Selected Academic Papers
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"How We Study the Constitution: Rethinking the Insular Cases and Modern American Empire," The Yale Law Journal Forum, November 2, 2020 (defending the importance of the Insular Cases to constitutional development, in particular the centrality of events surrounding those cases to basic transformations in the ideology and institutions of American expansionism).
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"Constitutionalism and the American Imperial Imagination," coauthored with Aslı Bâli, 85 University of Chicago Law Review 257 (2018) (essay highlighting the centrality of constitution writing and promotion to twentieth century American imperial power, as part of the symposium, The Limits of Constitutionalism: A Global Perspective).
"Progressivism and the Disenchanted Constitution," in The Progressives’ Century: Democratic Reform and Constitutional Government in the United States, eds. Stephen Skowronek, Stephen Engel, and Bruce Ackerman (Yale University Press, 2016) (exploring Progressive critiques of the culture of American constitutional devotion, especially its role in sustaining structures of class inequality).
"Colonialism and Constitutional Memory," 105 U.C. Irvine Law Review 263 (2015) (‘Law As’ symposium article on the role of the Constitution in re-imagining the American past in civic rather than settler colonial terms).
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"Constitutionalism and the Foundations of the Security State," 103 California Law Review 335 (2015) (article exploring how constitutional veneration as a mass political commitment emerged in tandem with the modern security infrastructure).
"Who Decides on Security?" 44 Connecticut Law Review 1417 (2012) (lead article for the annual commentary issue, detailing how a new concept of security emerged in the mid-20th century and how it has generated a legal framework in the U.S. for issues of war and emergency tied to professional expertise, secrecy, and elite authority).
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"Freedom Struggles and the Limits of Constitutional Continuity," 71 Maryland Law Review 1015 (2012) (symposium article on Jack Balkin’s Constitutional Redemption, employing the Prize Cases and ex parte Milligan to argue that a redemptive popular politics should not necessarily be wedded to commitments to constitutional faith or continuity).
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"Settlers and Immigrants in the Formation of American Law," (unpublished essay drawn from The Two Faces of American Freedom on how the idea of the U.S. as an immigrant nation was historically bound to settler needs and institutions).