Bio

Jonathan Gienapp is Associate Professor of History and Associate Professor of Law. He specializes in the constitutional, political, legal, and intellectual history of the early United States. His primary focus to date has been the origins and development of the U.S. Constitution, in particular the ways in which Founding-era Americans understood and debated constitutionalism across the nation's early decades. His historical interests intersect with modern legal debates over constitutional interpretation and theory, especially those centered on the theory of constitutional originalism.

His first book, *The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era* (Harvard University Press, Belknap, 2018), rethinks the conventional story of American constitutional creation by exploring how and why founding-era Americans’ understanding of their Constitution transformed in the earliest years of the document’s existence. It investigates how early political debates over the Constitution’s meaning altered how Americans imagined the Constitution and its possibilities, showing how these changes created a distinct kind of constitutional culture, the consequences of which endure to this day. It won the 2017 Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize from Harvard University Press and the 2019 Best Book in American Political Thought Award from the American Political Science Association and was a finalist for the 2019 Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians. In addition, it was named a *Choice* Outstanding Academic Title for 2019 and a 8Spectator USA8 Book of the Year for 2018.

His second book, 8Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique* (Yale University Press, 2024), mounts a comprehensive historical critique of originalism. It argues that recovering Founding-era constitutionalism on its own terms fundamentally challenges originalists' unspoken assumptions about the U.S. Constitution and its original meaning.

Gienapp's next book is on the forgotten history of the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, currently entitled "We the People of the United States: The Struggle over Popular Sovereignty and Nationhood." It tells the story of the Preamble's early vitality and eventual descent into political and legal irrelevance as a way of exploring the broader struggle over popular sovereignty and national union in the early United States. It probes the often entwined debates over popular rule, sovereignty, federalism, and constitutionalism in the nation's earliest years to understand the full meanings of the Constitution's opening words: "We the People of the United States."

Gienapp has also published a range of articles, book chapters, and essays on early American constitutionalism, politics, and intellectual history, modern constitutional interpretation, and the study of the history of ideas.

He is a member of the Historians Council on the Constitution at the Brennan Center for Justice and has contributed to a number of historians' amicus briefs to the Supreme Court of the United States. He is also one of the founding editors of the Journal of American Constitutional History where he serves as a senior editorial advisor.

Academic Appointments

Program Affiliations

  • American Studies

Contact

  • Academic
    jgienapp@stanford.edu
    University - Faculty Department: History Department Position: Assoc Professor
    • 450 JANE STANFORD WAY, BLDG. 200
    • LANE HISTORY CORNER 228
    • STANFORD,  California  94305 
    University - Faculty Department: Law School Position: Associate Professor of Law

Additional Info

  • Mail Code: 8610

2024-25 Courses

Stanford Advisees

All Publications

  • Removal and the Changing Debate over Executive Power at the Founding AMERICAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL HISTORY Gienapp, J. 2024; 63 (3): 229-250

    View details for DOI 10.1093/ajlh/njad006

    View details for Web of Science ID 001156445100001

  • THE FEDERALIST CONSTITUTION FOREWORD FORDHAM LAW REVIEW Schwartz, D. S., Gienapp, J., Mikhail, J., Primus, R. 2021; 89 (5): 1669-1675

    View details for Web of Science ID 000641586900001

  • IN SEARCH OF NATIONHOOD AT THE FOUNDING FORDHAM LAW REVIEW Gienapp, J. 2021; 89 (5): 1783-1813

    View details for Web of Science ID 000641586900005

  • National Power and the Presidency Rival Forms of Federalist Constitutionalism at the Founding Gienapp, J., Lowe, B. UNIV PRESS FLORIDA. 2021: 127-164

    View details for Web of Science ID 000664147100006

  • Democratic Culture and Democratic Shocks: The Limits of Constitutional Cycles Missouri Law Review Gienapp, J. 2021; 86: 501-516
  • Written Constitutionalism, Past and Present Law and History Review Gienapp, J. 2021; 39 (2): 321-360

    View details for DOI 10.1017/S0738248020000528

  • Beyond Republicanism, Back to Constitutionalism: The Creation of the American Republic at Fifty NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY-A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE AND LETTERS Gienapp, J. 2020; 93 (2): 275–308

    View details for DOI 10.1162/tneq_a_00822

    View details for Web of Science ID 000541961300014

  • The Myth of the Constitutional Given: Enumeration and National Power at the Founding American University Law Review Forum Gienapp, J. 2020; 69: 183-211
  • The Foreign Founding: Rights, Fixity, and the Original Constitution Texas Law Review Online Gienapp, J. 2019; 97: 115-137
  • The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era Gienapp, J. Harvard University Press. 2018
  • How to Maintain a Constitution: The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions and James Madison’s Struggle with the Problem of Constitutional Maintenance Nullification and Secession in Modern Constitutional Thought Gienapp, J. University Press of Kansas. 2016: 53-90
  • HISTORICISM AND HOLISM: FAILURES OF ORIGINALIST TRANSLATION FORDHAM LAW REVIEW Gienapp, J. 2015; 84 (3): 935-956

    View details for Web of Science ID 000367180700003

  • Making Constitutional Meaning The Removal Debate and the Birth of Constitutional Essentialism JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC Gienapp, J. 2015; 35 (3): 375-418

    View details for DOI 10.1353/jer.2015.0054

    View details for Web of Science ID 000362321400002

  • Using Beard to Overcome Beardianism: Charles Beard’s Forgotten Historicism and the Ideas-Interest Dichotomy Constitutional Commentary Gienapp, J. 2014; 29: 367-381