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Podcast: Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast
Episode: Simon J. Gilhooley, "The Antebellum Origins of the Modern Constitution: Slavery and the Spirit of the American Founding" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
Description: The Antebellum Origins of the Modern Constitution: Slavery and the Spirit of the American Founding (Cambridge University Press, 2020) argues that conflicts over slavery and abolition in the early American Republic generated a mode of constitutional interpretation that remains powerful today: the belief that the historical spirit of founding holds authority over the current moment. Simon J. Gilhooley traces how debates around the existence of slavery in the District of Columbia gave rise to the articulation of this constitutional interpretation, which constrained the radical potential of the constitutional text. To reconstruct the origins of this interpretation, Gilhooley draws on rich sou...