Founders Professor of Law Mary Sarah Bilder will be among the 36 distinguished authors, historians, and former military leaders speaking about the preservation of the nation’s democracy during the 10th Annual George Washington Symposium hosted by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association November 2-4.
Bilder’s scholarship centers on the early history of the Constitution. Areas of research include the concept of a Framing Generation, Native Nations and the 1787 Constitution, written constitutionalism as a new genre, early constitutional conceptions of women, the history of judicial review, and colonial- and founding-era constitutionalism.
Together with Harvard Law’s Michael J. Klarman and National Constitution Center head Jeffrey Rosen, Bilder will serve on the symposium’s November 4 panel, “A More Perfect Union: The Constitution Principles and Ideas,” moderated by Douglas Bradburn, president and CEO of George Washington’s Mount Vernon.
Her newest book, Female Genius: Eliza Harriot and George Washington at the Dawn of the Constitution (University of Virginia Press), was a finalist for the 2023 George Washington Prize. So was her 2016 Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention (Harvard University Press), which also received the Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy. The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire (Harvard University Press, 2004) won the Littleton-Griswold Award from the American Historical Association.
Registration information for “The Great Experiment: Democracy from the Founding to the Future” symposium can be found here.
Photograph: Caitlin Cunningham