Jonathan Gienapp's Books

Against Constitutional Originalism

A Historical Critique

By: Jonathan Gienapp

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Against Constitutional Originalism

A Historical Critique

By: Jonathan Gienapp

A detailed and compelling examination of how the legal theory of originalism ignores and distorts the very constitutional history from which it derives interpretive authority Constitutional originalism stakes law to history. The theory's core tenet--that the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted according to its original meaning--has us decide questions of modern constitutional law by consulting the distant constitutional past. Yet originalist engagement with history is often deeply problematic. And now that a majority of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court champion originalism, the task of scrutinizing originalists' use and abuse of history has never been more urgent. In this comprehensive and novel critique of originalism, Jonathan Gienapp targets originalists' unspoken assumptions about the Constitution and its history. Originalists are committed to recovering the Constitution laid down at the American Founding, yet they often assume that the Constitution is fundamentally modern. Rather than recovering the original Constitution, they project their own understandings onto it, assuming that eighteenth-century constitutional thinking was no different than their own. They take for granted what it meant to write a constitution down, what law was, how it worked, and where it came from, and how a constitution's meaning was fixed. In the process, they erase the Constitution that eighteenth-century Americans in fact created. By understanding how originalism fails, we can better understand the Constitution that we have.

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361

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Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300265859

ISBN 13

9780300265859

The Second Creation

Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era

By: Jonathan Gienapp

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The Second Creation

Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era

By: Jonathan Gienapp

A stunning revision of our founding document’s evolving history that forces us to confront anew the question that animated the founders so long ago: What is our Constitution? Americans widely believe that the United States Constitution was created when it was drafted in 1787 and ratified in 1788. But in a shrewd rereading of the Founding era, Jonathan Gienapp upends this long-held assumption, recovering the unknown story of American constitutional creation in the decade after its adoption—a story with explosive implications for current debates over constitutional originalism and interpretation. When the Constitution first appeared, it was shrouded in uncertainty. Not only was its meaning unclear, but so too was its essential nature. Was the American Constitution a written text, or something else? Was it a legal text? Was it finished or unfinished? What rules would guide its interpretation? Who would adjudicate competing readings? As political leaders put the Constitution to work, none of these questions had answers. Through vigorous debates they confronted the document’s uncertainty, and—over time—how these leaders imagined the Constitution radically changed. They had begun trying to fix, or resolve, an imperfect document, but they ended up fixing, or cementing, a very particular notion of the Constitution as a distinctively textual and historical artifact circumscribed in space and time. This means that some of the Constitution’s most definitive characteristics, ones which are often treated as innate, were only added later and were thus contingent and optional.

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465

Publisher

Belknap Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674185048

ISBN 13

9780674185043

The Second Creation

Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era

By: Jonathan Gienapp

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The Second Creation

Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era

By: Jonathan Gienapp

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465

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Belknap Press

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ISBN 10

0674185048

ISBN 13

9780674185043

Against Constitutional Originalism

A Historical Critique

By: Jonathan Gienapp

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Against Constitutional Originalism

A Historical Critique

By: Jonathan Gienapp

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361

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Yale University Press

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ISBN 10

0300265859

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9780300265859

A House Built by Slaves

African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House

By: Jonathan W. White

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A House Built by Slaves

African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House

By: Jonathan W. White

Readers of American history and books on Abraham Lincoln will appreciate what Los Angeles Review of Books deems an "accessible book" that "puts a human face — many human faces — on the story of Lincoln’s attitudes toward and engagement with African Americans" and Publishers Weekly calls "a rich and comprehensive account." Widely praised and winner of the 2023 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, this book illuminates why Lincoln’s unprecedented welcoming of African American men and women to the White House transformed the trajectory of race relations in the United States. From his 1862 meetings with Black Christian ministers, Lincoln began inviting African Americans of every background into his home, from ex-slaves from the Deep South to champions of abolitionism such as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. More than a good-will gesture, the president conferred with his guests about the essential issues of citizenship and voting rights. Drawing from an array of primary sources, White reveals how African Americans used the White House as a national stage to amplify their calls for equality. Even more than 160 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln’s inclusion of African Americans remains a necessary example in a country still struggling from racial divisions today.

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289

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

1538161818

ISBN 13

9781538161814

Midnight in America

Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War

By: Jonathan W. White

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Midnight in America

Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War

By: Jonathan W. White

The Civil War brought many forms of upheaval to America, not only in waking hours but also in the dark of night. Sleeplessness plagued the Union and Confederate armies, and dreams of war glided through the minds of Americans in both the North and South. Sometimes their nightly visions brought the horrors of the conflict vividly to life. But for others, nighttime was an escape from the hard realities of life and death in wartime. In this innovative new study, Jonathan W. White explores what dreams meant to Civil War–era Americans and what their dreams reveal about their experiences during the war. He shows how Americans grappled with their fears, desires, and struggles while they slept, and how their dreams helped them make sense of the confusion, despair, and loneliness that engulfed them. White takes readers into the deepest, darkest, and most intimate places of the Civil War, connecting the emotional experiences of soldiers and civilians to the broader history of the conflict, confirming what poets have known for centuries: there are some truths that are only revealed in the world of darkness.

