At our most recent Congressional Briefing in March, Saul Cornell (Fordham) and Darrell A. H. Miller (Duke) discussed the history of gun legislation and jurisprudence in a panel moderated by Karin Wulf (William & Mary). Past efforts at regulation since the revolutionary period speak to present and future efforts to legislate and rule legally on interpretations of the Second Amendment.

A video recording of the briefing can be found here, in C-SPAN’s video library.

A briefing summary, with bios of the panelists, is available here.

At February’s Congressional Briefing, “How Congress Reforms Itself: Historical Perspectives on Rules Changes” — recently aired on C-SPAN — leading historians of both bodies of Congress addressed past changes to rules and the overall history of congressional reform and rule changes since 1789. A panel of four historians — Matthew Wasniewski (House of Representatives), Daniel S. Holt (Senate), John Lawrence (University of California’s Washington Center), and moderator Michele Swers (Georgetown University) — presented perspectives on how these modifications have changed the way congress works over time, and they explored some of the unintended consequences of reform efforts.

A video recording of the briefing can be found here, in C-SPAN’s video library.

A briefing summary, with bios of the panelists, is available here.

In October, the National History Center hosted a congressional briefing on the history of US refugee policy.  At the briefing, Carl Bon Tempo (SUNY-Albany) and Maria Cristina Garcia (Cornell) outlined the evolution of refugee policy from the immediate postwar period through the Refugee Act of 1980.

A video recording of the briefing is available here, in C-SPAN’s video library.  You can read a one-page briefing summary here.

Read Dane Kennedy’s recap of the event, “Myths and Realities of the US Refugee Policy,” for Perspectives Daily.