Historians Council in the News

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Historians Council in the News

The Brennan Center has convened a council of expert historians from leading institutions nationwide to help change the national legal conversation on history and the Constitution. Below, you will find a regularly updated collection of their op-eds and media appearances on these issues.

Quotable

The Court [is] confronting the complications of using the past as the means of securing and legitimatizing legal principles... History does not have definitive answers for you.

Laura Edwards

Princeton University — Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty and Professor of History

Originally Quoted In The Washington Post

Supreme Court upholds gun ban for domestic violence restraining orders

Quotable

In holding that the president is immune from criminal prosecution for any official act, the Court has struck at the foundation of our anti-monarchical constitution.

Jane Manners

Beasley School of Law, Temple University — Assistant Professor

Originally Quoted In The Hill

The Framers knew presidential duties didn’t include electoral vote counts

Op-Eds by Council Members

Holly Brewer, Perspectives on History
Jonathan Gienapp, Yale University Press
Jane Manners on presidential immunity from prosecution, The Hill
Holly Brewer on presidential immunity from prosecution, The New Republic
Noah Rosenblum on SEC v. Jarkesy, The Atlantic
Holly Brewer and Laura Edwards on U.S. v. Rahimi, Washington Monthly
Jennifer Tucker on U.S. v. Rahimi, CNN
Holly Brewer and Tom Wolf on presidential immunity from prosecution, Newsweek
Rosemarie Zagarri on presidential immunity from prosecution, Ford Forum
Jane Manners on presidential immunity from prosecution, Los Angeles Times
Alex Keyssar and Tom Wolf on the Supreme Court’s 2023 term and originalism, Newsweek

MSNBC

Jack Rakove on Presidential Immunity

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell is joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning Stanford history professor Jack Rakove to discuss Donald Trump's understanding of presidential immunity and the friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court on presidential immunity Rakove helped draft.

Watch here

Quotable

[T]he Court...has essentially created its own history that it finds very convenient to use as justification for undoing major governmental policies and traditions over the 20th Century.

Gautham Rao

American University — Associate Professor of History

Originally Quoted in Salon

"Power grab": Supreme Court guts agency power, posing "devastating" environment…

Quotable

There is an irony to the originalist view that is dominant on the Supreme Court today…Its activism is at odds with the original understanding of courts’ very limited role.