A public memorial and celebration of Isenberg’s life will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 6, at the University Chapel.

Christine Kexel Chabot, Marquette University Law School, has posted the The Interstitial Executive: A View from the Founding: The Supreme Court appears poised to recognize a unitary executive President with power to override statutory removal restrictions for almost all principal officers in the executive branch. The core unitary claim is that Article II vests “the executive power in a President of the United States,” and that the President therefore has exclusive control over all exercises of executive power by subordinate officers. The Court and unitary scholars have further grounded their claims in originalism and contended that the unitary executive’s primary mechanism of control is an indefeasible power to remove all subordinate officers at will. This Article debunks originalist unitary claims by introducing new historical evidence to show that the Washington, Adams, and Jefferson Administrations failed to practice what unitary scholars preach. It introduces a critical body of previously unexamined archival evidence of the terms of office and removal specified in over 200 commissions that Presidents issued to their appointees. These records recover a representative and more comprehensive view of the distinct terms of office that Presidents specified for all of their appointees including officers who exercised executive power both with and without statutory tenure protections. Unlike the Supreme Court, early Presidents recognized removal during pleasure only for officers whose tenures were not specified by statute and respected statutory and constitutional removal restrictions for other officers.  While unitary scholars claim that Article II empowered early Presidents to remove officers notwithstanding statutory restrictions, the officer commissions introduced by this Article show that executive practice instead turned on congressional discretion under Article I’s Necessary and Proper Clause. The Washington, Adams, and Jefferson Administrations asserted service “during pleasure” for officers ranging from the Secretary of State to the Librarian of Congress, but only when governing statutes left terms of office unaddressed. Presidents departed from this practice when they issued commissions to officers who enjoyed statutory or constitutional tenure protections, such as independent commissioners to settle accounts between the United States and individual states, Chief Justices who served on the Sinking Fund Commission, and Justices of the Peace who served for five-year terms set by statute. Commissions which the Presidents and Secretaries of State prepared for these officers repeatedly omitted references to removal “during pleasure” and indicated that these tenure-protected officials served during “good behavior” or for fixed terms. Early Presidents therefore asserted a power of removal during pleasure when Congress left terms of office unregulated but abided by statutory restrictions on removal applicable to other offices. The extended historical record shows that Presidents’ exercise of removal power operated within the law, not above it, and that Presidents respected the statutory terms of office which Congress established pursuant to the Necessary and Proper Clause. --Dan Ernst.  Professor Kexel Chabot's appendices are here

As usual, the University of Pennsylvania will convene a legal history workshop this year. The lineup is below: September 25, 2025: James Q. Whitman (Yale Law), “The Apparatus of Abasement and Elevation: Death and Transfiguration of Rank.”     October 16, 2025: Daniel Hulsebosch (NYU School of Law), TBD.    January 29, 2026: Jessica Pliley (Texas State University), TBD.     March 26, 2026: Susan Pearson (Northwestern University), TBD.    April 9, 2026: Rachel Shelden (Penn State University), TBD.     April 23, 2026: Amalia Kessler (Stanford Law School), TBD.  -- Karen Tani 

[We note the following advertisement for an Assistant Professor of U.S. Constitutional Law and Legal History in the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Missouri-Columbia.  DRE.] The Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri invites applications for an interdisciplinary, assistant professor tenure-track job in U.S. Constitutional Law and Legal History. Candidates from history, political science, and joint JD/PhDs are encouraged to apply, though all applicants should have PhD in hand by 1 August 2026. Depending on their expertise, the holder of this position will have an academic home in either the Department of History or the Truman School of Government and Public Affairs. The search committee is looking for candidates whose research and teaching focuses on the constitutional development, public law, and legal history of the United States in the chronological period Minimum Qualifications: Ph.D. in History or Political Science by time of appointment. Candidates should have an established research trajectory, commensurate with career stage, as well as college-level teaching experience.  Application Materials.  Use the online application and be prepared to upload your cover letter, CV, list of three reference contacts, and chapter or article length writing sample. The cover letter should include statements on both your research and teaching.  Applicants may contact the Chair of the Search Committee, Kinder Institute Associate Director Dr. Billy Coleman (colemanw@missouri.edu) with any questions about the job duties. Contact Andrew Longley (Andrew.longley@umsystem.edu) for any questions about the application process. Deadline for applications is October 22; the position will remain open until filled. Benefit Eligibility This position is eligible for University benefits. As part of your total compensation, the University offers a comprehensive benefits package, including medical, dental and vision plans, retirement, and educational fee discounts for all four UM System campuses.  For additional information on University benefits, please visit the Faculty & Staff Benefits website.  The University of Missouri is an Equal Opportunity Employer.  To request ADA accommodations, please call the Director of Accessibility and ADA at 573-884-7278.

