through legal and institutional channels, this Digest focuses on the role and responsibility of state governments to “sound the alarm” when the federal government exceeds its authority.

--Dan Ernst 

Ramsey on Birthright Citizenship

Michael D. Ramsey, University of San Diego School of Law, has posted Birthright Citizenship Re-Examined:

In 2020, I argued in Originalism and Birthright Citizenship that the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause guaranteed U.S. citizenship to almost everyone born in the United States apart from the children of foreign diplomats and (at the time it was adopted) tribal Native Americans. President Trump's 2025 executive order purporting to exclude from birthright citizenship the U.S.-born children of temporary visitors and of persons not lawfully present in the United States has brought the issue to the forefront and inspired prominent originalist counterarguments. In particular, two leading originalist-oriented scholars—Kurt Lash and Ilan Wurman—separately argue that the original meaning's citizenship guarantee is narrower than I contended. 

This Article responds to these new originalist assessments of the Citizenship Clause. Notably, although these scholars both reject the broadest reading of the Citizenship Clause, they disagree between themselves as to the clause's correct reading and scope. Professor Lash's account would exclude U.S.-born children of parents unlawfully present in the United States (thus defending the executive order only in part). Professor Wurman argues that the clause may guarantee citizenship to U.S.-born children of alien parents only if the parents are lawful permanent residents; this approach would find the President's executive order consistent with the clause's original meaning. 

Evaluating each of these contentions in turn, this Article concludes that neither of them is persuasive. Rather, this Article reaffirms the conclusion that the Citizenship Clause's broad language ("All persons born... in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States....") encompasses all U.S.-born persons over whom the United States exercised sovereign authority at birth.

--Dan Ernst 

Eldridge, Ireland and Derry's "Celebrating Women in Legal History"

Lorren Eldridge, Emily Ireland, and Caroline Derry have published Celebrating Women in Legal History: Making and Shaping a Discipline (Hart/Bloomsbury):

This book champions the work of women in legal history, and their contributions to both the discipline and feminist activism over nearly two centuries.

It considers women in academia, which was, in theory, open to women before they could become lawyers in most European countries. And it considers women working beyond the academy: many studied legal history in other ways; in local history societies, through archival work, and via activism.

Women legal historians have been under-recognised or forgotten altogether, even where they made substantial scholarly contributions. In focusing on the work of women in legal history, this book lays the foundations for a transformational reassessment of the discipline. It asks searching questions about what counts as legal history. It demonstrates that work by and about women should appear in our legal history courses, be discussed in our seminars, and be cited in our academic work. If the field of legal history is lively, innovative, and wide-ranging, everyone working in it benefits. By shining a light on undervalued scholarship, and areas which have received insufficient attention, we challenge assumptions in our discipline and advance its methods. 

Whilst some women were pioneers and worked to change gendered aspects of the law, others led more ordinary lives, disappearing from the gaze of legal history even as they contributed to it. This book tells some of their stories.

--Dan Ernst.  TOC after the jump.

Thomas's Review Essay on the American Administrative State

Dane Thomas, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, has published, open access, Legitimacy and the Problem of the Administrative State, a nice review essay on recent historical works, in Law and Social Inquiry:

While a postwar consensus largely upheld the legitimacy of the administrative state, the past two decades have witnessed a surge of critiques not seen since the 1930s. This review essay traces the evolution of these attacks from libertarian legal scholars decrying the administrative government’s alleged constitutional violations to lesser-known populist conservative figures like John Marini and Ned Ryun who frame the same developments as a subversive plot against the executive branch. Contrasted with them are defenders of the regulatory state like William Novak, who argue both for the historical precedent of state intervention as well as for its democratic legitimacy. The essay closes with a review of liberal concerns about the administrative state—exemplified by Alan Brinkley’s critique of the New Deal—and considers how defenders and critics might be speaking past one another. The debate reveals deeper fractures in American political thought and potentially new avenues for research into the politics of the administrative state in the latter half of the twentieth century.

--Dan Ernst 

CFP: 6th Asian Legal History Conference

[We have the following CFP.  DRE]

The Faculty of Law, Multimedia University, Malaysia is organizing the Sixth Asian Legal History Conference in Melaka, Malaysia on 6–7 August 2026. The conference is supported by the Asian Legal History Association. Previous Asian Legal History Conferences have been hosted, organized and supported by the University of Law at Hue University, the Faculty of Law at Thammasat University, the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore, the Faculty of Law at Doshisha University in Japan, and the Faculty of Law at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The conference aims to bring together a diverse, interdisciplinary group of scholars, researchers and graduate students to share their research findings on topics relating to legal history in Asia.

