There’s a throughline from the institution of slavery at the time of the United States’ founding at the end of the 18th century to today’s fights about voting rights and equal justice, according to Michael Klarman, the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School. In fact, it’s difficult to make sense of modern American society without knowing the story of the Constitution’s deep entanglement with race, he says.
“Everything has a history,” says Klarman. “And I don’t think you can understand much of anything about our present unless you understand how we got here.”
Klarman’s new Harvard Law School Online course, “Equality: Race and Constitutional History,” examines one part of that story, beginning with the nation’s origins through the aftermath of the Civil War. How did the antebellum Supreme Court view race — and how have our views of race changed over time? What are the political, legal, and social factors that influenced this evolution? And how might our past shape the current moment?
The course, which includes six self-paced modules and a one-hour discussion session with Klarman and fellow learners, is designed to reach a broad audience, including educators and non-lawyers. Registration is open through Friday, February 21, 2025.
“Professor Michael Klarman has dedicated his career to scholarship and teaching on our Constitution. We’re proud to welcome new learners to the Harvard Law School Online community to join the generations of students who have had the pleasure of learning from Professor Klarman’s expertise,” says John Coates, the John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law and Economics at Harvard and faculty director of Harvard Law School Online.
The course will begin by exploring how slavery was treated at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, followed by the Supreme Court’s decisions involving the Fugitive Slave Clause and the question of congressional bans on slavery in federal territories, Klarman says. Then, students will learn about the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, Reconstruction efforts to advance racial equality after the Civil War, and the subsequent entrenchment of racial segregation and subjugation.
“Race is one of the most important issues in American history, and we need to understand that history, including slavery and then the crusade to end slavery, the Civil War, and then 100 years of Jim Crow and disenfranchisement and lynching and a panoply of different ways in which Black people could be subordinated and insulted.”
Klarman says that there are contemporary implications to the ways in which the law facilitated racial subordination. “If you want to understand why African Americans are so disproportionately represented in our jails and prisons, why African Americans have a lower life expectancy, why they were so much more likely to die of COVID than anybody else, you have to understand the history of slavery and Jim Crow, and even post-Jim Crow unconscious racism and structural racism.”
Klarman also sees parallels in the modern-day struggles for equality, including efforts to protect voting rights. He points to President Donald Trump’s recent derogatory comments about policies designed to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the demise of race-based affirmative action, as a continuation of a long trend.
“Why would universities today be putting a thumb on the scale for African Americans? Well, if you don’t understand anything about American history, then that might seem like an odd policy,” he says. “But if you do understand the history of extreme racial oppression, and only how recently we’ve started to move in a different direction, such policies might make more sense.”
Klarman’s course also contains reasons for optimism — reflections on the activists and movements that pushed the nation to live up to its constitutional ideals. Klarman says that he believes they serve as role models for advocates tackling modern-day inequities.
“One way to be hopeful is to look at the past and realize how much social justice activists were up against, and yet how they often succeeded,” he says, adding that many advocates pressed on despite knowing that change was unlikely to be realized in their lifetimes. “For many of them, it was a long haul, and it was often much more difficult and dangerous than our fight is today.”
Klarman, who studied political theory as an undergraduate, began thinking seriously about history as a student at Oxford following law school and a judicial clerkship. Later, as a young constitutional law professor, Klarman found that he kept coming back to one special case: Brown v. Board of Education.
Its importance in American constitutional law cannot be overstated, he says. “The case raises two questions, the first of which is, what is its relationship to the civil rights movement? And the other is why the decision is right as a matter of constitutional theory, assuming, as everyone does, that it is right — and that turns out to be a more complicated question than you might think.”
His research and writing on this topic culminated in his first book, “From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality,” which won the 2005 Bancroft Prize in American history. And it led him to continue to study and teach about race and the law in the U.S., including this new course, the second half of which — exploring race and the law from World War I until the present day — will be posted later this year.
“Part of HLS Online, Klarman’s course joins other online opportunities for professional and lifelong learning for lawyers and non-lawyers alike, such as the Zero-L course, which teaches foundational legal topics to a much broader audience. “We’ve had a great experience bringing our Zero-L course, which prepares students for success in law school, to learners around the world. We’re delighted to build on the foundation of constitutional law offered in Zero-L by debuting the Equality: Race and Constitutional History course collection,” says I. Glenn Cohen ’03, the James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law at Harvard and faculty director of Harvard Law School Online.
Leah A. Plunkett ’06, the executive director of Harvard Law School Online, says that she is thrilled to offer Klarman’s course to learners from the U.S. and around the world, including educators and those interested in history, government, law, or the Constitution. Plunkett, who is also Harvard Law’s associate dean of Learning Experience and Innovation, says that she took constitutional law with Klarman 20 years ago as a law student herself, making the partnership even more meaningful.
“Professor Klarman’s teaching changed my understanding of our nation’s history, as well as deepened my respect for our Constitution and the strength of its promises for our present and future,” she says. “I’m beyond excited to welcome new learners around the world to the extraordinary experience of learning with Professor Klarman.”
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