Totally surreal that after 12 years of working on this thing, it’s out of my hands. Coming to you in the Hodding Carter III imprint at @uncpress.bsky.social next fall! Huge thanks to @simpsonvos.bsky.social & the many, many people who helped along the way.

Friends, please share? Brown2026 is advertising for its 3rd year of fellowships. Would love to have you consider this opportunity to work with us as we face 2026. Link to position and application info in the thread: And more info about the initiative is here: brown2026democracy.brown.edu 1/

The fall semester has been SUPER busy for the members of the Historians Council on the Constitution. Walk with me through this 🧵for highlights from the historians' work on some of the most pressing legal issues of the day, from agency independence to voting rights... @brennancenter.org

Y'all, we got a preview of this book at the @richardscenter.bsky.social and it is going to be *AMAZING*!! @gauthamrao.bsky.social is such a brilliant thinker & writer.

💯 these guys were super entertaining, what with their whist games and dinner parties, their legislation-writing, & running for president. The only problem is figuring out which era of the 19th c. would be most fun to watch…

I think Justice Barrett needs to read @rachelshelden.bsky.social’s forthcoming book.

This is a great review by @mgraber1.bsky.social. I love the description of Barrett’s book (and others like it) as “campaign biography.”

Illinois congressman John Farnsworth comparing the U.S. Supreme Court in Dred Scott to the Bleak House chancery court in 1859 is just *chef's kiss* [4 weeks out from my book deadline and still finding gems in my own research 🙃]

Deadline Extended Until Nov 15, 2025 We are accepting applications for TWO postdoctoral fellows! Fellowships are for two years and offer competitive wages and travel funds. Additional information and how to apply can be found here: richardscenter.la.psu.edu/fellowships/...

Today we're highlighting former Richards Center postdoc @jonathansjones.bsky.social, whose book Opium Slavery was just published by UNC Press! uncpress.org/978146968953...

New Symposium on my book is out in *American Political Thought*. Featuring critical essays by James Stoner, Michael McConnell, Calvin TerBeek, and George Thomas. Followed by my response. www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/apt/2025...

APPLICATIONS CLOSE IN TWO WEEKS! We're looking for TWO postdoctoral scholars in African American history and history of the Civil War era. Fellowships are for two years, and the anticipated start date is July 1, 2026. The deadline to apply is NOVEMBER 1! Links in the replies below.

In Marbury v. Madison (1803), Chief Justice John Marshall established judicial review, forever enshrining the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of Constitutional meaning* *sometimes described as a brilliant maneuver to save the judiciary, other times a judicial power grab, either way a myth

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!

Supreme Court-interested friends &/or DC people: does anyone here have a panoramic-style picture of the building with the high protective fence around it from 2021 that they would be willing to share with me? Bonus if it's black & white, though not necessary. Thx in advance!

Congratulations to Moyra Eaton on a successful defense of her dissertation, "The State in Stone: The U.S. Naval Asylum, Governance, and Nation Building in the Early Republic." (Very proud advisor on the left!) 🎉🎉

🗃️ So very excited to host Laura Edwards for the annual Brose Lectures at the @richardscenter.bsky.social this year! The lectures, are free and open to the public. Please join us: Thursday, October 23 at 5:30pm Friday, October 24 at 5:30pm Saturday, October 25 at 11:30am

Can't wait to celebrate this book out in the world, @mmendoza.bsky.social !! 🎉🎉

Some of my favorites are @tiyamiles.bsky.social @marthahodes.bsky.social, & @arikelman.bsky.social

Please share! We are looking for TWO postdoctoral scholars in African American history and history of the Civil War era. Fellowships are for TWO years, and the anticipated start date is July 1, 2026. The deadline to apply is NOVEMBER 1! Links are in the replies below.

🗃️ The CFA for the @richardscenter.bsky.social AFAM & Civil War Era history postdocs beg. Fall 2026 are live! These fellowships are 2yrs, include no teaching, generous research funds, & a great scholarly community! psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/PSU_Academic... psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/PSU_Academic...

I debated writing this. It can feel tempting, upon encountering yet another instance of this administration’s racism, to let it be. How many ways can you say the same thing over and over again? And yet we have to write it down, if for nothing else, so those who come after us know we were against it.

