Took about 20 years. And I never thought a book about enslavers using deputization to give themselves policing power would be relevant to our times. But we are where we are.
My book, White Power: Policing American Slavery, is now available for preorder.
a.co/d/29c7EIP
29.09.2025 21:01 — 👍 1174 🔁 404 💬 50 📌 15
Likewise! Deeply bummed. But sounds like it was a great time.
22.11.2025 19:15 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
White Power
Beginning in the colonial era and growing through the American Revolution and the Southern plantation system, slaveholders’ violent police regime continued...
The publication date for my book on the history of policing American slavery has been moved up a month! Now available May 12, 2026! Thanks so much to those who have preordered! The Press is offering 30% off with the code, 01UNCP30
uncpress.org/978146969484...
20.11.2025 11:55 — 👍 213 🔁 76 💬 5 📌 7
Cover page of brief of Rosenblum and Donahue in Slaughter
It was such a privilege to work with @nwdonahue.bsky.social and the fantastic lawyers at Patterson Belknap on this amicus brief for the Slaughter case, about whether Trump can fire the commissioners of the FTC.
The brief recovers crucial history the Court and most lawyers have missed. 1/3
14.11.2025 22:52 — 👍 183 🔁 43 💬 4 📌 1
Whatever else you might be, Anna, you’re certainly one of us!
15.11.2025 19:17 — 👍 14 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 1
And this brief from @jgienapp.bsky.social and @andreascoseriakatz.bsky.social draws on recent scholarship to counter arguments that the president had settled, unfettered removal power in the early American republic: www.brennancenter.org/media/14714/...
14.11.2025 22:35 — 👍 4 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
This brief from @narosenblum.bsky.social and @nwdonahue.bsky.social explores the history behind the terms used to describe which agencies are protected from presidential removal: www.brennancenter.org/sites/defaul...
14.11.2025 22:35 — 👍 5 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0
BREAKING: @janemanners.bsky.social, a legal historian and member of the Brennan Center’s Historians Council, filed a brief with the Supreme Court in Trump v. Slaughter, a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s attempt to remove a commissioner of the FTC without cause: bit.ly/4nSvm9B
14.11.2025 20:39 — 👍 221 🔁 73 💬 4 📌 2
New Symposium on my book is out in *American Political Thought*.
Featuring critical essays by James Stoner, Michael McConnell, Calvin TerBeek, and George Thomas.
Followed by my response.
www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/apt/2025...
28.10.2025 20:54 — 👍 20 🔁 11 💬 0 📌 0
Presidential Removal as Article I, Not Article II
As a matter of original public meaning, Article I's Necessary and Proper clause is the starting point for both Congress's power to create offices and the limits
A new paper from Gary Lawson & me:
"Presidential Removal as Article I, Not Article II"
Limits on congressional power to create independent agencies like the Fed & FTC don't come from Art II "Executive Power" absolutism.
See the Necessary and Proper Clause instead:
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
11.11.2025 21:53 — 👍 60 🔁 25 💬 4 📌 4
New Symposium on my book is out in *American Political Thought*.
Featuring critical essays by James Stoner, Michael McConnell, Calvin TerBeek, and George Thomas.
Followed by my response.
www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/apt/2025...
28.10.2025 20:54 — 👍 20 🔁 11 💬 0 📌 0
Rejecting the Unitary Executive
Critics have dismissed originalism as an empty methodology. They claim it is incapable of resolving our most important constitutional disputes, including the debate over the unitary executive. While u...
Rejecting the Unitary Executive is out in the Utah Law Review! TY @blakeprof.bsky.social @thisyank.bsky.social @jgienapp.bsky.social @andreascoseriakatz.bsky.social @jdmortenson.bsky.social @jedshug.bsky.social
@narosenblum.bsky.social
& many others not on here
dc.law.utah.edu/ulr/vol2025/...
22.10.2025 15:21 — 👍 38 🔁 18 💬 1 📌 0
My brilliant colleague Kate Haulman's new book is out today: The Mother of Washington in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford, 2025). I'm obviously biased but it is really exquisite!
global.oup.com/academic/pro...
12.09.2025 02:01 — 👍 25 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 1
When it addresses what history is most useful (founding-era) it raises an interesting q about Bruen's emphasis on *text*. Tho the court doesn't cite @jgienapp.bsky.social or Jud Campbell's work about the limited relevance of textual specification, that seems to be in the background of this worry.
27.08.2025 16:53 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
Thanks! Much appreciated.
23.08.2025 15:40 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
If you're interested in constitutional governance (in this case US governance), I can strongly recommend this book from @jgienapp.bsky.social. Wonderfully lucid. And, as a (very) lay reader, I appreciated the reiterated arguments and the plain, pithy prose.
23.08.2025 08:44 — 👍 7 🔁 2 💬 2 📌 0
Against Constitutional Originalism
A detailed and compelling examination of how the legal theory of originalism ignores and distorts the very constitutional history from which it derives inter...
7) In his new book @jgienapp.bsky.social argues that one cannot understand the Constitution without placing it into the contexts in which it was written-- none more so than the Founders' commitment to republicanism.
22.08.2025 15:39 — 👍 10 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 0
directly in the face of recent historical scholarship by Jud Campbell, @jgienapp.bsky.social, and others, that demonstrates how rights at the founding were not conceived of as these textual objects only secured once codified in a constitution.
20.08.2025 14:01 — 👍 17 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 1
Jonathan Gienapp
Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
📣 Catch OAH speakers Jonathan Gienapp & Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers in Sept at San Francisco St Univ! They'll be speaking Sept. 17 & 18 for SFSU’s Constitution & Citizenship Day Conference. #OAHLecturer
📅 history.sfsu.edu/constitution...
