Led by: Prof. John Fabian Witt (Yale University)
Course Number: AMHI 624
Semesters: New Course
Image: Resolution of Congress forwarding the Constitution to the states for ratification (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC07877)
The Fate of the American Constitution, 1787–1937
The Fate of the American Constitution, 1787–1937
Course Description
Since 1787, the United States Constitution has aimed to hold together a divided political community around a set of basic agreements. Some now call it the oldest constitution in the world still in effect today; others insist that though the textual template has remained in many respects the same, we have actually had two or three, or maybe even four constitutional orders over time, depending on how one counts. Either way, its history has been one of tumult, controversy, and sometimes mass violence from the very start. This course takes up the social and political history of the document and the practices that have arisen around it, from the founding era to the 1937 transformation that now hangs in the balance. Readings and lectures draw on multiple disciplinary approaches to history and law and foreground competing perspectives on the past.
Please note that the required books listed under course readings are finalized but other aspects of the course syllabus are subject to change. We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase made through the Bookshop.org links provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
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About the Scholar
John Fabian Witt, Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law and Professor of History, Yale University
John Fabian Witt is the Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law and a professor of history at Yale University. Witt holds a JD and a PhD in History from Yale. He served as a law clerk to Judge Pierre N. Leval on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He taught for a decade at Columbia Law School and has visited at Harvard and the University of Texas at Austin. Witt is the author of a number of books, including The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America (forthcoming in October 2025) and Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History, which was awarded the Bancroft Prize. He has written for The New Republic, The New York Times, Slate, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.
The views expressed in the course descriptions and lectures are those of the lead scholars.