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Publication Open Access Response(Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, 2026)How does one respond to such kind and generous comments? I am overwhelmed by them, and it is hard to know what to say in response, especially since each of the disciplines represented---history, law, and political theory---see the same past so differently. But before saying anything I must thank all the participants for taking the time and effort to attend the conference and prepare their remarks. Of course, I am especially grateful to Akhil Amar and Steven Calabrese for creating and organizing the conference, inviting and corresponding with all the participants, and ensuring that everything went smoothly. All of us who were there are indebted to the Law School of Yale University for hosting our gathering. I realize I was fortunate to have completed the bulk of my career as an historian before DEI and the search for social justice came to dominate much of academic life. Nowadays the oppressors in the Revolution are no longer the British; instead, the tyrants have become white patriarchal males who care for no one but themselves. And the oppressed are not the Patriots, but women, blacks, and the native peoples. Today the academic culture is so morally soaked with social justice that young scholars trying to write the kind of history I wrote would likely be intimidated and pressured into focusing on subjects having to do with women, race, slavery, or the indigenous peoples. The traditional kind of twentieth-century scholarship on the Revolution produced by such scholars as Charles McLean Andrews, Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., Edmund S. Morgan, and Bernard Bailyn is gone, and today it is hard to imagine it ever being revived, at least not in the near future. Perhaps to have the kind of histories of the Revolution that we were once used to, histories that were mostly free from anachronism and the presentist need to indict the past for not sharing our present moral values, we will have to count on historians in law schools or public institutions such as Akhil Amar and Jeffrey Rosen or popular historians with no academic connection such as Ron Chernow and Rick Atkinson.Publication Open Access CLIO, MINERVA AND THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC(Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, 2026)Gordon Wood’s Creation is surely one of the most successful first books of the twentieth century. It made an immediate impression when it was published in 1969, and it has remained a seminal study of the founding era. As is true for all other scholars of that era, it has been a tremendous influence on my own work. On rereading it in preparation for this event I was once again impressed by the net-full of sources he caught up in his researches, and even more by the large number of truly impressive insights he presents to his readers. Even after the almost 60 years during which the book has been in circulation, so much of what he says still has the aroma of freshness and the power of revelation. My rereading also brought back to mind some of my abiding thoughts about differences of perspective traceable to the different disciplines from which we approach the material. These differences are real, despite the fact that we share a basic concern with the intellectual or, as Bailyn put it, “ideological” origins of the American republic. And, despite the fact that we also agree that the Americans had created a “system without a precedent,” as Madison once put it, and a new political science to match. One manifestation of the difference in perspective is formal. As I have already suggested, Gordon, like historians in general, casts a wide net; he quotes small passages from many sources. He does not normally spend much effort in interpreting or analyzing the individual intellectual quotations he garners. I think of this as horizontal history. We political theorists are inclined to a more vertical sort of history. We don’t scan so wide a horizon, but drill down into the bits we find. “Drill, baby drill,” is our motto. Now, I think the two, the horizontal and the vertical, do not necessarily contradict each other, but should instead complement each other, each adding something to what the other brings.Publication Open Access Creation and the Republican Revival(Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, 2026)Few scholars have the opportunity to leave a lasting impact on their chosen field; fewer still revolutionize it. It is a remarkable feat, and even more so when it is recognized in one’s lifetime by both one’s peers and the public alike. To do so in the field of history requires an exceptional gift for understanding and dissecting broad sweeps of the past without losing sight of the small details that show that distant land to be as rich with experience as our own lives today. Historians thus not only provide insights into the causes and effects of change, but also an understanding of the perspectives and motivations of their subjects because they have gotten to know the individuals they study as full people. Gordon Wood readily possesses all these qualities. He is for that reason and so many others a truly extraordinary historian, and his example has inspired countless historians—me included—to seek to excavate the past. I am one of the group who was not only inspired to pursue a career as an historian by Professor Wood, but