History is an important tool when it comes to understanding American law. History is what the justices of the United States Supreme Court use when they want to ascertain what the framers meant when they drafted the Constitution of 1787 and its first ten amendments in 1789. And history is also the tool we use when we want to know how and why the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution and its amendments have changed over … [Read more...]
Episode 262: Interpreting the Fourth Amendment
Episode 261: Creating the Fourth Amendment
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution doesn’t always make headlines, but it’s an amendment that undergirds foundational rights. It’s also an amendment that can show us a lot about the intertwined nature between history and American law. In this third episode of our 4th Doing History series, we explore the early American origins of the Fourth Amendment with Thomas Clancy, a Professor Emeritus at the University of Mississippi … [Read more...]
Episode 260: Creating the First Ten Amendments
How and why did Congress draft the First Ten Amendments to the Constitution? In the United States, we use the Constitution and Bill of Rights to understand and define ourselves culturally. Americans are a people with laws and rights that are protected by the Constitution because they are defined in the Constitution. And the place where the Constitution defines and outlines our rights is within its First Ten Amendments, the Bill of … [Read more...]
Episode 259: American Legal History & the Bill of Rights
Law is all around us. And the basis of American Law comes not only from our early American past, but from our founding documents. This episode begins our 4th Doing History series. Over the next four episodes, we’ll explore the early American origins of the Bill of Rights as well as the history of the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment will serve as our case study so we can see where our rights come from and how they developed from the … [Read more...]
Episode 248: BFW Road Trip: Washington, D.C., NMAAHC
Not all historians publish their findings about history in books and articles. Some historians convey knowledge about history to the public in public spaces and in public ways. We conclude the “Doing History: How Historians Work” series with a look at how historians do history for the public with guest historian Lonnie Bunch, the Founding Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture. This episode … [Read more...]
Episode 212: Researching Biography
How do historians and biographers reconstruct the lives of people from the past? Good biographies rely on telling the lives of people using practiced historical methods of thorough archival research and the sound interrogation of historical sources. But what does this practice of historical methods look like? In this final episode of the Omohundro Institute’s Doing History series about biography, Erica Dunbar, the Charles and Mary Beard … [Read more...]
Episode 211: Considering John Marshall, Part 2
Can a biography help us explore big historical questions? Can knowing about the life of John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, help us better understand the Supreme Court and how it came to occupy the powerful place it has in the United State government? The Doing History: Biography series continues and explores these questions with Richard Brookhiser, author of John Marshall: The Man Who Made The … [Read more...]
Episode 210: Considering John Marshall, Part 1
For 34 years, John Marshall presided as the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. During his service, Marshall transformed the nation’s top court and its judicial branch into the powerful body and co-equal branch of government we know it as today. The Doing History: Biography series continues as Joel Richard Paul, a professor of law at the University of California, Hastings Law School and author of Without Precedent: Chief Justice … [Read more...]
Episode 209: Considering Biography
Biography. Since the earliest days of the United States, and even before the thirteen colonies came together to forge a nation, Americans have been interested in biography. But why? What is it about the lives of others that makes the past so interesting and fun to explore? This episode marks the start of the Omohundro Institute’s 4-episode Doing History series about biography. This series will take us behind-the-scenes of biography and how … [Read more...]
Episode 166: Freedom and the American Revolution
The Declaration of Independence described “all men” as “created equal” when its authors knew they were not. So was the revolutionary idea of freedom dependent on slavery? In this last episode of the Doing History: To the Revolution series we return to the place our series began: the world of Paul Revere. We speak with Christopher Cameron, an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, to discuss how Phillis … [Read more...]
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