🗃️ The CFA for the @richardscenter.bsky.social AFAM & Civil War Era history postdocs beg. Fall 2026 are live! These fellowships are 2yrs, include no teaching, generous research funds, & a great scholarly community! psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/PSU_Academic... psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/PSU_Academic...

It’s a terrific conference! Join us!

This is such a wonderful series! Each symposium is full of insightful gems and models of scholarly engagement, disagreement, and responses from authors. Glad to see them organized all in one place.

Justice Sotomayor suggests—implausibly—that justices somehow have a vested property interest in their office. Yet another reason why relying on judges to be reformers is an absolute disaster.

Friends, this book is FANTASTIC! Can't wait to see it in print, @emilysneff.bsky.social!! 🎉

Historian friends: tell me about your favorite research & writing tools. As a bonus, would love to know where you learned how to use them & if you'd be interested in sharing your knowledge w/ others.

So thrilled to see @jgienapp.bsky.social's important book on this phenomenal list! Congrats to all! 🎉

Such a tell that Roberts likes to repeat this anecdote.

Congratulations to @adamxmcneil.bsky.social on the @shearites.bsky.social dissertation prize! Can’t wait to see this great project out in book form.

So thrilled to see Alison recognized by @shearites.bsky.social for her exceptional book, The Interbellum Constitution! 🗃️

Yes! One way I explain this to students is imagine a foreigner trying to understand unwritten driving practice vsv speed limits. The legal limit tells you little about practice & enforcement, & varies by road type (ie: ppl don’t drive 10 over in neighborhoods but might on highways), time of day, etc

Seems to me an increasing amount of bad history is based on the idea that you can just keyword search terms (esp. 21st c. terms) to locate origins & relative usage. It's totally unimaginable to these keyword searchers why folks in the past would use diff terms or not mention common practice at all.

✈️ Very excited to head to Rhode Island for the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, at which I’m both an interloper & facilitator of what promises to be a terrific discussion with @gauthamrao.bsky.social, @jedshug.bsky.social, Jennifer Tucker & Saul Cornell!

Among others panels, I’m also super looking forward to Saturday’s session on new directions in const’l history w/ @jdmortenson.bsky.social, @tannerallread.bsky.social, @rachelshelden.bsky.social, @janemanners.bsky.social & Mary Bilder

This was Vin Scully's call of Henry Aaron's 715th home run. Tonight Major League Baseball cut off the first sentence, starting it with the "What a marvelous moment" part because they don't want to anger the white supremacists who run our country and of whom Rob Manfred is an ardent supporter.

Have you read a law review article recently that you thought was particularly great and deserving of a wider readership? If so, leave a link to it as a reply, together with a quick take on what made it great.

A great piece on colonial parties is Amy Watson’s “The New York Patriot Movement: Partisanship, the Free Press, and Britain’s Imperial Constitution, 1731–39,” WMQ 7 (Jan 2020): 33-64.

💯 a variety of competing political parties or factions (definitions debatable) existed in the colonial era; there was no need to invent the them—and many of the networks that made up these parties would transform into new state-level parties in the eras that followed.

Important to read this decision in the context of longer-term efforts by SCOTUS to chip away at private enforcement of civil rights & social welfare laws. I'll put a bunch of relevant background reading in the thread 🧵:

A little-known SCOTUS reform fact: in the 1880s a popular proposal among some leading jurists & lawyers was to expand the Court to 15 or 21. This was a solution to the Court's ever-expanding docket that maintained circuit riding and did not provide the cert docket control of later reforms. 1/2

One thing that worries me about this episode from an academic standpoint is what it might portend for who teaches history & how administrators evaluate students' claims to fairness. B/c this paper is as bad as it is offensive. Take this last paragraph where he quotes Lincoln's first inaugural 1/3

I’ll join Erika Lee, Kate Masur, and Tom Wolf for this conversation about BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP. Thursday June 12. Join us!

Excited to have these folks with us in State College next year!

We're announcing our 2025-26 @richardscenter.bsky.social fellows this week! So excited to have Ryan Quintana with us as our next Persun Visiting Scholar. This non-residential fellowship for associate professors rotates between scholars working on Civil War Era politics & military history. 🗃️

Thrilled to welcome these great scholars to the @richardscenter.bsky.social next year!

Out in paperback today! www.amazon.com/Against-Cons...