News Archive

Professor Gerard Magliocca gave a presentation at New York University Law School as part of their Legal History Colloquium on November 2nd. His presentation was taken from his upcoming book, One Turn of the Wheel: Andrew Jackson and the Modern Constitution. According to Magliocca, “This book takes a new look at how constitutional law is created and destroyed. In it, I argue that the primary force shaping our legal institutions and practices is a competition between different generations that collide according to a regular and predictable pattern. To see this constitutional cycle in motion, the text focuses on the rise and fall of one of these creative generations -- Jacksonian Democracy. In the process, the study dramatically reinterprets the landmarks of the ante-bellum era, including Marshall's opinion in M'Culloch v. Maryland, the removal of the Cherokee Tribe along ‘The Trail of Tears,’ the infamous Dred Scott opinion, and the origins of the Fourteenth Amendment." Magliocca’s work is forthcoming from University Press of Kansas in 2007.