Conference on Underappreciated Justices at Vanderbilt Law School

The Vanderbilt Law Review and Vanderbilt Law School’s program in Constitutional Law and Theory will be sponsoring a symposium on April 3-5, 2008 on “Underappreciated Justices” of the Supreme Court. Professor G. Edward White of the University of Virginia Law School will be giving the keynote address, and there are number of other prominent scholars participating. The “underappreciated” Justices that will be discussed (in rough chronological order) include Samuel Chase, James Iredell, William Johnson, Bushrod Washington, David Davis, John McLean, David Brewer, Rufus Peckham, George Sutherland, Pierce Butler, and Sherman Minton. I am pleased that I have been asked to present a paper on Justice Pierce Butler, who was a Minnesota native and one of the so-called “Four Horsemen.” Although the Minnesota Historical Society has quite a few of Butler’s papers and I have compiled an extensive bibliography, I would be pleased to take further suggestions on particularly good (especially primary) sources for this project. I hope to blog more about the details (including the other papers and participants) of the symposium later this year.