259 The Bill of Rights & How Legal Historians Work (Doing History 4)

Ben Franklin's World

Liz Covart

Earlyrepublic, History, Benfranklin, Society & Culture, Warforindependence, Earlyamericanrepublic, Earlyamericanhistory, Education, Colonialamerica, Americanrevolution, Ushistory, Benjaminfranklin

4.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2019

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Law is all around us. And the basis of American Law comes not only from our early American past, but from our founding documents.

This episode begins our 4th Doing History series. Over the next four episodes, we’ll explore the early American origins of the Bill of Rights as well as the history of the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment will serve as our case study so we can see where our rights come from and how they developed from the early American past.

In this episode we go inside the United States National Archives to investigate the Constitution and Bill of Rights. During our visit we’ll speak with Jessie Kratz, First Historian of the National Archives, and Mary Sarah Bilder, the Founders Professor of Law at Boston College, to better understand our founding documents and the laws they established.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/259

About the Series

Law is all around us. The Doing History: Why the 4^th? series uses the Bill of Rights and the Fourth Amendment as case studies to examine where our rights come from and how they developed out of early American knowledge and experiences. It also uses the history of the Bill of Rights and the Fourth Amendment to explore the history of law as a field of study and how this field of study differs from other historical subjects and how historians and lawyers use and view the history of the law differently.

The Doing History series explores early American history and how historians work. It is part of Ben Franklin’s World, which is a production of the Omohundro Institute.

Sponsor Links

Series Resources

Gautham Rao blog post: "Friends in All the Right Places: The Newest Legal History"
Jonathan Gienapp, “Constitutional Originalism and History”
Doing History 4 Legal Lexicon; or A Useful List of Terms You Might Not Know"
"Doing History 4: Bibliography"

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Ben Franklin's world is a production of the
0:02.6	Omaha Institute.
0:04.0	So we're walking into the rotunda of the Charers of Freedom
0:06.7	now and you can see that the ceiling is 75 feet tall.
0:10.1	The purpose of this building really is twofold, one to provide access to records for
0:15.2	researchers and that is the other side of the building, but we are on the visitor side of the
0:19.6	building or the museum of the National Archives And this side is really to educate the public
0:23.6	about history of our country.
0:25.5	So we have original documents on display.
0:27.4	The other thing to notice in this room are these niches.
0:30.5	I like to point these out because they're completely empty. The building was built in the 1930s and it was during the Great Depression so some corners were cut with the construction and one of them was the sculptures that were supposed to be in those niches were never
0:43.4	added. The number one question that visitors have is why can't they take photos and
0:47.4	that's because we had a lot of problems with visitors who would say their flash
0:51.1	was off and their flash really wasn't off and every time a
0:53.7	document is exposed to even a little bit of light it damages the document. The same
0:58.2	question is why it's so dark in here. It's the same reason because we don't want
1:01.6	the documents exposed to light. Hello and welcome to episode 259 of Ben Franklin's world.
1:16.6	The podcast dedicated to helping you learn more about how the people and events of our
1:21.0	early American past have shaped the present day world we live in.
1:24.9	And I'm your host, Liz Kovart.
1:27.9	Law is all around us.
1:29.9	And the basis of American law comes not only from our early American past, but from our founding documents.
	...

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