Must the US Constitution be a blueprint for empire?
Native Americans, overseas territories, and the law of US colonialism
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With the US threat to “buy Greenland,” annex Canada, raze Gaza, and re-take the Panama Canal, American imperialism is in the news. Such imperialism may seem hard to square with US constitutionalism.
Drafted nearly 240 years ago, the US constitution is the most famous and most emulated in the world. It is celebrated for enshrining the rule of law, dividing powers, structuring federalism, and guarding individual rights.
Yet, for all of its history as a celebrated “constitutional democracy,” the US has simultaneous been imperial, conquering and absorbing hundreds of Native American nations and numerous overseas territories, which it holds in subordination to this day.
How did the U.S. constitution allow this to happen? Or just maybe, did the constitution help it to happen? And, as Norway’s constitution day approaches, what does the US experience say about Norway’s constitutional democracy?
The Department of Comparative Politics invites you to this lecture and discussion by Maggie Blackhawk, the leading scholar of the “constitution of American colonialism.”
Maggie Blackhawk
A member of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, Blackhawk is a professor of law at New York University and an esteemed scholar of United States Indian law, constitutional law, and legislation.
Her research has been published in the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Supreme Court Review, American Historical Review, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Journal of the Early Republic, and Journal of Politics.
Blackhawk’s recent projects focus on the laws and legal histories of American colonialism and the central role of the American colonial project, including the resistance and advocacy of Native and other colonized peoples, in shaping the constitutional law and history of the United States.
This guest lecture is hosted by the ConFront Project - Contested frontiers: Understanding the constitutional politics of settler-state peripheries.
This lecture is free and open for all.