Submissions on any subject, providing they relate to legal history and fall into at least one of the categories specified below, will be considered. Among other themes, the organizers encourage papers on subjects such as:

• The historical evolution of common law, civil law, and socialist law traditions
• The history of law and empire
• The history of international law
• Transnational connections in legal history
• The history of law, gender and sexuality
• Legal pluralism and jurisdictional clashes
• Customary law and religious law
• The history of law schools and of the formation of the judiciary and of members of the legal profession.

The conference will be in person. Applicants will be responsible for their own transportation and accommodation costs.

Proposals may be for individual papers or panels. Panel proposals are particularly welcome, as the field of legal history is wide, and while the organizers will endeavor to cluster like papers together, thematic, geographic and temporal diversity of topics inevitably means panels composed of individually-submitted papers will cover only loosely-related subject matters.

Individual abstract proposals should include a 150-300 word abstract and the corresponding author’s contact information. These should be submitted through [this Microsoft Form].

In addition, participants may make a panel proposal. Panel proposals should include a 150–300 word description of the panel, and the title of 3 to 5 individual papers, contact information for the panel chair. The abstract for the 3 to 5 individual papers in a designated panel need to be submitted through [this Microsoft Form].

Applications are due by midnight (Malaysia time) on 1 April 2026.  Decisions on acceptance of proposals will be made on a rolling basis. Interested parties are advised to submit a proposal as early as possible.  The venue of the conference will be in the city of Melaka, Malaysia and the registration fee will be informed later.  Full paper will be published in the Asian Journal of Law and Policy (MyCite-indexed) and other journals.

Further information and clarifications may be obtained by email to alhc2026@mmu.edu.my.

Sunday Roundup

• Aziz Rana, Boston College, will discuss his book, The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them, as the 21st Annual Pro Lecture in Legal History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, on Monday, February 23, 2026, 12:15 p.m.–1:15 p.m. in the Thomas & Mack Moot Court Building. 

• Orville Vernon Burton will deliver “The First Amendment and Lincoln’s Constitutional Legacy” in the Clemson University Humanities Hub's annual Lectures in Law and Humanities Series on March 5 at 5:00 p.m. on the Watt Auditorium. 

• The University of St. Thomas's notice of Anthony M. Joseph's amicus brief in Chiles v. Salazar on the history of medical licensing in the United States.

• Adam Feldman on How academic briefs shape Supreme Court decisions (SCOTUSblog).

--Dan Ernst

Weekend Roundup

• Elizabeth Brand Monroe (1947-2026), a legal and public historian who received the Supreme Court Historical Society's Gossett Award for her article on the Dartmouth College Case (IndyStar). 

• Over at the LPE Blog: Serena Mayeri (Penn Carey Law) on "writing a history of marital privilege in an age of retrenchment." 

• In the Brigham Young University Law Review: a symposium reflecting on the 20th anniversary of David Skeel's Debt's Dominion: A History of Bankruptcy Law in America.   

• Robert Post, Yale Law School, and Daniel Holt,  Historical Office of the U.S. Senate, discuss the passage of the Judiciary Act of 1925 in this recording of a lecture sponsored by the Supreme Court Historical Society. 

• The American Historical Association hosts a Congressional Briefing on the history of vaccines on Wednesday, February 11, at 9:00 a.m. ET in Rayburn House Office Building Room 2044.  Panelists Elena Conis (Univ. of California, Berkeley), David M. Oshinsky (New York Univ.), and Michael Willrich (Brandeis Univ.) will discuss the history of vaccines against diseases including smallpox, polio, and measles.

• Via H-Disability: a CFP for a workshop on "Disabilities and Women in Ancient Rome: Legal, social and cultural perspectives" (University of Helsinki, Finland, May 4, 2026). 

• The Federalist Society has announced the establishment the Meese Prize for Excellence in Originalist Scholarship.  The winner gets  $10,000.  H/t: Originalism Blog.    

• Madiba Dennie will discuss her book The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take it Back at UVA Law. 

• The latest Part of the Philip C. Jessup papers is open at the Library of Congress.  Here's Rachel McNellis's account.  (Unfolding History.)

• A notice of Scott Sandage's teaching on the Constitution in the Special Collections Department at Carnegie Mellon University.

• Now online from the National Constitution Center: "Lucas Morel and Melvin Rogers join to discuss how African American leaders and citizens, such as Prince Hall, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. have invoked the ideas and principles of the Declaration of Independence throughout American history to push for a more free and equal America." 

• Although the event for which it was produced was last year, the American Historical Association has just circulated this very useful handout on the history of the tariff. 

• ICYMI: A GWB-appointed judge blasts the removal of the mention of George Washington's slaves  from his Philadelphia home (ATL).  Relatedly, SHEAR has a tracker of this and similar purging of public history (Panorama).  Jack Rakove on Playing the Grinch at America’s 250th Birthday Party (Washington Monthly). George Liebmann provides Historical Perspective on the Unitary Executive (Law & Liberty).  Adolpho Birch, the first Black judge appointed in Nashville (Fox17). Noah Shusterman says there's still historical work to be done on the Second Amendment (DCFL).  The criminalizing of protest and dissent has a long history in America (Guardian).  Yearlong project restores lost videos of civil rights foot soldiers (Tuscaloosa News).

 Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

Sherman and Nelson on the Weak Historical Case for Regulating Occupational Speech

Paul M. Sherman and Daniel Nelson of the Institute for Justice have posted The (Weak) Historical Case for Licensing Speech:

Increasingly, governments use occupational licensing to control who may speak on certain subjects and what licensees may say. The Supreme Court has twice rejected governments' doctrinal justifications for excluding occupational speech from First Amendment protection-first in NIFLA (2018) and again in Chiles (2026). But it has left open one possible source that could justify such exclusion: "persuasive evidence" of a "heretofore unrecognized" tradition of regulating occupational speech. This Article--the first to fully examine whether any such tradition exists--shows it does not.

This history has direct implications for today. Protecting occupational speech would protect against government controls on conversations between professionals and their patients that extend beyond the "conversion therapy" at issue in Chiles, like gender-affirming talk therapy. And it would undermine modern-day bans on "unlicensed" advice, including bans on who may provide legal advice, which have spurred our nation's current "access-to-justice crisis. 

--Dan Ernst 

Blumm on the Rise and Fall of Environmental Law

Michael C. Blumm, Lewis & Clark Law School, has posted The Rise and Fall of Environmental Law:

This article is an impressionistic, nonexhaustive look at the rise and fall of environmental law, beginning in the 19th century, extending through the statutes of the environmental decade of the 1970s and their implementation during the ensuing decades, and the quick deconstruction of environmental implementation by the Roberts Court and the Trump administration in recent years. Remarkably, the deconstruction occurred without major statutory change. 

--Dan Ernst 

Gienapp Responds to Critics

Jonathan Gienapp, Stanford University, has posted two essays in which he responds to critics.  The first is The Constitution and Historical Rupture, which appeared in the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities:

This essay is a response for a symposium on my book, Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique.  It responds to criticisms made against it while further developing the book's central themes.  It contends that the problem of historical rupture—that the eighteenth-century U.S. Constitution presupposed a very different way of thinking about constitutionalism and law than reigns today—is the most important problem implicated by the theory of constitutional originalism, and yet remains largely neglected. It further contends that were originalists to finally confront this problem, the theory could not survive that reckoning, not without abandoning its defining features. 

The second is  Constitutionalism, Then and Now: Response to McConnell, Stoner, TerBeek, and Thomas, which appeared in American Political Thought.

--Dan Ernst

UC Berkeley Center for the Study of Law & Society Speaker Series: Spring 2026 Lineup

The Center for the Study of Law & Society at the University of California, Berkeley, has posted the Spring 2026 lineup for its speaker series. Historians on the calendar include:

Feb. 9: Hardeep Dhillon (University of Pennsylvania), "The Children of Immigrants Ineligible for Naturalization and Historical Struggle for Birthright Citizenship"

April 27: Jonathan Levy (Sciences Po Paris, Centre for History), "When Acts of God Became Acts of Man: Floods, Property, and the Legal Origins of Climate Change in Houston"

-- Karen Tani

Street & Runyon, "The Library of Congress at a Crossroads: Executive Overreach and the Future of Public Knowledge"

This article is not legal history, but may be of interest to readers of the blog -- many of whom have likely made use of the Library of Congress or have other reasons to care about its functions: Leslie Street (William and Mary Law School) and Amanda Runyon (Penn Carey Law), "The Library of Congress at a Crossroads: Executive Overreach and the Future of Public Knowledge," Seattle University Law Review Online & Seattle Journal of Technology, Environment, & Innovation Law (forthcoming 2026). The abstract:

