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Richard Samuelson is associate professor of history at California State University, San Bernardino.

February 5, 2020|1619 Project, Jill Lepore, Slavery

These Truths Were Made for You and Me

Lepore’s book reads like an effort to create a storyline that could help us to restore a lost world, but it is not history.

November 28, 2019|Alexander Hamilton, President, Proclamation for Thanksgiving, Thomas Jefferson

A National Thanksgiving: President Washington and America’s National Holiday

by Richard Samuelson|3 Comments

The authority to proclaim a Thanksgiving might seem trivial to us. But it is, in fact, fraught with meaning.

April 11, 2019|college-admissions scandal, Higher Education, John Adams, Liberal Arts, Thomas Jefferson

Sins of Admissions

by Richard Samuelson|2 Comments

(image: Tero Vesalainen / shutterstock.com)

The college-admissions scandal enrages conservatives, who detest the concentrated power that today’s “best schools” represent; but we always had an elite.

November 13, 2018|Birthright citizenship, Fourteenth Amendment, Jurisdiction, Michael Rappaport, Richard Epstein, U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark

Jurisdiction, Old Style and New

by Richard Samuelson|5 Comments

Image: Leena Robinson/Shutterstock.com

If we take the Fourteenth Amendment to mean what Michael Rappaport and others argue, some strange consequences follow for resident aliens.

September 14, 2018|Abortion, Brett Kavanaugh, Equality, George Washington, John Adams, Peter Singer, Roe v. Wade, Thomas Jefferson

Don’t Settle for Roe

by Richard Samuelson|25 Comments

Image: Coffeemill/Shutterstock.com

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, we will have to go back to the messy compromises of politics, which might actually avert a new disunion.

June 26, 2018|Amendment Process, James Madison, Lynn Uzzell, Madison's Hand, Originalism

Madison’s Originalism

by Richard Samuelson|12 Comments

James Madison by Gilbert Stewart, 1821 (shutterstock.com)

The rationale for what is now called “originalism” has chiefly to do with the legitimacy of the 1787 Constitution.

January 31, 2018|Executive Privilege, George Washington, Jay Treaty, State Secrets

President Washington: A Prudent Guardian of State Secrets

by Richard Samuelson|4 Comments

In 1796, in the midst of the donnybrook over the Jay Treaty, President Washington asserted what we now call “executive privilege .”

September 19, 2017|Federalist 10, Identity Politics, Immigration, James Madison, U.S. Census, Voltaire

Extend the Sphere of Identity Politics

by Richard Samuelson|31 Comments

Our identity politics could use some Madisonian wisdom.

August 29, 2017|EEOC, John Calhoun, Missouri Compromise, Plessy v. Ferguson, Taylor Swift, Thomas Jefferson

Today’s Missouri Compromise Is Bad News

by Richard Samuelson|16 Comments

Are our laws producing “identity politics” and the divisions it fosters?

A scientist, or perhaps it was an engineer, once asked the political philosopher Harry Jaffa for a general scientific rule about politics. After reflecting upon the bizarre request, Jaffa came up with the following:

S = 2P, where “S” = solution and “P” = problem. Politics is tragic; there are no final solutions.