The three branches’ historical organizations – the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, the White House Historical Association, and the Supreme Court Historical Society – are convening a panel of scholars to examine the creation of the second system of national government which followed American independence – and prevails to this day. The conversation will explore the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the first years of the constitutional system with particular focus on the First Federal Congress, George Washington as the First President, and the First Justices and meetings of the Supreme Court.
Panelists
Fergus M. Bordewich
Fergus M. Bordewich has been an independent historian and writer since the early 1970s. He is the author of ten non-fiction books, including WASHINGTON: The Making of the American Capital (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2008), THE FIRST CONGRESS: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government (Simon & Schuster, 2016. Winner of the 2019 D.B. Hardeman Prize), and his latest, CENTENNIAL: The Great Fair of 1876 and the Invention of America’s Future (Alfred A. Knopf, 2026). In 2015, Bordewich served as chairman of the awards committee for the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, given by the Gilder-Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, at Yale University. He is a frequent public speaker at universities and other forums, as well as on radio and television. His articles have appeared in many magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, American Heritage, Atlantic, Harper’s, New York Magazine, GEO, Reader’s Digest, and others.
Gautham Rao
Gautham Rao is Associate Professor of History at American University, and Editor-in-Chief of Law and History Review, the leading global journal of legal history. He is author of White Power: Policing American Slavery (Hodding Carter III Books, 2026), and National Duties: Custom Houses and the Making of the American State (University of Chicago Press, 2016), as well as numerous scholarly articles. He is currently working on a constitutional history of the Confederate States of America and a book about the history and legacy of the television show, The West Wing.
Hon. Robert M. Dow, Jr.
The Honorable Robert M. Dow, Jr., serves as Counselor to Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., acting as the Supreme Court’s chief operating officer and assisting in the administration of the federal judiciary. A U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois since 2007, he previously chaired the Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on Civil Rules. Before joining the bench, he was a partner at Mayer Brown LLP. Judge Dow is a Rhodes Scholar and graduate of Yale University, the University of Oxford, and Harvard Law School.
