

McGuinn Hall Room 515
Telephone: 617-552-4167
Email: kenneth.kersch.1@bc.edu
American Political and Constitutional Development; American Political Thought; Politics of Courts
Ken Kersch is professor of political science. His primary interests are American political and constitutional development, American political thought, and the politics of courts. Kersch is the recipient of the American Political Science Association's Edward S. Corwin Award, the J. David Greenstone Prize from APSA's politics and history section, the C. Herman Pritchett Award from APSA’s law and courts section, and the Hughes-Gossett Award from the Supreme Court Historical Society.
Professor Kersch has published many articles in academic, intellectual, and popular journals. He is the author of five books: American Political Thought: An Invitation (Polity, 2021), Conservatives and the Constitution: Imagining Constitutional Restoration in the Heyday of American Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 2019)(named a Choice “Outstanding Academic Title”), The Supreme Court and American Political Development (University Press of Kansas, 2006) (with Ronald Kahn), Constructing Civil Liberties: Discontinuities in the Development of American Constitutional Law (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and Freedom of Speech: Rights and Liberties Under the Law (ABC-Clio, 2003).
Professor Kersch is member of the bar of New York, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia. He received his B.A. (magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) from Williams College, his J.D. (cum laude and Order of the Coif) from Northwestern University, and his Ph.D. in government from Cornell University.
Kersch has held visiting appointments at Harvard, the University of Missouri, Bowling Green State University, Bowdoin, and Princeton. Before coming to Boston College, he taught at Lehigh and Princeton.
American Political Thought: An Invitation (Polity, 2021).
"The Overlooked Conservative Tradition That Embraces an Executive Like Donald Trump," The Atlantic (October 25, 2019).
Conservatives and the Constitution: Imagining Constitutional Restoration in the Heyday of American Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
“Equality,” in Karen Orren and John Compton, editors, Cambridge Companion to the U.S. Constitution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
“Originalism’s Curiously Triumphant Death: The Interpenetration of Aspirationalism and Historicism in U.S. Constitutional Development,” Constitutional Commentary (Summer 2016)(re-published in Problema Anuario de Filosofía y Teoría del Derecho (International Journal on Legal Theory and Philosophy) (Enero-Diciembre, 2017) (Mexico City, Mexico).
“Constitutional Conservatives Remember The Progressive Era,” in Stephen Skowronek, Stephen Engel, and Bruce Ackerman, editors, The Progressives’ Century: Democratic Reform and Constitutional Government in the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).
“Constitutive Stories About the Common Law in Modern American Conservatism,” in Sanford Levinson, Joel Parker, Melissa Williams, editors, NOMOS: American Conservatism (New York: New York University Press, 2016).
“The Gilded Age Through the Progressive Era,” in Mark Tushnet, Mark Graber, and Sanford Levinson, editors, Oxford Handbook on The United States Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
“The Talking Cure: How Constitutional Argument Drives Constitutional Development," Boston University Law Review 94 (May 2014): 1083-1108.
“Systems and Feelings," in James E. Fleming, editor, NOMOS LIII: Passions and Emotions (New York: New York University Press, 2013): 289-303.
“Beyond Originalism: Conservative Declarationism and Constitutional Redemption," Maryland Law Review 71 (2011): 229-282.
Review Essay on Philip Hamburger’s Law and Judicial Duty (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), Journal of Policy History, 23:4 (2011): 586-593.
“Ecumenicalism Through Constitutionalism: The Discursive Development of Constitutional Conservatism in National Review, 1955-1980," Studies in American Political Development (Spring 2011): 1-31.
"A Friend to the Union," A Review of John Marshall: Writings (New York: Library of America, 2010) (Charles Hobson, editor), Claremont Review of Books (Summer 2010): 57-59.
“Everything is Enumerated: The Developmental Past and Future of an Interpretive Problem,” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 8 (September 2006): 957-982.
“Justice Breyer’s Mandarin Liberty," University of Chicago Law Review 73 (Spring 2006): 759-822.
“How Conduct Became Speech and Speech Became Conduct: A Political Development Case Study in Labor Law and the Freedom of Speech,” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 2 (March 2006): 255-297.
“Smoking, Progressive Liberalism, and the Law,” Critical Review 16 (2005): 405-430.
“The New Legal Transnationalism, the Globalized Judiciary, and the Rule of Law," Washington University Global Studies Law Review 4 (2005): 345-387.
“The Reconstruction of Constitutional Privacy Rights and the New American State,” Studies in American Political Development 16 (Spring 2002): 61-87.