The Riddle of Hiram Revels
Richard A. Primus's 2006 Harvard Law Review article revives the 1870 Senate debate over seating Hiram Revels, the first black senator, whose eligibility turned on whether Dred Scott remained law and whether the Civil War had swept away the antebellum Constitution. Primus argues the forgotten debate shows constitutional interpretation happens in legislatures too, and uses its principles to criticize the Supreme Court's Civil Rights Cases of 1883 for denying that Reconstruction transformed the constitutional order.
