History chair to speak at Supreme Court

February 17, 2012

Dr. Johnathan O’Neill, the chair of the Department of History at Georgia Southern University, will speak at the Supreme Court Historical Society on March 14 as part of The 2012 Leon Silverman Lecture Series.

O’Neill’s lecture, “Property Rights and the American Founding: An Overview,” is the first of the series, which this year focuses on the Supreme Court and property rights. The annual lecture series focuses on a different topic each year and the lectures are delivered at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. O’Neill’s lecture will consider the central importance of property rights in three areas: the coming of the American Revolution; the problems of the 1780s that led to the calling of the constitutional convention; and the text and political theory of the constitution created in Philadelphia in 1787.

“I am greatly honored and excited to have the opportunity to speak at the Supreme Court, an institution I have been studying and writing about for much of my career,” O’Neill said.

O’Neill is an associate professor of history at Georgia Southern, the author of Originalism in American Law and Politics: A Constitutional History and editor — with Gary L. McDowell — of America and Enlightenment Constitutionalism. He is currently working on a new book, Constitutional Knowledge and Constitutional Maintenance in Twentieth-Century America and was a Jack Miller Center Fellow in 2009.

The Supreme Court Historical Society is a nonprofit organization that serves the Court, the legal profession and the public. The society’s mission is to disseminate historical information about the Supreme Court through educational programs, publications, scholarship and the acquisition of Court-related antiques and artifacts.