was likewise inspired to become a specialist in American constitutional history of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It was and is no surprise then that when legal scholars and historians look to understand the early years of the American republic, they reach for Wood’s work as a starting point and, more often than not, begin with his seminal work, The Creation of the American Republic 1776–1787 (“Creation”), which, remarkably, began as a dissertation. Like many others, when I first encountered Wood’s account of the early republic I found it wholly convincing, and so, as I undertook my academic career, I did not attempt to invent and offer my own theory of how the structure of the Constitution came to be. Rather, I sought to explore in greater detail important topics that largely fit within his framework. For example, in my student note on the Takings Clause, drawing explicitly on Creation, I argued that, at the start of the Revolution, the dominant intellectual paradigm was republicanism with at its core the idea of individual sacrifice to advance the common good. Madison’s drafting of the Takings Clause reflected his rejection of republicanism and his embrace of liberalism, which grew out of his experience in the Revolutionary Era. He and others found that legislatures did not seek to advance the common good. Instead, Madison and his allies saw legislative deliberations as battles among self-interested actors. Madison sought to protect individual rights, including property rights, against majoritarian actions. In short, I argued, we have a Takings Clause because republicanism had given way to an ascending liberalism.Publication Open Access Gordon Wood, James Madison, and American Memory(Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, 2026)Gordon Wood’s exploration of the American Founding reveals a historian who is not content simply to recount the events of the past. Engaging with seminal works such as Revolutionary Characters, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787, or The Radicalism of the American Revolution, is like joining the author on a remarkable journey through time as he listens to the Founders recount their latest escapades or discuss what is on their minds. As one colleague astutely noted: “It’s difficult to conjure another writer so at home in the period, so prepared to translate its brilliant strangeness for a modern audience.” With unparalleled skill, Wood has illuminated the origins of American identity, aiding his contemporaries in their quest for self-understanding. This has not been a smooth road, given the current divisiveness and distress in the nation. Reflecting on Wood’s contributions, I am reminded of the character Tom Wingo from Pat Conroy’s acclaimed novel, who serves as keeper of his sister’s memory, helping her to recall and confront the traumatic events that have disrupted their lives. Similarly, for the last half century, Gordon Wood has played the vital role of keeper of America’s memory. In The Creation of the American Republic, Wood presents the American Revolution as a moment of profound ideological transformation. He argues that the revolutionary generation initially embraced a neoclassical republicanism focused on virtue, homogeneous interests, and the subordination of private desires to the common good. However, this classical ideal proved untenable in a large, diverse, and increasingly commercial society. For Wood, James Madison is emblematic of the transition to a new kind of politics, one that accepted faction and self-interest as ineradicable features of modern political life.Publication Open Access Gordon Wood’s Radical Achievement(Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, 2026)It’s an honor to be part of this celebration of Gordon Wood, our greatest living American historian. And I’m grateful that Steve Calabresi has asked me to talk about The Radicalism of the American Revolution, which I hadn’t previously read. The book was published in January 1992, the year after I graduated from law school. My teacher and mentor, Akhil Amar, viewed Gordon Wood’s Creation of the American Republic as the central text in Founding Era constitutional history, but he didn’t have the opportunity to assign the new book during our final year. I’m grateful for the belated homework assignment because The Radicalism of the American Revolution has transformed my understanding of the Revolution, just as it has transformed the understanding of so many readers. Gordon Wood shows that the American Revolution was not just a political revolution but a social and cultural revolution, and as a social and cultural revolution, it was as radical as any the world has ever known. As Wood writes, “If we measure the radicalism by the amount of social change that actually took place—by transformations in the relationships that bound people to each other—then the American Revolution was not conservative at all; on the contrary: it was as radical and as revolutionary as any in history.” The radicalism of the American Revolution, as Wood shows, was based on the transformation of American society from one based on hierarchy and monarchy to one based on equality, republicanism, and ultimately, democracy. And although Thomas Jefferson initially framed the debate between America’s two political parties as a debate between republicanism and monarchy, the Revolution set in motion democratic forces that swept further than either he or Alexander Hamilton imagined.