On November 13-14, 2008, the American Constitution Society, together with the Constitutional Accountability Center and the University of the Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, hosted a conference at the University of Pennsylvania Law School entitled “The Second Founding and the Reconstruction Amendments: Toward a More Perfect Union.”

In current legal debates, many invoke “the founding” of the Constitution yet focus only on the eighteenth-century framing, and ignore the significant changes to our country and our Constitution wrought by the Civil War. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments profoundly altered, among other things, the rights of individuals, the power of the federal government and the meaning of citizenship. The Second Founding conference brought together legal scholars, historians, practitioners and others to examine the history and substance of the Reconstruction Amendments, how those Amendments fundamentally changed the meaning of our governing document, and how their promise - largely forgotten even as originalism flourishes - can be fulfilled.

Also, in conjunction with this conference, the American Constitution Society co-sponsored an event, “The Legacy of 1808: Deconstructing Reconstruction,” at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, featuring Theodore Shaw, Martha Jones and Steven Calabresi, and moderated by Charles Lane.

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Click on the panel number to see panel descriptions.

To learn about the co-sponors of the conference, click on their logos:

To learn more about our "The Legacy of 1808: Deconstructing Restruction" co-sponsor, click: