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Constitutional Law

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Cleveland State University

History

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History In Law, Mythmaking, And Constitutional Legitimacy - Symposium: History And Meaning Of The Constitution, Patrick J. Charles Jan 2014

History In Law, Mythmaking, And Constitutional Legitimacy - Symposium: History And Meaning Of The Constitution, Patrick J. Charles

Cleveland State Law Review

What truly separates an historical inquiry, however, from an originalist inquiry is the degree by which myth consumes fact. Certainly, regardless of whether one is performing an historical or originalist inquiry, the methodological process takes part in generating myth. In terms of where the respective inquiries are to be placed on the spectrum of constitutional mythmaking, however, the standard historical inquiry is far less likely to engage in the process than its originalist counterpart. This is mainly because originalism is not so much about reasoning from known historical truths, but instead about recreating a hypothetical expected legal application of how …


Our Forgotten Founders: Reconstruction, Public Education, And Constitutional Heroism, Tom Donnelly Jan 2010

Our Forgotten Founders: Reconstruction, Public Education, And Constitutional Heroism, Tom Donnelly

Cleveland State Law Review

In this Article, I consider the constitutional stories we tell our schoolchildren about the Founding and Reconstruction. To that end, I analyze the relevant sections of our leading high school history textbooks, focusing particularly on the consensus narratives and constitutional heroes that emerge in these accounts. This analysis is vital to more fully understanding the background assumptions that elite lawyers, political leaders, and the wider public bring to bear when they consider the meaning of the Constitution.


The Founders And Slavery, Arthur R. Landever Nov 2006

The Founders And Slavery, Arthur R. Landever

Law Faculty Presentations and Testimony

The point of my talk is that our founders, who our tradition praises profusely of course, as men on Mount Olympus, had moral blinders on. I'm going to talk about key founders. Then I'm going to talk about the key English case, decided in 1772, Somerset v. Stuart. Then I'm going to talk about the Compromises of the 1770s and 1780s. Then I'm going to talk about what we can and can't learn from history. Then I'm going to consider what our generation is doing in the 21st century, considering what might shock our own descendants, two hundred years from …


Ohio's Constitutions: An Historical Perspective, Barbara A. Terzian Jan 2004

Ohio's Constitutions: An Historical Perspective, Barbara A. Terzian

Cleveland State Law Review

This article takes us from 1802 to the present, through two state constitutions and four constitutional conventions. The author shows how the crucible of history shaped and reshaped the Ohio Constitution - from early struggles, on the very threshold of statehood, between Jeffersonian Republicans and Federalists; to the pressures exerted in their respective eras by Abolitionists, Progressives, and Prohibitionists; to the quests for suffrage by blacks and women; to the economic impact of the Civil War and the growing industrialization of subsequent decades. Terzian performs this survey with careful attention to the political dynamics at each of Ohio's constitutional conventions …