Let me begin by thanking Jack Balkin and Mark Graber for generously organizing this symposium and for convening such a marvelous group of contributors. I’m extremely grateful to the participants in the symposium – Jonathan Gienapp, Greg Ablavsky, Rachel Shelden, Anna Law, Anne Twitty, Simon Gilhooley, Jane Manners, Evelyn Atkinson, Aaron Hall, Christian Fritz, David Schwartz, Connor Ewing, and John Mikhail – for their thoughtful and probing engagement with The Interbellum Constitution. Having sought in the book to capture something of the symphonic nature of early-nineteenth-century constitutional debates, I’m deeply honored to have such an esteemed audience of scholars gather in this forum to review the orchestra’s performance. It is both nerve racking and exhilarating to hear – from the wings – the commentators’ reactions to my efforts to animate the parade of characters and the raft of plots that constituted the highly theatrical worlds of nineteenth-century law and politics. 

The central claim of The Interbellum Constitution is that a distinct constitutional world existed in the United States between the end of the War of 1812, in 1815, and the beginning of the Civil War, in 1861. The book argues that scholars of constitutional law and thought have largely overlooked the period, mistakenly treating it as the “flyover country” between the “real” destinations: the founding and Reconstruction.

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• Balkinization Symposium on Alison L. LaCroix, The Interbellum Constitution, Jack Balkin
• Inheriting the Constitution, Jonathan Gienapp
• Facing Federalism(s) From Indian Country, Greg Ablavsky
• The Interbellum Constitution On Its Own Terms, Rachel A. Shelden
• Reflections on interdisciplinarity and periodization upon reading The Interbellum Constitution, Anna Law
• Going Big by Going Small: Alison LaCroix’s The Interbellum Constitution, Anne Twitty
• Forging Constitutional Politics through the Interbellum Constitution, Simon Gilhooley
• The Law and Politics of Exclusion in Alison L. LaCroix’s The Interbellum Constitution, Jane Manners
• The Creativity and Tragedy of Interbellum Federalisms, Evelyn Atkinson
• Creativity, Constraint and the Long Founding Moment, Aaron Hall
• The Complexity of American Federalism, Christian G. Fritz
• “Interbellum” versus “Antebellum,” or the Perils of Periodization, David S. Schwartz
• From Ideological Origins to the Interbellum Constitution, Connor M. Ewing
• A Federalism of Forgetting and Reimagining, John Mikhail
• Both Descendants and Ancestors: A Response to the Contributors, Alison LaCroix

Read more at Balkinization