🎤 Bring a speaker to your campus! www.oah.org/lectures/upc...
23.07.2025 20:07 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Bilder on Constitutional Regicide
Mary Sarah Bilder, Boston College Law School, has posted Hater of Kings: Catharine Macaulay’s Constitutional Regicide and the Declaration of Independence, which is forthcoming in Americans in Revolution, ed. Tom Cutterham and Sara Georgini (University of Virginia Press, 2026):
Charles I (LC)
The American Revolution was a constitutional regicide. At first glance it does not much resemble a regicide. Charles I had been executed in 1649. George III went on to live nearly half a century beyond 1776. But read the Declaration of Independence carefully and notice how large the king looms. The “present King of Great Britain” aimed to establish “an absolute Tyranny.” The eighteen usurpations each began with He, the king. The king embodied two particular political typologies: Prince and Tyrant. As such, he was “unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” This constitutional justification for regicide had been developed by British historian Catharine Macaulay in the fourth volume of her History of England. Macaulay’s history from James I to the execution of Charles I provided a historical model, theoretical explanation, and blueprint for would-be patriots. Because of Macaulay, on the far side of the Atlantic, American revolutionaries renounced their allegiance to the king–and to any king–without the complications and consequences of executing one.
--Dan Ernst
12.08.2025 06:13 — 👍 5 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
It’s been a hell of a run. Being Editor of @lawandhistrev.bsky.social has been the greatest honor of my career. But it had to end some time. I’ll be stepping down as Editor by next summer. I’ll give proper thanks to LHR’s Associate Editors & ASLH folks in due course. What a bittersweet moment!
07.08.2025 13:49 — 👍 49 🔁 6 💬 3 📌 1
Hope you enjoy!
10.08.2025 20:59 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Balkinization: Gratitude, and a Reply in Two Parts
A group blog on constitutional law, theory, and politics
Today the Balkinization blog features my reflections at the end of its seven-scholar symposium on my new book The Oldest Constitutional Question: Enumeration and Federal Power. You can find my short essay at the link below.
Many thanks to the participants.
balkin.blogspot.com/2025/07/grat...
25.07.2025 15:21 — 👍 12 🔁 7 💬 0 📌 1
The Rise of the Imperial Presidency
The once-obscure idea of a unitary executive is now central to debates over presidential power.
🚨Tuesday, Aug. 5 — Everything you need to know about the "Unitary Executive Theory" that's underwriting our new era of presidential lawlessness.
RSVP today 👇🏻 to get the link: brennan.swoogo.com/unitaryexecu...
@brennancenter.org @janemanners.bsky.social @jdmortenson.bsky.social @wuc3.bsky.social
25.07.2025 19:13 — 👍 29 🔁 16 💬 0 📌 1
27.07.2025 14:35 — 👍 488 🔁 47 💬 16 📌 4
So thrilled to see @jgienapp.bsky.social's important book on this phenomenal list! Congrats to all! 🎉
28.07.2025 16:27 — 👍 9 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
Author of AMERICAN FOUNDERS: How People of African Descent Established Freedom in the New World. I study, research, teach, & post American history.
Law Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Fan of health law, religious liberty, and reproductive rights
Notre Dame Law School professor. Administrative law geek. Should be writing. Papers here: ssrn.com/author=926820
Counsel, Democracy Program at Brennan Center for Justice
William T Comfort III Professor of Law, NYU Law School, studying & teaching local gov’t, landuse regulation, const’l law, fed courts, admin law, legislation, and federalism. Forlorn hope: reduce stakes and polarization by decentralizing divisive decisions.
Senior editor at The American Prospect, cohost and producer of the @leftanchor.bsky.social podcast https://www.patreon.com/leftanchor
Newsletter: https://www.ryanlcooper.com/
law professor. democracy. constitutional doctrine. solarpunk enthusiast. hoops. dad.
my opinions are solely my own and not attributable to anyone else.
ssrn: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=6381985
Professor at Notre Dame Law School
https://law.nd.edu/directory/sherif-girgis/
The Society for Historians of the Early American Republic is dedicated to exploring US history from 1776-1861.
#SHEAR2025 Registration live!
Historian. Mother. Seamstress-in-training. Shameless shoe addict, fine home cook, infrequent skeeter.
Historian, professor, book review editor, and reader, currently writing a book about Black and white New Yorkers' experiences with yellow fever during the 1790s.
Aspiring philosopher; tolerable human; "amusing combination of sardonic detachment & literally all the feelings felt entirely unironically all at once" [he/his]
Senior Correspondent at Vox covering the crisis of global democracy. Author of The Reactionary Spirit, a book on that topic, and a '25-'26 distinguished visiting fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Perry World House.
Political theorist at DePaul and author of The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx (Princeton, 2024). Essays in NY Times, Washington Post, Time, Bloomberg, etc. Jazz Guitar, New York Mets.
"A very accessible, very interesting, non-bombastic political scientist." -Jonah Goldberg
Subscribe to my newsletter "Tusk" about US parties, campaigns, and politics: http://smotus.substack.com
Dad, husband, President, citizen. barackobama.com
Historian of scientific, economic and colonial projects in early modern Britain, Ireland, and the Atlantic; books http://bit.ly/3HYwNiA & http://bit.ly/3rKdAvt; http://memoriousblog.com; views mine; he/him. Montrealer in Philly, except when I’m in Montreal
Law professor; author of Free to Move: Foot Voting Migration and Political Freedom; Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter; The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain; Volokh Conspiracy blogger.
David Boies Professor of Law, Yale Law School. Founding Chair, Academic Freedom Alliance; Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution. All opinions are mine alone.
Historian. Islanders/Yankees fan. Opinions are my own. Has it ever been otherwise?
