Historical Origins of the US Constitution (Ewald)
Faculty
|
|
| William Ewald Professor of Law and Philosophy wewald@law.upenn.edu |
Additional Information
Skills Training
Oral Presentations
Expository Writing
Grading
10% Participation,
90% Paper
Yes
Class meets in person.
Course Continuity
Students are encouraged to stay home if you are ill or experience flu-like symptoms. If you miss a class for any reason, it is still your responsibility to make up the work missed.
I offer the following to students who miss class due to illness:
- Class sessions are regularly recorded. I will make these recordings routinely available on the course site to everyone in the class.
- When you are better, please make an appointment to meet with me and I will review/answer questions about what you missed.
Meeting Times/Location
W 4:30PM - 6:30PM
Silverman Hall M28
Category
Seminar
Credits
3.0
This seminar will offer an intensive investigation of the intellectual origins of the US Constitution. Its focus will be on three leading architects of the Constitution: James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and James Wilson.
We will study their contributions to the 1787 Convention, to the ratification debates, and to the emergence of constitutional thought in the early Republic.
The primary texts will be Madison’s *Notes* of the Federal Convention, the *Federalist* papers (especially those by Hamilton and Madison), and the law lectures and Supreme Court opinions of James Wilson.
The focus will be on constitutional ideas—on understanding what was novel, what choices had to be made, and how these thinkers differed among themselves. The relevance of these topics to current debates about originalism and the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court is unavoidable and will also be considered.
Recent scholarship has transformed our understanding of the origins of the Constitution in surprising ways, and the entire field has suddenly become a hot topic of research. The seminar will present those discoveries and address matters that are at the frontier of current scholarship. We will spend time discussing the state of historical scholarship, how to work with the extensive archival collections in Philadelphia, and how to write a publishable research paper. The aim will be to assist students in writing a paper suitable for a law review comment or other scholarly publication.
Because there is a great deal of material to cover, and because some of it is difficult, I shall spend the first hour of each class summarizing and presenting it, leaving the second hour for discussion. I am finishing my own book on Wilson’s constitutional thought and will have a lot to say about him and about the archival sources. That means no student presentations, but an expectation that you will have read the week's materials, will post a brief written commentary online each week, and will participate in the discussion.
Constitutional Law Learning outcomes: Demonstrate a core understanding of constitutional law; Perform legal analysis in the context of constitutional law; Communicate effectively on topics related to constitutional law; Demonstrate an understanding of constitutional law affects other areas of law.
Perspectives on the Law Learning outcomes: Demonstrate an understanding of how the law affects, and is affected by, the individual course topic; Perform legal analysis in the context of the individual course topic; Communicate effectively on the legal and other aspects of the individual course topic; Demonstrate the ability to use other disciplines to analyze legal issues relevant to the individual course topic, including economics, philosophy, and sociology, as appropriate.
Textbooks
""Plain, Honest Men": The Making of the Constitution" by Richard Beeman |