Jack N. Rakove

Professor Jack Rakove is the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies, Political Science, and Law. He received his B.A. from Haverford College and his Ph.D. from Harvard University and then went on to teach at Colgate University. His principal areas of research include the origins of the American Revolution and Constitution, the political practice and theory of James Madison, and the role of historical knowledge in constitutional litigation. His work has led to fellowships with the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, National Endowment of Humanities, and the Stanford Humanities Center. Professor Rakove has won the Delancey K. Jay Prize and the Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award, Society of the Cincinnati Book Prize, Pulitzer Prize in History for his book, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (1996), where Rakove argues that originalism, the practice of interpreting the Constitution by a fixed set of the original farmers' intentions, should not be the only approach to settling today's judicial questions.