Legal Commentary

Hi folks. This is a fly over post, I apologize. For reasons that are now obscure, I decided the best way to celebrate my first sabbatical was to spend October presenting two new and different papers at two separate venues while also reviewing a bunch of proposals for a granting agency. And around the edges I also had to do the usual things like writing letters of recommendation, working on a book manuscript and a chapter outline, and so on.  The upside is that I got a lot done on my new project (which looks at constitution making movements in turn-of-the-twentieth-century China), met some people working on interesting projects, and got a lot of good comments on my work.  The downside is that October has been a sort of a long month and it isn't quite over yet, since I have to fly off today to participate in a review of all those grant proposals. So this is just a way of quickly saying hi and thanks to Dan for inviting me, before I disappear for a couple of days.

Before I go, I should probably briefly introduce myself, if for no other reason to distinguish myself, however slightly, from the hordes of Floridians that people this blog. I'm at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, where I teach legal and constitutional history. These days it's mostly constitutional history; I teach your basic US constitutional history course, but I've also taught a whole range of related classes, including a course on constitutional debates in the founding era, a course on citizenship in US constitutional history, a seminar on comparative constitutional history, another seminar on civil liberties in times of war and trouble, and a course on the long history of civil rights in the US.  My main appointment is in the history department, but I have a longstanding affiliation with Levin College of Law. So once a year I teach some sort of constitutional or legal history course at the law school to a mix of law students and graduate students in history, anthropology, and/or political science.  My research was recently described as eclectic, which seems like a pretty fair way to put it. It's covered a lot of ground and some fairly distinct periods of time, but in the end, it has all tended to circle around the issue of how and why social forces are able to influence or shape constitutional order. Which proves I'm a hedgehog in fox clothing, I guess.

And on that note, I need to go pack and run to the ATM. I'll be back around midweek.