Almost a year ago, a great light went out: Sarah Lee Best, Penn Law '21, was one of 67 souls aboard the flight that collided with a military helicopter and crashed into the Potomac. Sarah was my student and I am honored to join in a dedication to her memory: pennlawreview.com/2025/12/23/f...

New book alert, absolute must-read for anyone interested in the history of US empire and international law: Allison Powers, Arbitrating Empire: United States Expansion and the Transformation of International Law global.oup.com/academic/pro...

This evening at 5 pm—live cast on Zoom and @nyu.edu—the revolution that never ended, with Ken Burns.

At #ASLH where @tannerallread.bsky.social Tanner Allread accepts the Kathryn T. Preyer Award!

Blum of Students For Fair Admissions (SFFA) is targeting the Kamehameha Schools-privately run schools founded by descendants of King Kamehameha in 1887 (before the overthrow and annexation of the Kingdom by the U.S.) Refusing all federal funds, the schools aim to preserve Native Hawai'ian culture./1

Again, your mostly non-profit mostly uni press humanities publishers are not the thing making a wreckage of scholarly publishing. Paying for their work is a good thing, and we should keep doing that.

Blum of Students For Fair Admissions (SFFA) is targeting the Kamehameha Schools-privately run schools founded by descendants of King Kamehameha in 1887 (before the overthrow and annexation of the Kingdom by the U.S.) Refusing all federal funds, the schools aim to preserve Native Hawai'ian culture./1

Just a reminder that "en banc" review in the Ninth Circuit is ... unique. The full court (29 active judges, currently with a 16-13 D-R split) votes on whether or not to rehear a case en banc. If so, then *10* judges are randomly drawn to sit with Chief Judge Murguia as the "en banc" court.

Judge Graber is a brilliant and thoughtful jurist. As the first woman to serve on the Oregon Supreme Court, she holds deeply informed views on federalism. I'm also wildly biased, but she is the most beautiful writer (a skill she often restrains because she believes strongly in judicial moderation).

I’ll be speaking at The Henry Ford Theater on November 8 to present "We're Still Here: Fighting Indigenous Erasure in the Media.” Register and get tickets:

What an honor and absolute pleasure it was to spend the week at the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Study Center and with the Rothbaum/Jankowsky Family! It was also a delight to present new material from the book project on colonial administration.

We hope everyone enjoyed our 22nd Rothbaum Lecture Series in Representative Government. Our speaker this year was Professor @maggieblackhawk.bsky.social from NYU Law. Her talk was titled "Colonial Administration: Empire, Civilization, and the Making of Political Science"

'Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny' wins the @historians.org John E. O’Connor Film Award for outstanding interpretations of history through film. It was an honour to work and appear on this beautifully edited, timely, documentary. www.pbs.org/wnet/america...

Looking forward to the half-dozen or so lectures and talks that @maggieblackhawk.bsky.social will be delivering here at OU this week! An embarrassment of riches for us Sooners!

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!

Adapting Ned Blackhawk's National Book Award winner for young readers has been both an honor and a pleasure. I learned a lot while writing the adaptation, and I am looking forward to sharing this book with the world in Fall 2026.

New essay in the Atlantic today: How Native Nations Shaped the Revolution by Ned Blackhawk (with many lessons on how we ended up where we are as a nation, and a gift link) www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Fascinating and uncomfortable article. Well worth reading.

This is true of most commonly used history textbooks, including the unironically titled: "Give Me Liberty!" wwnorton.com/books/978132...

New essay in the Atlantic today: How Native Nations Shaped the Revolution by Ned Blackhawk (with many lessons on how we ended up where we are as a nation, and a gift link) www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Concur in full. I had the opportunity to do a similar program with Maggie and Ned, and it was an incredible experience. I'd recommend it especially to people who are looking for ways to better incorporate Native peoples and histories into their teaching and research.

Political violence, post-pandemic one-party rule, vast economic inequality, and immigration backlash? The 2020s are the 1920s all over again--and that may show us a way out. Adapted from my book, to be published next week. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/o...

Anyone would be very lucky to have Nathaniel Donahue in their workshops! His project on corvee labor and U.S. state building is fascinating, and worth a read even in these trying times.

Thanks so much, Mary! Deadline 10/10 to apply for the free seminar for junior faculty and grad students on Native peoples and the Constitution.

I'm excited about our upcoming Rothbaum Lectures given by Maggie Blackhawk! Lectures are free and open to the public.

