I just finished reading Akhil’s new book, which I would highly recommend. No doubt I am a little biased, as I was his student and am a regular listener of his podcast. Nevertheless, Born Equal is a page-turner with lots of nuggets that advances birth equality as a basic principle for constitutional interpretation.
Typically, I read Akhil’s books for the trees rather than for the forest. A book that goes through each provision of the Constitution (as his 2005 book did) must invariably focus on details. The same goes for his 1998 book on the Bill of Rights. He is terrific at uncovering new facts, highlighting forgotten people or issues, and doing case analysis. There are sometimes broader themes, but before this book the most significant was that Reconstruction glossed the first ten amendments. You now see some Justices endorsing this claim, though the Court has so far not used that to do anything.
Birth equality is a broader idea. Akhil’s prior books nodded in that direction. But as someone once told me, a scholar’s work looks like a well-planned arc only in hindsight. We don’t have master plans that take forty years to spool out. Instead, reflection and research turns tentative thoughts into commitments and fine points into grand ones. That’s what’s going on here. I would say that the biggest divide in Fourteenth Amendment scholarship is between the tree and forest scholars. This is Akhil’s first forest book. And it’s a towering forest.
One cautionary note: The subtitle says that Born Equal is about the Constitution from 1840-1920. That’s only sort of true. There is a fair amount of pre-1840 background, and most of the book is about 1840-1870. 1870-1915 gets only one chapter. The repudiation of birth equality, what Michael McConnell once called “The Jim Crow Republic,” should probably get more attention. But you can only put so much in one book.
Posted by Gerard Magliocca on September 13, 2025 at 01:25 PM