This piece will apply @jgienapp.bsky.social 's book critiquing originalism to the recent ahistorical formulations of history in Trump v Barbara oral arguments.

Historical Thinking And Democratic Citizenship

4/22 webinar: In an era of polarized historical memory, how can colleges and universities teach history in ways that strengthen democratic culture?

Join Mary Clark, Suzanne Marchand, Jeffrey Collins, and Hoover's @jgienapp.bsky.social for "Historical Thinking and Democratic Citizenship". RSVP ⤵️

Originalism in Our Time: April 18, 2026, 3:30-5pm. The panel will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the originalism theory and what it means in our current constitutional moment.

I'm not at OAH, but if I was, I'd hightail it to this fabulous panel with @jgienapp.bsky.social @rachelshelden.bsky.social @janemanners.bsky.social and others on the meanings of originalism in our time.

🎉 👏🏻

Honestly still in shock by its placement, but my article (and job talk paper), “Indigenous Constitutionalism,” is officially out in the Harvard Law Review. A brief thread on this project🧵

harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-13...

Had a lovely chat this morning with a university physicist who assured me that law professors trying to compare themselves to Einstein and others to Sir Isaac Newton are not even right about their condescending insult.

Remembering the Origins of Birthright Citizenship Administrative Burdens Were Long Used to Restrict Internal Migration

New at Can We Still Govern?: @unlawfulentries.bsky.social puts yesterday's oral arguments about birthright citizenship into historical perspective, noting how the Fourteenth Amendment took aim at internal migration laws that restricted movement. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/rememberin...

Book cover for Rachel A. Shelden, The Political Supreme Court: A Forgotten History

Not sure whether this is apt or terrible timing but here’s the official cover of my book due out with @uncpress.bsky.social W. Hodding Carter III imprint this fall. 🎉

Supremacy From two acclaimed legal scholars, a new history of the Supreme Court that overturns our most basic assumptions about its role in our democracy, showing how it seized the power it now wields., Suprema...

After years of research, Daphna Renan & I are thrilled to announce preorders of SUPREMACY. Why is US democracy so broken? One reason is we've wrongly accepted that 9 justices have the final say over the Constitution. This book traces how that happened—& how we can reclaim power to govern ourselves.

Jonthan Gienapp's book Against Constitutional Originalism, A Historical Critique with an abstract image of the US flag at the top

RE: the whole "literature" that is now furiously being manufactured by a handful of law professors on birthright citizenship to backstop the unconstitutional EO, anyone can do historical analysis, but it take training + time to do it properly. There are standards of historical accuracy. See 👇 1/

Congrats! 🎉

bsky.app/profile/jgie...

What she said.

Unboxing a book that took 16 years. What’s it about, who is it for? How to order? www.annaolaw.com/book-migrati... want 🎧 to Dahlia Lithwick interview me about it? Fresh podcast below 👇🏽/

His reflections on his life and work, “Things Needed to Get Better,” was just published earlier this year. Rest in peace…

New symposium on my book is out in the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities!

It features essays by an extraordinary group of scholars from across Law and History followed by my response.

yaleconnect.yale.edu/yjlh/yjlh-is...

Very interesting paper by philosopher William Ewald in the recent symposium on @jgienapp.bsky.social’s Against Constitutional Originalism.
openyls.law.yale.edu/server/api/c...

This is a thread for notes about first impressions from my second read through.

Read Jonathan’s response alone to completely change the way you think about the Constitution in the Founding Era!

Leading constitutional scholars grapple with Gienapp's critique of originalism. I would have freaked out at the prospect, but Jonathan's response to his critics is the last in the list of essays. These will be classics of the genre. Congratulations, Jonathan.

Oh it's a banger. Super interesting and illuminating, IMHO.

Thanks Pat! I really appreciate that.

Folks, my Originalism seminar paper just leveled up in a big way

!!!

Not to be missed — including in particular @jgienapp.bsky.social’s response to his critics. Had the chance to teach on this in American Legal Thought this year, and it was a real treat.

Now the symposium is published!

bsky.app/profile/jgie...

New symposium on my book is out in the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities!

It features essays by an extraordinary group of scholars from across Law and History followed by my response.

yaleconnect.yale.edu/yjlh/yjlh-is...

Oh Todd is the best, in more ways than one.

Much appreciated! Delighted to hear the book resonated with you.

Much appreciated! This is high praise. I’m very glad you identified and grasped the central point too.

The Constitution and Historical Rupture Jonathan Gienapp*

Despite what they sometimes say about recovering the history of past law, Baude and Sachs have insisted that "ordinary lawyer's work" handles history in "artificially limited" and often "anachronistic" ways. 318 That is the law's story about itself. Rather than return to the past in earnest to unwind the ruptures that have transformed our law, this approach exploits the law's fiction of continuity to minimize the relevance of those historical changes to our legal consciousness. This strategy would create a different problem, however, and one no less severe. It would sever originalists from the constitutional world that the Founders knew and force them to admit that they are doing something other than faithfully reconstructing the past. Doing so would essentially revive the old common-law style, and, with it, collapse originalism into something indistinguishable from living constitutionalism. If the past is remade on the terms of the legal present, it can no longer credibly serve as the neutral source of adjudication that originalists have always claimed it to be. It instead would become the artificial creation of our living law.

this, from prof @jgienapp.bsky.social, is the most devastating criticism of originalism i’ve ever read. i truly hope that scholars don’t miss the radical nature of his *conceptual* rupture claim. i look forward to reading the book. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

See what the Dean doesn’t understand is that I really have two jobs: my job job, and then answering email