This seminar examines the changing nature and concepts of America constitutionalism, from the pre-Revolutionary controversy with Britain through the adoption of state and federal constitutions between 1776 and 1788 and the first interpretive disputes of the 1790s. The course requires intensives reading in both primary and secondary sources, including leading works of recent historical scholarship (Bailyn's Ideological Origins, Wood's Creation of the American Republic, and the course instructor's own Original Meanings) as well as excursions into the rich theoretical and polemical literature of the Revolutionary era (notably including The Federalist). Though that old chestnut, the origins of judicial review, receives some attention, the seminar defines and describes constiutionalism in much more expansive term. Attention is also paid to basic problems in understanding the history of political ideas, and the assumptions and approaches of different schools of interpretation.