Constitutional History Colloquium

This is not your mother s American Constitutional History course, if only in that it attends so little to constitutional jurisprudence. The focus is, rather, on general conceptions of constitutionalism that underlie constitutional law. The five required textbooks are: THE RADICALISM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, by Gordon Wood; OUR DECLARATION, by Danielle Allen; THE SECOND FOUNDING, by Eric Foner; TIME FOR SOCIALISM, by Thomas Piketty; and, at the inspiration of Maurer 3L Travis Sloffer, THE AGE OF ENTITLEMENT, by Christopher Caldwell. Shop this elective course by scouting out all those books and by inquiring among Maurer students about experiences Maurer students have had in courses I teach. There will be several writing assignments, with some revision required after the fact. The course will proceed routinely as a roundtable discussion; if you neither like talking in class nor want to learn to like talking in class, then spare yourself this course and spare those who take the course your unhelpful presence.