Disability classifications can take one of two forms. The more familiar form targets people with disabilities on account of their disability, and harms them. Th

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The Summer 2025 issue of the Journal of Supreme Court History is now available online.    Gerard N. Magliocca, Right in Theory, Wrong in Practice”: Women’s Suffrage and the Reconstruction Amendments The most remarkable constitutional argument ever forgotten is Representative William Loughridge’s dissent from an 1871 report by the House Judiciary Committee. That Report rejected a petition by Victoria Woodhull claiming that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments gave women the right to vote. S. Deborah Kang, Creating a “Mass Production Technique”: Anti-Mexican Racism and the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 New archival research shines a light on the anti-Mexican animus that motivated the authors and agents of the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 and reveals that racism was a feature, rather than a bug, of the legislation that still impacts today’s immigration debates.Sam Erman and Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, Jus Soli Nation to Jus Soli Evasion: International Lawyers for White Supremacy and the Road through Wong Kim Ark   In an effort to dismantle the Citizenship Clause and the U.S.’s traditional recognition of “jus soli,” racist opponents to the Fourteenth Amendment set out to establish a practice of “jus sanguinis” with a weaponization of international law. These attempts backfired, and “country by birth” prevailed and more solidly reaffirmed as the Citizenship Clause. Katherine Shaw reviews David Pozen's The Constitution of the War on Abortion  David Pozen’s The Constitution of the War on Drugs reveals how constitutional law and values have largely been absent from the arguments surrounding the war on drugs—in an interesting contrast to the constitution’s central place surrounding the debates on abortion and reproductive freedoms.  --Dan Ernst 

[We have the following announcement from the Publications Committee of the American Society for Legal History .  DRE]  After eight years of ...

[Penn Carey Law has posted the following announcement.  DRE]  Beginning in the 2025-2026 academic year, the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School will offer a new Certificate of Study in History and Historical Research Methods, granted by the History Department in the School of Arts and Sciences at Penn. The Certificate, one of more than a dozen certificates of study offered at the Law School, is open to all Penn Carey Law students. Certificates of study provide opportunities for credentials in additional areas, allowing for more concentrated coursework en route to specialized or focused career paths. “I was immediately excited by Professors Karen Tani and Serena Mayeri’s proposal to create this new Certificate, because the topics are increasingly important to the practice of law,” said Amanda Aronoff, Managing Director, Cross-Disciplinary Programs at the Law School and Director of Student Engagement for the Francis J. & William Polk Carey JD/MBA Program at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and the Wharton School. “In addition, even though Penn Carey Law offers numerous and diverse cross-disciplinary offerings, there isn’t anything else like this Certificate.” The Certificate arrives at a time of exciting growth for legal history at the Law School, which has seen the national recognition of multiple Penn legal historians in recent years as well as the continued expansion of the Legal History Consortium, uniting the Law School and Penn’s History Department to foster innovative research, scholarship, and education in law and history. “Despite the strength of legal history at Penn, we didn’t previously offer students structured opportunities that join law and history, aside from our JD/PhD program,” said Seaman Family University Professor Karen Tani L’07, PhD’11. “That struck me as a big gap.” Additionally, Tani believes that offering law students more opportunities to engage with history as part of their education and careers will better equip them for today’s legal landscapes. “It’s clear that history has become increasingly important to Supreme Court rulings,” she said. “We see this in the Court’s deepening commitment to originalism to decide constitutional questions, as well as in its turn to ‘history and tradition’ to determine whether the Constitution protects various ‘unenumerated’ rights.” Tani points to some of the most important decisions of the past five years as examples – regarding abortion, affirmative action, firearms regulation, nationwide injunctions, and more. “We wanted to create a certificate that allows law students to be educated consumers of legal opinions that rely on history and to meaningfully engage with the methods and commitments of the discipline,” she said. Students pursuing the Certificate must complete four courses in the general area of History and Historical Research Methods – one at the Law School and three in History – as well as attend four History-sponsored events, such as workshops, lectures, or pedagogy seminars. “Penn has long been a leader in legal history, and our JD-PhD joint program in American legal history has been a proud success,” said Jared Farmer, Chair of the Department of History at Penn. “We are excited to deepen the relationship between the School of Arts and Sciences and Penn Carey Law with this certificate program.” 

The certificate is available to Penn Carey Law Students beginning in the 2025-2026 academic year.