In May 2025, President Trump's removal of the Librarian of Congress and attempted removal of the Register of Copyrights precipitated a constitutional crisis that exposed fundamental structural vulnerabilities in the nation's knowledge infrastructure. This Article argues that the Library of Congress faces a dual threat: a constitutional breach of separation of powers and a cultural threat to the preservation of America's intellectual heritage. The Library's structural ambiguity — its simultaneous identity as a legislative library, national library, and copyright agency — has left it vulnerable to executive overreach that threatens both constitutional integrity and its role as custodian of national memory.

Drawing on separation-of-powers doctrine, mandatory deposit jurisprudence, and the emerging Supreme Court framework on presidential removal authority, this Article demonstrates that the Copyright Office's exercise of executive functions within a legislative institution creates irreconcilable constitutional tensions. The D.C. Circuit's decision in Valancourt Books further undermines the mandatory deposit system that has sustained the Library's comprehensive collections for over 150 years.

To resolve these crises, this Article proposes a comprehensive three-part legislative solution: (1) modernizing mandatory deposit to authorize electronic submissions and create constitutional protections through voluntary compliance mechanisms; (2) codifying the Library's status as a wholly legislative branch entity with congressional appointment of the Librarian; and (3) severing the Copyright Office from the Library and relocating it to the Executive Branch. Without decisive congressional action, the erosion of the Library's statutory independence threatens the constitutional balance of powers, the preservation of American cultural heritage, and the future of public knowledge in a democratic society.

Read on here.

-- Karen Tani

Gailie on Race and the NY Constitution of 1821

Peter J. Galie, Professor Emeritus, Canisius University, has published The 1821 Constitutional Convention and the Constitutionalizing of Racial Discrimination in New York as Albany Law Review 87 (2023-2024) 147-1166:

Martin Van Buren (NYPL)

The 1821 New York Constitutional Convention removed property ownership for White males as a condition for voting while adding a requirement that Black voters possess a freehold estate worth $250.00. White males were eligible to vote if they met the following requirements: (i) residence in the state for one year; (ii) residence in the county they were voting in for six months; and, (iii) either, paid property taxation, served in the militia or was a fireman, or labored on the public highways; Black men were eligible only if they possessed the freehold estate mentioned above, and had resided in the state for three years. With this addition, the 1821 Constitution became the first in the state’s history to contain a provision making race a part of its constitutional fabric. This Article examines that decision and the role Martin Van Buren played in the context of the state’s colonial background and constitutional tradition.

--Dan Ernst 

Northwestern Legal History Colloquium: Spring 2026 Lineup

Via our friends at Northwestern Law, we have the lineup for their Spring 2026 legal history colloquium:

February 4 – Alison LaCroix (Chicago)

February 18 – Nathaniel Donahue (NYU)

February 25 – José Argueta Funes (Berkeley)

March 11 – Willy Forbath (Texas)

March 18 – Sarah Milov (Virginia)

April 1 – Greg Ablavsky (Stanford)

April 8 – Jonathan Gienapp (Stanford)

April 15 – Taisu Zhang (Yale)

-- Karen Tani

JAH 112:3

There is much of interest to legal historians in the latest issue of the Journal of American History (112:3):

Presidential Address: Historians' Voices in Times of Peril

David W Blight

“Disabled by Law”: Ableism and Self Advocacy in Eighteenth-Century British America
Laurel Daen

Plenary Powers: Chinese Immigration, Sovereignty Challenges, and the Making of Federal Immigration Power in the U.S. West
Julian Lim

The Long War on Welfare: Taxpayer Activists and the Politics of Backlash in Depression-Era America
Brooke Depenbusch

--Dan Ernst.  H/t GR 

Dean's "Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law"

Steven A. Dean, Boston University School of Law, has posted Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: The Story of Global Jim Crow (Oxford University Press):

Global tax policy has long determined which states can access the resources necessary to flourish. Today, even the wealthiest states struggle to tax rich individuals and multinationals. Anti-Black racism has enriched affluent states at the expense of marginalized ones and undermined the taxing power of all nations.

