Gerard N. Magliocca – författare

A history of the origins of the 14th Amendment and the the man who helped craft itJohn Bingham was the architect of the rebirth of the United States following the Civil War. A leading antislavery lawyer and congressman from Ohio, Bingham wrote the most important part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees fundamental rights and equality to all Americans. He was also at the center of two of the greatest trials in history, giving the closing argument in the military prosecution of John Wilkes Booth's co-conspirators for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and in the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. And more than any other man, Bingham played the key role in shaping the Union's policy towards the occupied ex-Confederate States, with consequences that still haunt our politics.American Founding Son provides the most complete portrait yet of this remarkable statesman. Drawing on his personal letters and speeches, the book traces Bingham's life from his humble roots in Pennsylvania through his career as a leader of the Republican Party. Gerard N. Magliocca argues that Bingham and his congressional colleagues transformed the Constitution that the Founding Fathers created, and did so with the same ingenuity that their forbears used to create a more perfect union in the 1780s. In this book, Magliocca restores Bingham to his rightful place as one of our great leaders.

The first biography of George Washington's extraordinary nephew, who inherited Mount Vernon and was Chief Justice John Marshall's right-hand man on the Supreme Court for nearly thirty years.George Washington's nephew and heir was a Supreme Court Justice for over thirty years and left an indelible mark on American law. Despite his remarkable life and notable lineage, he is unknown to most Americans because he cared more about establishing the rule of law than about personal glory. In Washington's Heir, Gerard N. Magliocca gives us the first published biography of Bushrod Washington, one of the most underrated Founding Fathers. Born in 1762, Justice Washington fought in the Revolutionary War, served in Virginia's ratifying convention for the Constitution, and was Chief Justice John Marshall's partner in establishing the authority of the Supreme Court. Though he could only see from one eye, Justice Washington wrote many landmark decisions defining the fundamental rights of citizens and the structure of the Constitution, including Corfield v. Coryell--an influential source for the Congress that proposed the Fourteenth Amendment. As George Washington's personal heir, Bushrod inherited both Mount Vernon and the family legacy of owning other people, one of whom was almost certainly his half-brother or nephew. Yet Justice Washington alone among the Founders was criticized by journalists for selling enslaved people and, in turn, issued a public defence of his actions that laid bare the hypocrisy and cruelty of slavery. An in-depth look at Justice Washington's extraordinary story that gives insight into his personal thoughts through his own secret journal, Washington's Heir sheds new light not only on George Washington, John Marshall, and the Constitution, but also on America's ongoing struggle to become a more perfect union.

Since the adoption of the US constitution, there has been ongoing calibration of the power balance between the three branches of government, often in the face of rapidly changing social and political contexts. In 1952, US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson took up this debate in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company v. Sawyer, a watershed case that barred President Harry S. Truman from seizing privately operated steel mills during the Korean War. Concurring with the majority decision, Jackson penned an opinion that would become the authoritative source on the constitutional boundary between congressional and executive authority.In The Actual Art of Governing, eminent legal historian Gerard N. Magliocca takes a close look at this landmark opinion, providing a deep reading of the decision and the context surrounding it, and explaining its lasting influence. Magliocca skillfully shows how Justice Jackson's opinion broke free of the rules for judicial writing, taking a pragmatic approach to constitutional interpretation that drew on personal experience and historical examples, rather than sticking strictly to the text, judicial doctrine, and original public meaning. The framework that Jackson proposed took on crucial significance during the fallout of Richard Nixon's Watergate abuses and has continued to be relied upon in controversies involving the reach of the US President's power, including actions taken by Donald Trump. Magliocca concludes by arguing that a proper reading of Jackson's Youngstown concurrence would lead to significant curbs on emergency powers, the discretion of the federal courts, and presidential authority.

Although Populist candidate William Jennings Bryan lost the presidential elections of 1896, 1900, and 1908, he was the most influential political figure of his era. In this astutely argued book, Gerard N. Magliocca explores how Bryan's effort to reach the White House energized conservatives across the nation and caused a transformation in constitutional law. Responding negatively to the Populist agenda, the Supreme Court established a host of new constitutional principles during the 1890s. Many of them proved long-lasting and highly consequential, including the "separate but equal" doctrine supporting racial segregation, the authorization of the use of force against striking workers, and the creation of the liberty of contract. The judicial backlash of the 1890s—the most powerful the United States has ever experienced—illustrates vividly the risks of seeking fundamental social change. Magliocca concludes by examining the lessons of the Populist experience for advocates of change in our own divisive times.

What happens when the political ideas and constitutional interpretations of one generation are replaced by those of another? This process has occurred throughout American history down to the present day as “we the people” change our minds about how we govern ourselves. Depicting a monumental clash of generations, Gerard Magliocca reminds us once again how our Constitution remains a living document. Magliocca reinterprets the legal landmarks of the Jacksonian era to demonstrate how the meaning of the Constitution evolves in a cyclical and predictable fashion. He highlights the ideological battles fought by Jacksonian Democrats against Federalists and Republicans over states’ rights, presidential authority, the scope of federal power, and other issues. By doing so he shows how presidential politics, Supreme Court decisions, and congressional maneuverings interweave, creating a recurrent pattern of constitutional change. Magliocca builds on the view that major changes in American political and constitutional development occur generationally—in roughly thirty-year intervals—and move from dominant regime to the emergence of a counter-regime. Focusing on a period largely neglected in studies of such change, he offers a lucid introduction to the political and legal history of the antebellum era while tracing Jackson’s remarkable consolidation of power in the executive branch. The Jacksonian movement grew out of discontent over the growth of federal power and the protection given Native Americans at the expense of frontier whites, and Magliocca considers such issues to support his argument. He examines Jackson’s defeat of the Bank of the United States, shows how his clash with the Marshall Court over the Cherokee “problem” in Worcester v. Georgia sparked the revival of abolitionist culture and foreshadowed the Fourteenth Amendment, and also offers a new look at Dred Scott, M’Culloch v. Maryland, judicial review, and presidential vetoes. His analysis shows how the interaction of reformers and conservatives drives change and how rough-and-tumble politics shapes our Republic more than the creativity of judicial decisions. Offering intriguing parallels between Jackson and George W. Bush regarding the scope of executive power, Magliocca has produced a rich synthesis of history, political science, and law that revives our understanding of an entire era and its controversies, while providing a model of constitutional law applicable to any period.