New Ken Burns!!!! New Ken Burns!!!!!

ca. 250 years go we began a domestic war to define what North America would become. Ken Burns on the Revolution that is still ongoing. Honored (and still pretty surprised) to have contributed. m.youtube.com/watch?v=lruE...

Only an administration intent on committing war crimes in the present and future would stoop to calling Wounded Knee a "battle" rather than what it truly was: a massacre of over 250 Lakotas, mainly women, children, and the elderly. 1/

I understand there are bigger problems, especially for the academy. But I miss the days when “difficult” meant that a speaker mustered immense evidence to shift entrenched paradigms—and not “difficult” meaning conflict with partisan priors. Difficult meant that 800 pages later minds were blown open.

What-does-God-want-with-a-starship voice: "What does 'from' mean?"

Calling all middle and high school teachers! Drawing inspiration from Ken Burns’ upcoming documentary, The American Revolution, join us for a full day of free, in-person professional development on Friday, October 17th at the JCB. Registration required! forms.gle/CT83ESjTZWeg...

It's been almost 90 years since the Supreme Court in Erie v. Tompkins disallowed federal court application of general common law. There has, however, been a revival of interest in the general common law, something we'll be discussing this spring at UChicago! www.law.uchicago.edu/events/eries...

"The United States is more than white men moving westward. It is more than conquest. The US is constituted by and is a product of its borderlands. In fact, it is more borderlands—and borderlands peoples—than center." harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/u... Turner, once again, meet Bolton.

The new episode of Philosophy Tube is about the founding of the USA, settler colonialism, and how Thomas Jefferson made excuses for it. (You may notice some parallels to current events) youtu.be/dBjQBa23cOw?...

“Someday, I hope, we’re going to have a reckoning over the horrors of this moment, but I don’t think we can do it without a clearer understanding of how this fits into U.S. history. There’s a tendency to say, “This isn’t who we are,” and I get the impulse, but history is never that simple.”

"The most important aspect of recognizing this history is not so those of us descended from settlers...feel shame, but rather “to recognize that these tactics, [a division into] savage vs. civilized, continues to inhabit our society." This article asks for email, but not money. Worth the read.

"This is part of the reality of Black life in this country: We must make a record of those forces that seek to erase us and erase our histories so that future generations know we did not simply accept it."

With respect, calling the contemporary moment the "imperial presidency" while also claiming that it is "historically novel" could obscure the real history of executive power in the the US territories, Indian Country, and all of our colonies. There is much here to learn from. /1

Junior faculty and grad students in political science, history, law, and Native American Studies, come take a class with us at the New York Historical Society (and via Zoom) on Native Peoples, American Colonialism, and the U.S. Constitution. To apply, Institute for Constitutional History: 1/2

Junior faculty and grad students in political science, history, law, and Native American Studies, come take a class with us at the New York Historical Society (and via Zoom) on Native Peoples, American Colonialism, and the U.S. Constitution. To apply, Institute for Constitutional History: 1/2

Enduring Empire by katrina quisumbing king

This week on Amicus: A fascinating conversation about the meaning of the Constitution as understood by Native nations in 1789—and whether squeezing their perspectives into an “originalist” framework risks legitimizing the government-led atrocities that followed. slate.com/podcasts/ami...

We're searching for a new Editor-in-Chief! Please see Call for Applications: legalhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2025/08/law-...

Please consider donating to the new Sand Creek monument for the Colorado statehouse, memorializing the massacre of over 200 Cheyennes and Arapahoes in 1864. The project is guided by descendants of the effected Indigenous communities. www.sandcreekmassacrefoundation.org/memorial

This is huge. apnews.com/article/musc...

John Gast's "American Progress"--now on the official account of the Department of Homeland Security. Constitutionalism is more than text, especially in domains like expansion, dispossession, and borders (where there isn't much text)--it is also ideas about "nature," values, principles, and ideology.

Some news, as they say. (I am especially looking forward to working with Maria Goldverg during this final stretch, who seems like an absolute gem.)

As a scholar, I hold complicated views on the preservation of historical markers and archives. I tend to be far more speech protective than folks expect me to be. But mascots are, well, mascots. Why put this word on your children's clothes or raise them to cheer it? www.reuters.com/sports/trump...

The case of Native Americans lays bare Vance's theory of citizenship. He says real "Americans" have North American ancestry, even if their ancestors opposed the U.S. But his Administration also argues that "Indians" were rightly denied citizenship-and uses that to deny citizenship from others today.