The National Constitution Center has this podcast, featuring Gerard Magliocca (Indiana/McKinney) and Kurt Lash (Richmond) discussing John Bingham with moderator Jeffrey Rosen: John Bingham, Father of the 14th Amendment. Here is the introduction:
John Bingham was one of the most influential but least known visionaries of the post-Civil War Constitution. Dubbed “the James Madison of the 14th Amendment” by Justice Hugo Black, Bingham drafted a constitutional provision that changed the course of American history by ensuring that states were duty-bound to uphold their citizens’ constitutional rights. A moderate Republican and dedicated supporter of abolition before the Civil War, Bingham spearheaded the Reconstruction-era efforts to guarantee citizenship to all people born in the United States, regardless of race, and to extend the Constitution’s promise of equality to all American citizens.
(Via Balkinization).
Posted at 6:23 AM