Simon Gilhooley's "The Antebellum Origins of the Modern Constitution"

Session Submission Type: Virtual Author meet critics

Session Description

This book argues that conflicts over slavery and abolition in the early American Republic generated a mode of constitutional interpretation that remains powerful today: the belief that the historical spirit of founding holds authority over the current moment. Simon J. Gilhooley traces how debates around the existence of slavery in the District of Columbia gave rise to the articulation of this constitutional interpretation, which constrained the radical potential of the constitutional text. Examining free black activism in the North, Abolitionism in the 1830s, and the evolution of pro-slavery thought, this book shows how in navigating the existence of slavery in the District and the fundamental constitutional issue of the enslaved's personhood, Antebellum opponents of abolition came to promote an enduring but constraining constitutional imaginary.

Sub Unit

• Division 1: Political Thought and Philosophy

Cosponsor

• Division 56: American Political Thought

Chair

• Emily Nacol University of Toronto

Presenters

• Simon Gilhooley Bard College

• Neil Roberts Williams College

• Nolan Bennett University of Wisconsin - Green Bay

• Elizabeth Beaumont University of California, Santa Cruz

• Calvin TerBeek University of Chicago