Joint Center for History and Economics Online Seminar

Nikolas Bowie - The Judicial Counterrevolution to Reconstruction

The Supreme Court today routinely limits the power of Congress to enact domestic regulations, from healthcare laws to voting rights acts. But the Court did not always scrutinize federal laws so closely; many of the Court’s restrictive interpretations of Congress’s powers date to Reconstruction. This talk explores a new coauthored project that will describe the judicial counterrevolution to Reconstruction, its implications for the political world modern Americans have inherited, and the alternative imagined possibilities, past and present.