Constitution Making

Americans were some of the first people to create written constitutions. This course will explore how they adopted this emerging technology and then grew to shape it. This will primarily concern constitution writing and adoption but also constitutional amendment. We will devote some reading and class time to the adoption of the United States Constitution and its various amendments. But most constitutional making in American history has been at the state level. We will therefore explore how many states drafted and adopted—or failed to adopt—various constitutions. This will especially mean delving into many of the more consequential constitutional conventions in American history, including the Founding Era, the Age of Reform, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Progressive Era, and the 1960s and 1970s. Overall, the class will give you an overview of American constitutional history not from the usual angle of what the courts say but from the standpoint of constitution writers, ratifiers, and amenders.