Watch Now: Author Book Talk with Akhil Reed Amar

By: Kelsey Johnston

Baltimore, Maryland

Sunday, June 28, 2026

Yale University professor of law and political science Akhil Reed Amar joined the regular meeting of the Lincoln Study Forum on June 13 as discussed his timely and engaging book, "Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840-1920."

"Born Equal" recounts the dramatic events and constitutional debates that unfolded across eight decades and which reimagined the meaning of the Declaration of Independence's proposition that "all men are created equal." It relates the stories of several remarkable nineteenth-century women and men, black and white, who elaborated a new vision of what this ideal demanded.

Their debates played out through such events as the Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, the Buffalo Free Soil Convention of 1848, in the Lincoln – Douglas debates, on many Civil War battlefields, through post-war Reconstruction, and the crusading efforts of the National Women's Suffrage Association. Amar offered a cogent description of his book, saying that “it blends law, history, and political science to offer a grand narrative of America’s Constitution.”

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