This text considers the concept of constitutionalism as the subject matter of constitutional history and argues that the study of constitutionalism should be interdisciplinary, requiring the insights and methods of history, political science, and jurisprudence. It covers the evolution of American constitutionalism across the span of American history, from the Founding, to the Reconstruction, and on to the Cold War and the rise of the bureaucratic state in the 1980s.
Author Biography
Herman Belz is professor of history at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of The American Constitution: Its Origins and Development, Equality Transformed: A Quarter Century of Affirmative Action, and Emancipation and Equal Rights: Politics and Constitutionalism in the Civil War Era, among other works.
