GLC@Lunch with Aaron Hall: “The Founding Rules: Slavery and the Creation of American Constitutionalism, 1789-1889”
Aaron Hall (GLC Visiting Scholar; Assistant Professor of History, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities)
How did the creation of the U.S. Constitution become enshrined as "the Founding"? This talk unfolds the origin story of American constitutionalism's devotion to authoritative original meanings—a product not of the founding era but of slavery, democracy and law in subsequent political time. It discusses how Americans responded to intractable struggles over slavery's future by developing a constitutional culture enthralled and enclosed by a governing past. This new American constitutionalism narrowed democratic responsibility for slavery and delimited possibilities in Congress, courtrooms and popular politics. But it was also an unruly force that helped collapse the original order that produced it. While The Founding Rules is a national story, this telling will highlight sources and sites where Yale, New Haven and Connecticut come into view.