{"id":3455,"date":"2025-11-18T11:48:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T15:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/?p=3455"},"modified":"2025-12-20T14:08:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T18:08:42","slug":"review-of-akhil-amars-born-equal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/review-of-akhil-amars-born-equal\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of Akhil Amar\u2019s Born Equal – Gordon Wood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Introduction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Born Equal: Remaking America\u2019s Constitution, 1840-1920<\/em> is the second volume of Akhil Amar\u2019s grand trilogy, a constitutional history of the United States.[1]<\/sup><\/a> This is a bold and ambitious project. As Amar, who is the Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, stated in his first volume, The Words that Made Us: America\u2019s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840<\/em>, we have multitudes of books on this and that constitutional issue, narrow monographs that never see beyond their particular subject or particular period.[2]<\/sup><\/a> But we have precious few treatments of our constitutional history that are wide-angled and multigenerational and that sweep over the entire exciting 250-year history of our constitutional struggles.[3]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amar rightly believes that our constitutional conversation that chugs along in courtrooms, classrooms, newsrooms, family rooms and everywhere in between needs a better historical foundation than it has at present. And who could quarrel with that? He hopes that his trilogy will unite history and law in a broad and multigenerational narrative that seeks both to understand the past and to evaluate it using proper historical and legal tools of analysis.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the full piece here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Akhil Reed Amar, Born Equal: Remaking America\u2019s Constitution, 1840-1920\u00a0(2025).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/sup><\/a> Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America\u2019s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840 (2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/sup><\/a> See <\/em>Amar, Born Equal, supra <\/em>note 1, at 612 (\u201cThis book features original legal analysis and new historical conceptualizations based on deep immersion in primary sources. The preceding pages routinely present arguments and facts not found in any other modern work.\u201d). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Born Equal: Remaking America\u2019s Constitution, 1840-1920\u00a0is the second volume of Akhil Amar\u2019s grand trilogy, a constitutional history of the United States.\u00a0This is a bold and ambitious project. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[79,13,80],"class_list":["post-3455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-per-curiam","tag-book-review","tag-constitutional-law","tag-legal-history"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZSiL-TJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3455\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}