In a compelling narrative interwoven with personal storytelling, Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: The Story of Global Jim Crow connects Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s metaphor of the "bad check"-representing unfulfilled promises of freedom and equality to Black Americans-to contemporary anti-Black global tax policies. The book uncovers lost connections, such as those between Edwin Seligman, an architect of our global tax system, and the Dunning School, which laid the foundation for Jim Crow laws, and between Stanley Surrey, a Harvard professor and advisor to President John F. Kennedy, and key moments of the Cold War.

Furthermore, it takes a global view and reveals how racial panic triggered by African decolonization allowed an exclusive club of white countries to deliver a second bad check to newly sovereign states like Kenya and Nigeria. By circumventing the inclusive one-country, one-vote system of the United Nations, the OECD and its double tax treaty dismantled the generous arrangements that helped Europe rebuild after both World Wars.

Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law exposes the surprising role anti-Black racism played in shaping an international tax system that benefits billionaires at the expense of billions of people. This eye-opening account challenges readers to rethink the global tax system and its profound impact on racial and economic justice.

--Dan Ernst 

"Law and Justice in the 1950s" (in England and Wales)

Just out from University of London Press: Law and Justice in the 1950s: Case Studies From a Neglected Decade, edited by Fiona Cownie and Rosemary Auchmuty and published in association with the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies:

The 1950s was a decade of considerable legal development in England and Wales, despite often being regarded as very conservative in contrast to the more radical 1960s and 1970s. This collection illustrates the breadth of those developments, providing a sociolegal perspective on a range of topics across criminal, property, family, commercial, environmental and public law, and legal education. It examines the social, political and economic context of the decade to reveal how legal developments in the 1950s have much greater significance than has generally been acknowledged to date. Drawing on case studies from the Great London Smog in 1952, the treatment of women in the Wolfenden Report and divorce law reform, to the takeover battle for the Savoy Hotel in 1953, law on the radio and more, the chapters throw new light on current debates about the relationship between law and issues of justice, inclusion and equality in different spheres of activity.

Written for historians and legal specialists alike, this book explores the stories behind the laws in this neglected decade. In revealing the historical context, arguments and controversies raised at the time and the different perspectives of the parties involved, it offers a greater understanding of why we have the law we have now and of these issues as they continue to be played out in the early twenty-first century.

Here is an endorsement that matters: 

This ground-breaking book provides an exciting new perspective on the role of law in England and Wales during the 1950s. New stories not already recorded in standard legal histories are carefully examined, including an eye-opening series on education, and the conjunction between women and the home. Wide-ranging and engaging, it is a fine achievement.  

—David Sugarman, Professor Emeritus, Law School, Lancaster University, UK

--Dan Ernst.  TOC after the jump. 

Weekend Roundup

• Nathan Dorn, the Curator of Rare Books at the Law Library of Congress, on  Hippolytus de Marsiliis: The First Criminal Law Professor and His Books (In Custodia Legis).  

• Congratulations to legal historian Jennifer L. Mnookin upon her appointment as president of Columbia University! (Columbia News).

•  History, Tradition, and the Constitution (Claude's, that is) (Dorf on Law).  

•  "U.S. Territorial Expansion: The Constitutional Roles of Congress and the President," a Congressional Research Service Report.   

• Righting the Wrongful Conviction and Execution of Daniel Sampson in Halifax in 1935, an event at Dalhousie's Schulich Law School on February 5, 2026, at 07:00 PM.  The event will be recorded and posted to YouTube. 

• The Virginia Tourism Corporation has launched a new Virginia Civil Rights podcast (WRIC). 

• Lawbook Exchange's January 2026 catalogue of Scholarly Law & Legal History is here. 

• A conversation with Jill Lepore on We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution (W.W. Norton, 2025) (BC Law).

• ICYMI: Tal Fortgang on whether Traditionalism can be Originalist (SCOTUSblog).  Molly Brady, HLS, on debates from 19th-century state conventions that reveal why some constitutions allow takings for “private use" (State Court Report). Madiba K. Dennie on how originalist law professors get birthright citizenship wrong (Balls & Strikes).  An Ohio Supreme Court landmark: Rogers v. Toni Home Permanent Hair Co. (1958) (CNO). 

• Update: UVA Law's notice of G. Edward White's selection as Editor of the Journal of Supreme Court History. 

 Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

Beck on Ending Qui Tam in England

Randy Beck, University of Georgia School of Law, has posted The False Claims Act and the English Eradication of Qui Tam Legislation:

Congress amended the False Claims Act in 1986 to encourage qui tam enforcement of the statute, which penalizes submission of false claims to the federal government. A qui tam statute authorizes a private citizen “informer” to file suit on behalf of the government for collection of a statutory forfeiture. A successful informer receives a share of the recovery. Qui tam enforcement came from England, where it served for centuries as the principal means of enforcing a wide range of statutes. England moved away from qui tam enforcement in the 1800s and abolished it altogether in 1951. In this Article, Professor Beck considers the recurring problems that beset English qui tam enforcement, the widespread contempt for informers, and the reasons for Parliament's eventual eradication of such legislation. He concludes that qui tam statutes contain an inherent conflict of interest because they afford informers a pecuniary interest that often conflicts with public interests at stake in the litigation. Professor Beck argues that this conflict explains the problems with English qui tam statutes and analogous problems under the False Claims Act. He recommends modifying the Act to preserve the benefits of qui tam enforcement while increasing the role of disinterested public prosecutors in enforcement.

--Dan Ernst 

Mitchell's "Gaskell and the Law"

Paul Mitchell, University College London, has published Gaskell and the Law (Hart/Bloomsbury):

Elizabeth Gaskell is best known today as a novelist of social realism. Until now, however, her use of law, which is crucial to her portrait of society, has never been systematically explored. This book shows that Gaskell's fiction is rich with insights into the law of her time, and that reading her work with a lawyer's eye deepens and enriches the reading experience.

The book explores Gaskell's work as a whole. It gives careful attention to her most famous novels, but also engages with the lesser-known novels and the shorter fiction, showing that these often overlooked works contain a wealth of original ideas and legal interest. Gaskell's fiction is shown consistently demonstrating a skilled, accurate and critical handling of legal rules and a sensitivity to law's personal and social effects. She does not limit herself to mid-nineteenth century issues, but enters into such fundamental questions as the individual's obligation to obey the law, and the relation between law and fiction. The book shows that a hitherto unappreciated aspect of Gaskell's genius as writer is that she integrates this sophisticated engagement with law seamlessly, so that it contributes to the cumulative artistic effect of her work.

As a leading scholar of Victorian legal history, Paul Mitchell brings an in-depth knowledge of the law to his close readings of Gaskell. He brings out the richness and sophistication of Gaskell's engagement with the law, and proposes both new readings and new valuations of this important novelist's work.

--Dan Ernst 

CFP: Four Nations Law and the Humanities

[We have the following CFP for The Four Nations Law and the Humanities Forums.  DRE]

We are excited to announce the calls for papers for Four Nations Law and the Humanities Forums 2026!

Located around the country during 2026, the forums will provide an important space to develop research excellence at the intersections of law and the humanities, and foster intellectual community, supporting early-career scholars. Hosted at the University of Glasgow, Queen’s University Belfast, University of Warwick, and Cardiff University, these workshops are a series held across the four UK nations, in collaboration with the Law and the Humanities Hub (LHub) at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.

The forums will workshop ECRs’ work in progress and offer a rigorous context addressing the nature of interdisciplinary research in law and the humanities and its paths of development.

Criteria for Selection.  Contributions developed by early-career scholars will be selected based on their demonstration of excellence in scholarship and practice. Proposed participation may be written papers or creative work (in visual, sonic, film, etc. form), at any intersection within Law and the Humanities, including research that connects law with history, philosophy, literature, art, performance, linguistics, cultural and media studies, creative practice, and other humanistically-informed fields and methods.
     
Eligibility: The forums are open to individuals currently pursuing a PhD or DPhil, or who are within seven years of having completed their PhD, with due accommodation for career breaks, who are actively carrying out research in Law and the Humanities.

Forums Dates.  The dates of the workshops are as follows:

21st May - University of Glasgow
25th June - Queen’s University Belfast
2nd  July - Cardiff University
17th July - University of Warwick 

The workshops will bring law and humanities scholarship to wider audiences through the engagement of legal scholars as well as humanities scholars, ensuring that the research is not confined to law or the humanities.

Forums Format.  A limited number of works in progress will be selected for each forum. Each forum will be based on pre-reading of all papers and works by all attendees, and will include:

A friendly opening session;

Workshop sessions of 45 minutes dedicated to the submitted papers/works. Each session will include an invited senior commentator and an open discussion addressing subject matter, method, interdisciplinarity, and creativity. The authors/creators will not be expected to present.  The discussion will include all participants in conversational style (not as a Q&A).

