Researching

I’ve been researching and writing about the history of American law and politics for over two decades. I’m fascinated with Americans relationship with government—how we’ve gone from the Founding Fathers deciding to create a new system of government hundreds of years ago, to politicians today telling us government is the problem. Here are some links to some of my projects, but you can also see my full cv here.

Brief of Amici Curiae, Scholars of the Founding Era, in Support of Respondent (with Holly Brewer, Rosemarie Zagarri, Jack N. Rakove, Jonathan Gienapp, Jane Manners, Saul Cornell, Joanne Freeman, David Konig, Michael Ross, Alexander Keyssar, Jill Lepore, Peter Onuf, and Alan Taylor) in Donald J. Trump v. United States, No. 23-939, April 5, 2024.

Historians’ Amicus Brief (with Jane Manners and Richard R. John) in Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, No. 22-1219, December 22, 2023.

Brief of Professors of History and Constitutional Law as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners (with Kevin Arlyck, Brian Balogh, Aziz Z. Huq, Richard R. John, Noah A. Rosenblum) in Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association of America, May 15, 2023.

Historians’ Amicus Brief (with Jed Shugerman, Jack Rakove, Simon Stern, and John Mikhail) in Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington v. Donald J. Trump, August 11, 2017.

“The Federal Posse Comitatus Doctrine: Slavery, Compulsion, and Statecraft in Mid-Nineteenth Century America, ” Law and History Review, vol. 26, no. 1 (January, 2008).

*Awarded 2008-09 James Madison Award, Society for the History of the Federal Government

*Awarded 2008-09 Erwin C. Surrency Prize, American Society for Legal History

“The Posse Comitatus Doctrine in Early America,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, ed. Jon Butler (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).

“The State the Slaveholders Made: Regulating Fugitive and Runaway Slaves in the Early
Republic,” in Freedom’s Conditions in the U.S.-Canadian Borderlands in the Age of Emancipation, ed. Tony Freyer et al. (Carolina Academic Press, 2011).

“Political Economy in the First Federal Congress,” in Washington’s Government: Charting the Origins of the Federal Administration, ed. Max M. Edling and Peter J. Kastor (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2021), 86-106.

“The New Historiography of the Early Federal Government: Institutions, Contexts, and the
Imperial State,” The William and Mary Quarterly 77, no. 1 (January, 2020), 97-128.

(with Ariel Ron) “Taking Stock of the State in Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of
the Early Republic 38, no. 1 (Spring, 2018), 61-67.

“Administering Entitlement: Governance, Public Health Care, and the Early American
State,” Law and Social Inquiry, vol. 37, no. 3 (Summer, 2012), 627-656.

“Sailors’ Health and National Wealth: Marine Hospitals in the Early Republic,”
Common-Place, vol. 9, no. 1 (October, 2008).

(with Thomas Wolf) “At Supreme Court, Corporations Misuse History in Cases on Agency Power,” January 16, 2024, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/supreme-court-corporations-misuse-history-cases-agency-power

“History is not on Donald Trump’s Side,” CNN.com, June 13, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/13/opinions/trump-arraigment-presidential-records-history-rao/index.html

“A ‘Hamilton’-esque Scandal Helped Give Trump His Cudgel,” CNN.com, June 2, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/02/opinions/insurrection-act-of-1807-history-and-now-rao/index.html

Interview with FedTalk, Federal News Network, February 20, 2019, https://federalnewsnetwork.com/fedtalk/2019/02/diving-into-early-presidential-history/

“When it Comes to Guns, Congress has Always been in the Pocket of Profit Chasers,” The Washington Post, October 4, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/10/04/when-it-comes-to-guns-congress-has-always-been-in-the-pocket-of-profit-chasers/?utm_term=.adc6ff42de0e

“Teaching History in the Trump Era,” the Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History, August 8, 2017, https://earlyamericanists.com/2017/08/08/roundtable-teaching-history-in-the-trump-era/

(with Jed Shugerman) “Presidential Revisionism: The New York Times Published the Flimsiest Defense of Trump’s Apparent Emolument Violations Yet,” Slate, July 17, 2017, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/07/the_new_york_times_published_the_flimsiest_defense_of_trump_s_apparent_emoluments.html

Contributor to Fresh Takes on the Declaration of Independence, Declaration Resources Project, Harvard University, 2017, https://declaration.fas.harvard.edu/files/declaration/files/fresh_takes.pdf

“The Foundations of the Modern State,” Balkinzation, June 9, 2014, http://balkin.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-foundations-of-modern-state.html

Interview for Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast about Early American History, https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/episode-098-gautham-rao-birth-american-tax-man/