About

When delegates gathered in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, they agreed on one thing: the young United States was in trouble. Independence had been won, but the nation’s first experiment in self-government, the Articles of Confederation, was failing. What no one agreed on was what should come next.

As James Madison and others urged the creation of an entirely new Constitution, one that would dramatically strengthen the national government, deep and competing fears came to the surface. Some delegates believed the Revolution had gone too far, that democracy was sliding into disorder. They pointed to state debtor relief laws, paper money schemes, and violent uprisings by farmers resisting taxes as evidence of "mob rule." Others, however, feared the opposite danger: that concentrating power in a strong federal government, especially in a single executive, would betray the Revolution’s ideals and lead straight back to monarchy.

In this talk, University of Maryland constitutional historian Michael Ross will bring these high-stakes debates to life, revealing the anxieties, ambitions, and hard-fought compromises that emerged from the Constitutional Convention, and explaining how those decisions continue to shape American politics and government today.

About the Speaker:

Michael Ross is a Professor of History at the University of Maryland and a nationally recognized expert on U.S. constitutional and legal history. He is the author of numerous award-winning books and articles on the Supreme Court and the development of American law, including Justice of Shattered Dreams: Samuel Freeman Miller and the Supreme Court during the Civil War Era.

Professor Ross currently serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Supreme Court History and has acted as a historical adviser to the United States Mint. He has twice been invited to deliver Silverman Lectures at the United States Supreme Court. Trained as both a historian and a lawyer, he earned his J.D. from Duke University School of Law and his Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.