Nikolas Bowie on Written Constitutionalism

In this episode, Nikolas Bowie, Assistant Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, discusses his article "Why the Constitution Was Written Down," which was published in the Stanford Law Review. Bowie begins by explaining why the concept of a written constitution was important and its conventional origin story. He describes the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company and how colonists came to conceptualize it in constitutional terms. He observes that this shift led American colonists to conceptualize constitutionalism differently than people in England. He reflects on how this affected early American constitutional thought. And he explains how it ought to affect constitutional interpretation today. Bowie is on Twitter at @nikobowie.This episode was hosted by Brian L. Frye, Spears-Gilbert Associate Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky College of Law. Frye is on Twitter at @brianlfrye. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.