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293

Publisher

UNC Press Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1469632055

ISBN 13

9781469632056

American Exceptionalism, American Anxiety

Wages, Competition, and Degraded Labor in the Antebellum United States

By: Jonathan A. Glickstein

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American Exceptionalism, American Anxiety

Wages, Competition, and Degraded Labor in the Antebellum United States

By: Jonathan A. Glickstein

What, then, was the supposed role of poverty, the fear of poverty, and other negative work incentives in the era of early industrial capitalism and escalating sectional conflict over slavery? American Exceptionalism, American Anxiety examines a wide spectrum of antebellum American thought on these and related issues, including slavery and cheap immigrant and female sweated labor."--BOOK JACKET.

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382

Publisher

University of Virginia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813921155

ISBN 13

9780813921150

Shipwrecked

A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade

By: Jonathan W. White

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Shipwrecked

A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade

By: Jonathan W. White

From the New York Times: "The astonishing stories in Shipwrecked ... [offer] a fresh perspective on the mess of pitched emotions and politics in a nation at war over slavery." Historian Jonathan W. White tells the riveting story of Appleton Oaksmith, a swashbuckling sea captain whose life intersected with some of the most important moments, movements, and individuals of the mid-19th century, from the California Gold Rush, filibustering schemes in Nicaragua, Cuban liberation, and the Civil War and Reconstruction. Most importantly, the book depicts the extraordinary lengths the Lincoln Administration went to destroy the illegal trans-Atlantic slave trade. Using Oaksmith’s case as a lens, White takes readers into the murky underworld of New York City, where federal marshals plied the docks in lower Manhattan in search of evidence of slave trading. Once they suspected Oaksmith, federal authorities had him arrested and convicted, but in 1862 he escaped from jail and became a Confederate blockade-runner in Havana. The Lincoln Administration tried to have him kidnapped in violation of international law, but the attempt was foiled. Always claiming innocence, Oaksmith spent the next decade in exile until he received a presidential pardon from U.S. Grant, at which point he moved to North Carolina and became an anti-Klan politician. Through a remarkable, fast-paced story, this book will give readers a new perspective on slavery and shifting political alliances during the turbulent Civil War Era.

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337

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

1538175029

ISBN 13

9781538175026

A House Divided

The Civil War and Nineteenth-Century America

By: Jonathan Daniel Wells

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A House Divided

The Civil War and Nineteenth-Century America

By: Jonathan Daniel Wells

Consolidating one of the most complex and multi-faceted eras in American History, this new edition of Jonathan Wells’s A House Divided unifies the broad and varied scholarship on the American Civil War. Amassing a variety of research, this accessible and readable text introduces readers to both the war and the Reconstruction period, and how Americans lived during this time of great upheaval in the country's history. Designed for a variety of subjects and teaching styles, this text not only looks at the Civil War from a historical perspective, but also analyzes its ramifications on the United States and American identities through the present day. This second edition has been updated throughout, incorporating new scholarship from recent studies on the Civil War era, and includes additional photographs and maps (now incorporated throughout the text), updated bibliographies, and a supplementary companion website.

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394

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Published Date

ISBN 10

1317352343

ISBN 13

9781317352341

Coping with Defeat

Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism, and the Modern State

By: Jonathan Laurence

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Coping with Defeat

Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism, and the Modern State

By: Jonathan Laurence

The surprising similarities in the rise and fall of the Sunni Islamic and Roman Catholic empires in the face of the modern state Coping with Defeat presents a historical panorama of the Islamic and Catholic political-religious empires and exposes striking parallels in their relationship with the modern state. Drawing on interviews, site visits, and archival research in Turkey, North Africa, and Western Europe, Jonathan Laurence demonstrates how, over hundreds of years, both Sunni and Catholic authorities experienced three major shocks and displacements—religious reformation, the rise of the nation-state, and mass migration. As a result, Catholic institutions eventually accepted the state’s political jurisdiction and embraced transnational spiritual leadership as their central mission. Laurence reveals an analogous process unfolding across the Sunni Muslim world in the twenty-first century. Identifying institutional patterns before and after political collapse, Laurence shows how centralized religious communities relinquish power at different rates and times. Whereas early Christianity and Islam were characterized by missionary expansion, religious institutions forged in the modern era are primarily defensive in nature. They respond to the simple but overlooked imperative to adapt to political defeat while fighting off ideological challenges to their spiritual authority. Among Laurence’s findings is that the disestablishment of Islam—the doing away with Islamic affairs ministries in the Muslim world—would harm, not help with, reconciliation to the rule of law. Examining upheavals in geography, politics, and demography, Coping with Defeat considers how centralized religions make peace with the loss of prestige.

