The Constitution and Public Policy in American History

The first conference held at Boston University in 2006 was published as a Special Issue of the Journal of Policy History Vol. 20, No. 1 (2008)

March 10-11, 2006, CAS Dean’s Conference Room, Boston University

Friday, March 10, 2006

12:00-1:00: Lunch

1:00-1:30:                Introduction by Boston University Provost David Campbell

1:30-3:30:                Session I

“The Misunderstood Origins of Judicial Review: Constitutionalism and the Colonial Period”

Mary Sarah Bilder, Boston College

“From Blood to Profit:  the Transformation of Value in the American Constitutional Tradition”

Christine Desan, Harvard University

“Constitutional Revision and the City: The Enforcement Acts and Urban America, 1870-1894.”

David Quigley, Boston College

Commentator: Brendan McConville, Boston University

3:30-4:00:                Break

4:00-6:00:                Session II

“Police and Perfection: Constituting an Enlightened State”

Christopher Tomlins, American Bar Foundation

“’A man may quibble for his life:’ Reversible Error, the Death Penalty, and the Massachusetts Supreme

Judicial Court”

Alan Rogers, Boston College

“The Least Vaccinated of Any Civilized Country‚: Law, Liberty, and Public Health in the Progressive Era”

Michael Willrich, Brandeis University

Commentator:  Gerry Leonard, Boston University

7:00-10:00             Dinner

 

Saturday, March 11, 2006

8:30-9:30               Breakfast

9:30-11:30              Session III

The Laboratories of Reform: Fiscal Innovations and State Constitutions”

Ajay Mehrota, Indiana University

“Woodrow Wilson and a World Governed by Evolutionary Law”

John Thompson, Cambridge University

“The South Challenges the Court: The Southern Manifesto of 1956”

Anthony Badger, Cambridge University

Commentator:  Mary Dudziak, University of Southern California

11:30-12:30             Lunch

12:30-2:30             Session IV

“The People and Amending the Constitution: Revisiting the Equal Rights Amendment Battle”

Donald Critchlow, Saint Louis University

“Bureaucracy and Democracy: Public Policy in Modern America”

Morton Keller, Brandeis University

“Millennialism, Marionology and Popular Anti-Communism: Origins of the Christian Right”

Jonathan Zeitz, Cambridge University

Commentator:  James Kloppenberg, Harvard University

2:30-3:00            Concluding Thoughts, Comments for Revision