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Reposted by Geoffrey Kirsch

Moby Dick @mobydickatsea.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

often possession is the whole of the law

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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

That’s the perfect name for this time of oligarchs: “the Re-Gilded Age.”

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Geoffrey Kirsch @geoffreykirsch.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Thrilled to announce that my book NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE AND THE LAW OF THE MARKET is now under contract with Oxford University Press and forthcoming sometime next year. Thanks to all who supported, challenged, and strengthened it along the way. Now, to find a job....

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Manisha Sinha @profmsinha.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Historian here this is literally about gutting the Reconstruction amendments especially the consequential 14th amendment piece by piece.

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Nate Wolff @natewolff.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

Look, Middlemarch is a great novel. It complexly mediates class conflict, the commodification of all life, emerging ideological structures in Victorian capitalism. I just personally think it’s more impressive when a novel does that through a story about a guy who hates a weird fish.

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Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof @evanbernick.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

It is certain that Uncle Tom’s Cabin had a greater impact on our constitutional order than any law review article, and it was a work of fiction.

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Geoffrey Kirsch @geoffreykirsch.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

"In Emerson’s words, we are 'build[ing] sepulchres of the fathers' and seeking the authority of the past rather than 'demanding our own works and laws and worship.' ... Rather than enjoying an 'original relation to the universe,' we are subjected to an originalist relation to the universe."

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Jelani Cobb @jelaniya.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. — Frederick Douglass

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Geoffrey Kirsch @geoffreykirsch.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Grateful to @melville-society.bsky.social and honored to be in the company of so many impressive past winners!

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Heather Cox Richardson (TDPR) @hcrichardson.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

Before the midterms of 1866, President Andrew Johnson called his congressional opponents traitors and said they should be hanged. Voters were so profoundly moved by his words... that they gave his opponents a supermajority in Congress, and the nation got the Fourteenth Amendment.

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Joshua R Greenberg @joshrgreenberg.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

Moby Dick was published on this day in 1851, so today's bank note comes from Nantucket and features a large vignette of whalers in a longboat about to harpoon a spouting sperm whale. Also on the right, note the Hydrostatic Oil Press. Manufacturers and Mechanics Bank, Nantucket, MA, $3, Dec 5, 1843.🗃️

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Rachel Shelden @rachelshelden.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

Illinois congressman John Farnsworth comparing the U.S. Supreme Court in Dred Scott to the Bleak House chancery court in 1859 is just *chef's kiss* [4 weeks out from my book deadline and still finding gems in my own research 🙃]

Text of a speech by Illinois Republican John Farnsworth in 1859 on the floor of the U.S. House: "I propose, briefly, to give some of the reasons why I oppose the extension of the slave power, by the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton constitution; and first, I oppose it because it is contrary to the genius and spirit of our declaration and Constitution, and the designs of the fathers of the Republic, as exhibited in the history of the Government, until a recent period. I know it is now roundly asserted by the Democratic party, that Congress has no rightful authority to interdict or prohibit the introduction of slavery into the Territories of the United States; that to do so would violate the principle of the equality of States; and that party has recently invoked the ad of the Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case-a tribunal which sits yearly, in an appropriate dismal room in the basement of this Capitol, where one can easily realize Dickens's description of the Foggy high court of chancery; and they have obtained the side bar dictum of a majority of those judges to sustain this doctrine. The President of the United States wonders that a doubt could ever have existed, that the Constitution carries slavery into the Territories, and declares that Kansas is as much a slave State as Georgia."

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Dan Farbman @danfarbman.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

Boy, Holmes' bad man is really getting a workout these days.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Political violence is bad. It usually begets more political violence. Celebrating political violence is bad. It usually encourages more political violence, against various targets. Campus shootings are bad. They make everyone on campus less safe. It's bad that what I wrote here is controversial.

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Geoffrey Kirsch @geoffreykirsch.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

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Geoffrey Kirsch @geoffreykirsch.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

Planning this panel for next year's @c19americanists.bsky.social conference in Cincinnati. Email/DM me with questions and/or proposals!

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Annette Gordon-Reed @agordonreed.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

Nearly 250 years of a republic struggling to live up to the ideals of its founding documents only to arrive here.

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Geoffrey Kirsch @geoffreykirsch.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

O gentlemen, the time of life is short; To spend that shortness basely were too long If life did ride upon a dial’s point, Still ending at the arrival of an hour. An if we live, we live to tread on kings.

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Annette Gordon-Reed @agordonreed.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

“It is…a small college. And yet, there are those who love it”

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Meredith Rose @mrose.ink · 05/06/2025

“Kafka name-checked three words in” feels like the lawyer equivalent of noticing a small red dot appearing between your eyes

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Geoffrey Kirsch @geoffreykirsch.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

Planning this panel for next year's @c19americanists.bsky.social conference in Cincinnati. Email/DM me with questions and/or proposals!

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Bill Kristol @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Most foreigners at Harvard grasp American principles better than most senior officials in the Trump administration.

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Rep. Jamie Raskin @raskin.house.gov · 22/05/2025

This intolerable attack on Harvard’s independence and academic freedom is plainly government retaliation for Harvard’s speech standing up for itself and the rule of law. America must rally to the side of Harvard and its students in court, in Congress and in our communities.

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Trump Administration Halts Harvard’s Ability to Enroll International Students

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Herman Melville @melvillequotes.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

"Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges." ―Billy Budd, Sailor

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 08/05/2025

it has taken me a minute to finish, but if you’re a 19th century american history/legal theory nerd you will love this book yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

yalebooks.yale.edu

The Interbellum Constitution

A synthesis of legal, political, and social history to show how the post-founding generations were forced to rethink and substantially revise the U.S. consti...

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Ben Railton @americanstudier.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

"Just a week after the authorities of Boston assembled to carry back a perfectly innocent man, and one whom they knew to be innocent, into slavery, the inhabitants of Concord caused the bells to be rung and the cannons to be fired, to celebrate their liberty +

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Dan Farbman @danfarbman.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

In 1844, "Squire" Samuel Hoar was sent to South Carolina to protest the ongoing enslavement of free black sailors from Massachusetts there. He and his daughter fled Charleston under threats of violence. Please stop making my research relevant... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_...

en.wikipedia.org

Samuel Hoar - Wikipedia

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Manisha Sinha @profmsinha.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

Historian here traitors are always trying to kill our republic. On this day Abraham Lincoln was murdered by a Confederate assassin. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

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Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

HARVARD TAKES A STAND. Yes!!!! “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.”

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Rachael Hunt @rhunt97.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Boston has the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever

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Paul Gowder @gowder.io · 29/03/2025

Can we please remember that John Adams literally represented the Redcoats who did the Boston Massacre. Like, if you’re going to wave the goddamn flag and say that lawyers ought not to represent clients you disagree with or who are allegedly guilty, then you’re just confused about American lawyers.

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