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606

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691219788

ISBN 13

9780691219783

Freedom Soldiers

The Emancipation of Black Soldiers in Civil War Camps, Courts, and Prisons

By: Assistant Professor of History Jonathan Lande,Jonathan Lande

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Freedom Soldiers

The Emancipation of Black Soldiers in Civil War Camps, Courts, and Prisons

By: Assistant Professor of History Jonathan Lande,Jonathan Lande

Freedom Soldiers examines the lives of formerly enslaved men who deserted the US Army during the Civil War and their experiences in army camps, courts, and prisons. It explores their reasons for leaving, often through their own voices from courts-martial testimony.

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Page Count

329

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

019753175X

ISBN 13

9780197531754

Genetic Management of Fragmented Animal and Plant Populations

By: Richard Frankham,Jonathan D. Ballou,Katherine Ralls,Mark Eldridge,Michele R. Dudash,Charles B. Fenster,Robert C. Lacy,Paul Sunnucks

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Genetic Management of Fragmented Animal and Plant Populations

By: Richard Frankham,Jonathan D. Ballou,Katherine Ralls,Mark Eldridge,Michele R. Dudash,Charles B. Fenster,Robert C. Lacy,Paul Sunnucks

One of the greatest unmet challenges in conservation biology is the genetic management of fragmented populations of threatened animal and plant species. More than a million small, isolated, population fragments of threatened species are likely suffering inbreeding depression and loss of evolutionary potential, resulting in elevated extinction risks. Although these effects can often be reversed by re-establishing gene flow between population fragments, managers very rarely do this. On the contrary, genetic methods are used mainly to document genetic differentiation among populations, with most studies concluding that genetically differentiated populations should be managed separately, thereby isolating them yet further and dooming many to eventual extinction! Many small population fragments are going extinct principally for genetic reasons. Although the rapidly advancing field of molecular genetics is continually providing new tools to measure the extent of population fragmentation and its genetic consequences, adequate guidance on how to use these data for effective conservation is still lacking. This accessible, authoritative text is aimed at senior undergraduate and graduate students interested in conservation biology, conservation genetics, and wildlife management. It will also be of particular relevance to conservation practitioners and natural resource managers, as well as a broader academic audience of conservation biologists and evolutionary ecologists.

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426

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0191086061

ISBN 13

9780191086069

Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854

By: Jonathan H. Earle

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Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854

By: Jonathan H. Earle

Taking our understanding of political antislavery into largely unexplored terrain, Jonathan H. Earle counters conventional wisdom and standard historical interpretations that view the ascendance of free-soil ideas within the antislavery movement as an explicit retreat from the goals of emancipation or even as an essentially proslavery ideology. These claims, he notes, fail to explain free soil's real contributions to the antislavery cause: its incorporation of Jacksonian ideas about property and political equality and its transformation of a struggling crusade into a mass political movement. Democratic free soilers' views on race occupied a wide spectrum, but they were able to fashion new and vital arguments against slavery and its expansion based on the party's long-standing commitment to egalitarianism and hostility to centralized power. Linking their antislavery stance to a land-reform agenda that pressed for free land for poor settlers in addition to land free of slavery, Free Soil Democrats forced major political realignments in New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Ohio. Democratic politicians such as David Wilmot, Marcus Morton, John Parker Hale, and even former president Martin Van Buren were transformed into antislavery leaders. As Earle shows, these political changes at the local, state, and national levels greatly intensified the looming sectional crisis and paved the way for the Civil War.

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297

Publisher

Univ of North Carolina Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807875775

ISBN 13

9780807875773

The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800-1861

By: Jonathan Daniel Wells

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The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800-1861

By: Jonathan Daniel Wells

With a fresh take on social dynamics in the antebellum South, Jonathan Daniel Wells contests the popular idea that the Old South was a region of essentially two classes (planters and slaves) until after the Civil War. He argues that, in fact, the region h

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348

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Univ of North Carolina Press

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0807855537

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9780807855539

Book's by Jonathan Gienapp

Against Constitutional Originalism

Against Constitutional Originalism

The Second Creation

The Second Creation

The Second Creation

The Second Creation

Against Constitutional Originalism

Against Constitutional Originalism

A House Built by Slaves

A House Built by Slaves

Midnight in America

Midnight in America

American Exceptionalism, American Anxiety

American Exceptionalism, American Anxiety

Shipwrecked

Shipwrecked

A House Divided

A House Divided

Coping with Defeat

Coping with Defeat

Freedom Soldiers

Freedom Soldiers

Genetic Management of Fragmented Animal and Plant Populations

Genetic Management of Fragmented Animal and Plant Populations

Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854

Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854

The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800-1861

The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800-1861

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