Books in the Cambridge Studies on the American Constitution series

This book examines the post-war conservative movement in the US to shed light on how visions of constitutional restoration and redemption were mobilized during the heyday of American liberalism to unite a fractious and diverse political coalition.

American Sovereigns is a path-breaking interpretation of America's political history and constitutionalism that analyzes the understanding of how the American people were to rule as a collective sovereign. National and state political controversies produced choices that shaped the current American view of the meaning of the sovereignty of the people.

Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil, first published in 2006, offers a new interpretation of the constitutional law and politics of slavery. The Taney Court's conclusions that former slaves could not be American citizens and that slavery could not be banned in American territories was a plausible interpretation of the antebellum constitution.

World War I and the American Constitution analyzes how the First World War transformed American constitutional law. Ross examines the social, political, economic and legal forces that generated rapid change in traditional understandings of constitutional relationships, and how war laid the foundations for the modern administrative state.

Unveiling a lost jurisprudence of rights that provided expansive possibilities for protecting blacks' physical safety and electoral participation even as it left public accommodation rights undefended, Pamela Brandwein offers a path-breaking analysis that will be of interest to constitutional scholars, legal historians and scholars of race and American political development.

The Burr trial, one of the greatest criminal trials in American history, pitted President Thomas Jefferson, Chief Justice John Marshall and former Vice President Aaron Burr in a three-way contest that tracked the political and cultural differences of the new republic. The law that came out of the trial left a permanent mark on American history.