Balkinization is hosting a symposium on Alison LaCroix's new book, The Interbellum Constitution: Union, Commerce, and Slavery in the Age of Federalisms (Yale University Press, 2024). Here are the contributions so far:
John Mikhail, A Federalism of Forgetting and Reimagining
Connor M. Ewing, From Ideological Origins to the Interbellum Constitution
David S. Schwartz, “Interbellum” versus “Antebellum,” or the Perils of Periodization
Christian G. Fritz, The Complexity of American Federalism
Aaron Hall, Creativity, Constraint and the Long Founding Moment
Evelyn Atkinson, The Creativity and Tragedy of Interbellum Federalisms
Jane Manners, The Law and Politics of Exclusion in Alison L. LaCroix’s The Interbellum Constitution
Simon Gilhooley, Forging Constitutional Politics through the Interbellum Constitution
Anne Twitty, Going Big by Going Small: Alison LaCroix’s The Interbellum Constitution
Anna Law, Reflections on interdisciplinarity and periodization upon reading The Interbellum Constitution
Rachel A. Shelden, The Interbellum Constitution On Its Own Terms
Greg Ablavsky, Facing Federalism(s) From Indian Country
Jonathan Gienapp, Inheriting the Constitution
My quick take: as the "history and tradition" formulation pushes originalists to invoke practices and arguments from what Professor LaCroix calls the "interbellum" period (1815-1861), originalists need to read this book. (I'm not sure originalists should consider evidence from this period, or at least the later part of this period, but there seems to be a move in that direction.)
Posted at 6:13 AM