The scholarship, creative practice, and networking will be fostered and supported through the participating institutions and LHub, via the Four Nations website, a concluding online plenary, and associated networks such as Legal Humanities Association and the Art/Law Network.

Submissions.  Please submit a CV; statement of interest in the forum, including an explanation of your eligibility (up to 250 words); and a 500-1,200-word proposal for a paper, or in the case of an artwork submission, the work and a 300-word description. Please also indicate which location you wish to attend.  

If accepted, submission of the completed paper will be expected a month prior to the chosen workshop, and should be up to 6000 words, or the completed artwork if non-text. 

Proposal Submission Deadlines.  Dates for the submission are as below.  

28th February - University of Glasgow
31st March - Queen’s University Belfast
30th April - Cardiff University and University of Warwick

NB: Location preferences may not always be possible.  Please send the above to Lucy.FinchettMaddock@gold.ac.uk and Lhub@sas.ac.uk. 

Completed Works Deadlines for Accepted Proposals:

21st May - University of Glasgow
25th May - Queen’s University Belfast
2nd June - Cardiff University
17th June - University of Warwick

For further information, please do contact Lucy.FinchettMaddock@gold.ac.uk and LHub@sas.ac.uk.

With thanks to funding from IALS LHub, Learned Society Wales, and University of Dundee, for their additional funding and support.

The Declaration of Independence in Global Context

This year's Harmsworth Conference of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford is The Meanings of Independence: The American Declaration in Global Context, 1776-1826.  It meets March, 19-20, 2026, and is convened by Eliga Gould, University of New Hampshire, and Patrick Griffin, Notre Dame University.

The Declaration of Independence, whose 250th anniversary Americans will observe in 2026, is the United States’ founding text, but it was also a transformational international text. Although Congress’s main purpose was to declare thirteen of Britain’s American colonies to be free and independent states, the Declaration’s words and example spoke to audiences well beyond the new union’s borders. Convened by Eliga Gould and Patrick Griffin, Harmsworth Professors, respectively, for 2025-26 and 2022-23, this conference will explore some of the implications of that wider message. In addition to the response to the Declaration in Britain, Ireland, and Europe, we anticipate presentations that focus on North America’s Indian country, Haiti and the Caribbean, Sierra Leone and West Africa, and China and British India. Participants will be encouraged to approach their topic from the broadest possible social and cultural contexts, paying particular attention to how categories of race and class, as well as gender and sexuality, mediated what independence meant. As the choice of 1826 as the conference’s endpoints, we hope to include presentations on the Spanish American Revolutions that extended the quest for independence throughout the Western Hemisphere. 1826 was also the year that two of the main architects of American independence, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, died, both on July 4.

Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard University, will deliver the keynote.

 --Dan Ernst 

CFP: Narrating Justice: Postwar Trials in Memory and Culture

[We have the following CFP.  DRE.]

On behalf of the organizers, the Polish Academy of Sciences – Scientific Centre in Vienna, the Faculty of History, University of Warsaw, and the Museum of the Second World War, we invite you to participate in the conference "Narrating Justice: Postwar Trials in Memory and Culture”, which will take place on June 11-12, 2026, in Vienna. 

The discussion on post-war reckoning provides an opportunity to reflect on contemporary responses to violence and human rights violations, as well as on the role of scholarly research in the face of current conflicts and growing political tensions in Europe and around the world. The conference seeks to examine post-war trials as a long-term historical, legal, social, and cultural phenomenon. Drawing on approaches from different fields of scholarship, it will address the immediate post-1945 tribunals and their aftermath, as well as later trials and broader processes of post-conflict justice in diverse contexts. Attention will be given to the historical, social, and media contexts of these trials, their forms of documentation and reception, as well as their representation in literature, film, theatre, music, and the visual arts. We also invite contributions focusing on non- European contexts, perspectives, and historical settings.

We invite abstracts covering topics that include, but are not limited to:

Historical and Legal Contexts: The Nuremberg Trials and their impact on the development of international criminal law; Trials in Germany, Austria, Poland, and other countries; Shifts in legal categories: from war crimes to crimes against humanity

Social and Political Dimensions: Reception of post-war trials in European societies; Public debates on guilt, responsibility, and retribution; The role of victims’ and witnesses’ testimonies

Trials in the Media: Press, radio, television, and digital coverage of trials, Documentary recordings as historical sources, Visual and rhetorical strategies in depicting perpetrators and victims

Cultural and Artistic Representations: Trials as motifs in literature, theatre, film, and the visual arts; Artistic reconstructions, reinterpretations, and revisitations; Documentary literature and nonfiction in the context of legal history

Memory Studies and Politics of Memory: Post-war trials in European cultural memory; Transnational and comparative perspectives; Institutionalization of the memory of trials
(museums, archives, education)

Contemporary Relevance: Continuities between post-war tribunals and modern international courts; Narratives of responsibility in the context of contemporary conflicts; Challenges for law, memory, and justice in the twenty-first century.

