This dissertation examines the local dimension of suffrage in the United States. The U.S. has a hyper-federalized system of election administration, in which county and municipal officials and institutions continue to play important roles, and I demonstrate that a systematic analysis and appreciation of these suffrage practices enhances our understanding of voting rights and American political development. The dissertation makes theoretical, historical, and normative contributions to our ideas about American voting. First, I argue that conceiving suffrage as a practice, rather than merely a formal right or an instrumental behavior, produces a more rich understanding of what Americans actually do at the polls. Historically, I show that prominent roles for local officials and a great deal of variation in voting practices at the county or municipal level have always been components of American suffrage. Such variation—which is today often treated as a scandal or, at best, an historical accident to be rectified—is in important ways a product of purposeful state action, and is closely connected to American ideas about popular sovereignty and the state. Normatively, I emphasize the redemptive aspects of the local character of American suffrage, challenging what seems to be the prevailing bias today against things local. I contend not only that local administration of elections is deeply rooted in U.S. history and thought, but also that local administration has at times been an important engine of inclusion, expanding the bounds of suffrage before state and federal law did so. Americans have always voted together in our communities, and have done so for reasons rooted in our fundamental political traditions.

In this dissertation, I explore the relationship between legal theory and legal practice. My focus is on the response of late nineteenth and early twentieth century American jurisprudence to a perceived crisis in American legal doctrine, a crisis that threatened to undermine the legitimacy and authority of the American legal profession. Uncertainty and complexity in the law were dominant characterizations of this historical moment, more generally understood as a time of rapid social and economic growth, producing a sense of chaos and fragmentation. I read formalism and realism (both broadly construed) as forms of legal modernism which provide alternative discourses of professional authority, emerging not necessarily as reactions to one another so much as to the perceived problems of expertise entailed by such historical transformations. My principal aim is to explore and articulate those dimensions of modernist legal thought which serve as the foundation for this new juridical discourse of professional authority, and to suggest some of the possible implications of failing to look at the early tradition of realist jurisprudence from this perspective. In this sense, I seek to lay the foundation for a more general critique and reconstruction of this tradition.

This project explores the relationship between constitutional interpretation and acquisition and governance of territories during the nineteenth century. This project explores how Congress, the Supreme Court and the Executive branch constructed the constitution in order to justify various imperialist nation-building endeavors. In the process, this project explores questions of citizenship, race, constitutional interpretation, and nation building.