Volume 53, Number 3 · February 23, 2006
How Democratic Is the Constitution
By Gordon S. Wood
America's Constitution: A Biography
by Akhil Reed Amar
Random House, 657 pp., $29.95
Righteous Anger at the Wicked States: The Meaning of the Founders' Constitution
by Calvin H. Johnson
Cambridge University Press, 294 pp., $75.00
If it weren't for the law professors who teach and write constitutional history we wouldn't have much constitutional history being written or taught in the academy these days. Most universities have long since given up teaching undergraduate courses in American constitutional history, and most of those few remaining professors who do teach it are retiring and not being replaced with constitutional scholars. Although the general public still seems very interested in constitutional matters—as the attention being paid to the Supreme Court appointments suggests—most members of history faculties today prefer popular cultural history to what some dead white males in the past did with the Constitution. Apparently this lack of academic interest in the Constitution seemed dire enough to Congress that it recently demanded that all educational institutions receiving federal funds do something to commemorate Constitution Day on September 17. A congressional mandate is not the best way to get the academy interested in the Constitution.
Review, 4773 words
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