Timeline and Submissions:  Proposals must include, in a single PDF file: (1) paper abstract (max. 1,000 words); and 2) brief biography of the author(s).  All conference submissions must be in English, and all accepted works are to be presented in English.  Proposals for the conference should be submitted to office@vienna.pan.pl by March 22, 2026.

Accommodation and Travel.  The conference will take place over two days, on 11–12 June 2026, at the Polish Academy of Sciences – Scientific Centre in Vienna (Boerhaavegasse 25, 1030 Vienna).  The organisers encourage in-person participation by all speakers. However, depending on the circumstances, some presentations could be delivered online. Please note that invited speakers will be responsible for their transport to and from Vienna.

Participation in the conference is free of charge, and participants will be offered lunch and coffee during the breaks. Participants without institutional support may receive reimbursement of travel expenses up to €150 per person, as well as modest complimentary accommodation at the PAS Scientific Centre in Vienna. For those requesting support, a brief statement of purpose (500–650 words) should be submitted with the abstract and biography.

Inquiries can be made by e-mail to monika.gromala@vienna.pan.pl, milena.blahuta@vienna.pan.pl

De and Shani's "Assembling India's Constitution"

Rohit De, Yale University, and Ornit Shani, University of Haifa, have published Assembling India's Constitution: A New Democratic History (Cambridge University Press): 

 In this paradigm-shifting history, two leading historians of India re-examine the making of the Indian constitution from the perspective of the country's people. In a departure from dominant approaches that foreground the framing of the text within the Constituent Assembly, Ornit Shani and Rohit De instead demonstrate how it was shaped by diverse publics across India and beyond. They reveal multiple, parallel constitution-making processes underway across the subcontinent, highlighting how individuals and groups transformed constitutionalism into a medium of struggle and a tool for transformation. De and Shani argue that the deep sense of ownership the public assumed over the constitution became pivotal to the formation, legitimacy and endurance of India's democracy against arduous challenges and many odds. In highlighting the Indian case as a model for thinking through constitution making in plural societies, this is a vital contribution to constitutional and democratic history.

--Dan Ernst 

Brady on Wolford and the Level-of-Generality Problem

Maureen E. Brady, Harvard Law School, has posted Property v. Guns: The Level-of-Generality Problem in Wolford:

Wolford v. Lopez presents the Supreme Court with a novel question: may states require property owners to affirmatively consent before armed persons enter private property that is held open to the public? Hawaii enacted such a default rule after New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen instructed courts to assess modern gun regulations by analogy to historical restrictions that are “relevantly similar” in “how and why” they burden the right to armed self-defense. In Wolford, the parties have turned to colonial-era hunting statutes limiting armed entry onto private land, but they disagree fundamentally about what those laws represent.

This Essay shows how Wolford crystallizes the level-of-generality problem embedded in Bruen’s historical framework. Outcomes often turn on the frame courts choose for “the relevant tradition”: defined too narrowly, no analogue fits; defined too broadly, almost anything does. Wolford poses that problem on both “why” and “how.” On “why,” the parties and lower courts dispute whether Founding-era hunting laws targeted “poaching” alone or broader concerns about armed trespass. On “how,” they dispute whether bans tied to “enclosed” or “improved” land map onto the modern category of “private property open to the public.”

Reexamining the record through property history clarifies what the hunting laws can—and cannot—do in the analogical analysis. Even an “anti-poaching” frame does not resolve whether the laws addressed theft of game or a broader bundle of concerns including trespass, property damage, and violence associated with armed strangers. And “enclosure” and “improvement” functioned as publicly legible property signals—proxies for claim and notice—rather than precursors to contemporary zoning-era distinctions between residential and commercial space. The Essay closes by arguing that when history is genuinely ambiguous and competing constitutional values are in tension, courts should be transparent about the level-of-generality choices that drive outcomes and candid about the extent to which those choices inevitably reintroduce means-ends reasoning under another name.

--Dan Ernst