Johnathan O'Neill
Ph.D., University of Maryland, 2000
B.A., Colgate University, 1991
Research Fields: American Constitutional and Legal History; American Political Thought
Teaching and Research Interests:
I am a historian of American constitutionalism and American political thought. My first book was Originalism in American Law and Politics: A Constitutional History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). I also have co-edited (with Gary L. McDowell) a multi-author essay collection, America and Enlightenment Constitutionalism (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006) and have published articles in The Review of Politics , The Modern Law Review , and the Northwestern University Law Review . My current book project is "Constitutional Knowledge and Constitutional Maintenance in Twentieth-Century America," which addresses the nation's contemporary uncertainty about the meaning of constitutionalism as a form of political organization. It argues that constitutional maintenance and change are significantly influenced by how constitutionalism is understood and studied, and examines twentieth-century debates about what from the centuries-old constitutional tradition and the American founding could or should be kept, what might be refashioned, and what might have to be abandoned. Under examination will be particularly influential individual figures and, more generally, recent Straussian and historical institutionalist challenges to the dominance of legal realism and behavioralism in law and social science. My research will show that such debates affected the practice and evaluation of American constitutionalism and that contemporary discussions of its nature and tendency might be profitably reclaimed by reconsidering them.
Upper Division/Graduate Courses Taught:
HIST 3133 U.S. Constitutional History
HIST 5231 Legal History of the U.S.
Address and Contact Information:
1138 Forest Building
PO Box 8054
Department of History
Georgia Southern University
Statesboro, GA 30460-8054
Tel: (912) 478-0241
Fax: (912) 478-0377
E-mail: joneill@georgiasouthern.edu
