Lecturing about the History of American Rights Recognition
James M. Masnov offers Intellectual History Lecture to George Washington University Audience
This article is based on an article courtesy George Washington University’s History Department Newsletter in Washington, DC.
History Killers founder, Columbian Distinguished Fellow, and current History PhD student, James M. Masnov, provided a full lecture to the “Why We Fight About Politics” History/Political Science class at George Washington University’s Corcoran Hall on April 10th.
During the lecture, James provided the roughly one-hundred students in attendance with a talk about the long fight over the United States’ Bill of Rights. As shared during the talk, the fight for a Bill of Rights was not one that merely transpired between the years of 1787 (when the U.S. Constitution was drafted) and 1791 (when the Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments to the Constitution—was added). Rather, the fight for the Bill of Rights continued through the Barron v. Baltimore decision in 1833, the Dred Scott case in 1857, the American Civil War (1861 - 1865), and the Ratification Amendments (Amendments Thirteen, Fourteen, and Fifteen).
In fact, the fight for the Bill of Rights continued into the twentieth century. Aspects of the battle, in fact, remain. Moreover, important to the lecture was a point to remind students and other attendees that regardless of their particular politics, both so-called conservative and so-called progressive justices have worked in concert to continue to subvert certain aspects of Bill of Rights recognition and enforcement. This is a truth inconvenient to those who put partisanship over historical understanding and objective reality.
The lecture, titled “Rights Debates and Arguments over Constitutional Governance,” was based in part on James’s 2023 book, Rights Reign Supreme: An Intellectual History of Judicial Review and the Supreme Court, published by McFarland Books and available here.
James M. Masnov lecturing at George Washington University’s Corcoran Hall in Washington, DC.
[James M. Masnov is a Columbian Distinguished Fellow at George Washington University’s History Department in Washington, DC. He has been a contributor at Pure Insights, the Brownstone Institute, Armstrong Journal of History, and the Oregon Encyclopedia, among other publications. His books include Imperfect Vehicles, available here, Rights Reign Supreme: An Intellectual History of Judicial Review and the Supreme Court, available here, and History Killers and Other Essays by an Intellectual Historian, available here.]
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