At Balkinization, the symposium on Kurt Lash's "The Reconstruction Amendments: Essential Documents" is now complete. Professor Lash has a general response. Here are the contributions:
What is Reconstruction? by Gerard N. Magliocca
Kurt Lash and the Canons of Constitutional Law by Jack Balkin
Kurt Lash on Reconstruction (1): Defining the topic, setting the canon by Sandy Levinson
Kurt Lash on Reconstruction (2): Is the Fifteenth Amendment an Embarrassment? by Sandy Levinson
Not Too Much, Not Too Little: Frederick Douglass in Kurt Lash’s Reconstruction Volumes by Bradley Rebeiro
What Reconstruction Demonstrates about Constitutional Change by Richard Primus
The Reconstruction Amendments’ Canonical Texts by Darrell A.H. Miller
Embracing the Entirety; Close and Distant Reading of The Congressional Globe by Lea VanderVelde
An Unparalleled Reconstruction Political Time Machine by Christopher Green
The Continuing Value of Documentary Collections in Originalist Theory by Lee J. Strang
Originalism, Methodology, and the Reconstruction Amendments by Jennifer L. Mascott
From Professor Lash's response:
My deep and sincere thanks to Jack Balkin for hosting this symposium on “The Reconstruction Amendments: Essential Documents (2 vols.) (Kurt T. Lash, ed.) (University of Chicago Press 2021). Before responding to some of the questions and concerns raised in these remarkable essays, please allow me a moment to note how positively the reviewers responded to the collection:
“Kurt Lash now stands alongside Max Farrand in doing extraordinary work to further constitutional knowledge by making a critical portion of our past more accessible.” (Magliocca)
A “remarkable scholarly achievement.” (Balkin)
A “splendid collection” and “an invaluable source of material (and insight) for anyone charged with teaching courses on the Constitution” (Levinson)
“Lash has hit the Aristotelian mean, providing just the right amount of primary material to facilitate insight into the political and constitutional complexities leading up to and engulfing the Reconstruction period. Scholars, judges, and citizens who seek to investigate the intricacies of Reconstruction will find Lash’s The Reconstruction Amendments: The Essential Documents invaluable.” (Rebeiro)
“[A]n impressive achievement: thorough, textured, and provocative.” (Primus)
“Canonical Texts” presented in a “masterful two volume set . . .. Lash has produced a single, critical resource for understanding a profound moment in American constitution making—a resource that is long, long overdue. . . . Lash has produced a book that every constitutional scholar and historian needs to own.” (Miller)
“[An] Unparalleled Reconstruction Political Time Machine” that “is, without a doubt, the best single place to go in order to recapture, first-hand, the intellectual environment from which the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments emerged. It deserves a place on a shelf—given its heft, a relatively sturdy shelf—of every serious student of the Constitution. . . . [This] wonderful and amazing achievement . . . will permanently transform the way the Reconstruction amendments are discussed and studied.” (Green)
“Lash’s volumes curate sources ranging from newspaper articles to public speeches and letters to judicial opinions and congressional debates” [and are an] “indispensable” and “critical resource for anyone who values the historical meaning of this deeply important constitutional text. . . Lash’s work should be seen as a critical resource for both jurists and academics” (Mascott)
After ten years of toil, this kind of response is deeply gratifying.
Now to the concerns and (light) criticisms. …
Posted at 6:39 AM