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Our Forgotten Founders: Reconstruction, Public Education, And Constitutional Heroism, Thomas G. Donnelly
Our Forgotten Founders: Reconstruction, Public Education, And Constitutional Heroism, Thomas G. Donnelly
Thomas G Donnelly
This Article examines a set of constitutional stories that has not been the subject of focused study by legal scholars—the stories we tell our schoolchildren about the Founding and Reconstruction. These stories offer new clues about the background assumptions that elite lawyers, political leaders, and the wider public bring to bear when they consider the meaning of the Constitution. Since the early twentieth century, our leading high school textbooks have tended to praise the Founding generation and canonize certain “Founding Fathers,” while, at the same time, largely ignoring Reconstruction’s key players and underemphasizing the constitutional revolution these “Forgotten Founders” envisioned …
A Popular Approach To Popular Constitutionalism: The First Amendment, Civic Education, And Constitutional Change, Thomas G. Donnelly
A Popular Approach To Popular Constitutionalism: The First Amendment, Civic Education, And Constitutional Change, Thomas G. Donnelly
Thomas G Donnelly
Popular constitutionalists often ignore one of the most important features of popular constitutional culture—the constitutional life of the average citizen. Although these scholars have detailed the key role played by non-judicial actors in promoting non-Article V constitutional change, they have spent little time considering how changes to constitutional meaning become part of our popular constitutional fabric. This Article fills a gap in the literature by examining how popular constitutional meaning is shaped “on the ground,” once the most recent controversy fades and constitutional life returns to normal. To that end, it focuses on a pathway that has been largely ignored …