Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Political Science
University of Pennsylvania
2017

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Political Science
University of Pennsylvania
2014

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Government and Politics
University of Maryland
2012

Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)

College of William and Mary
2010

McWilliams Award for Best Faculty Paper in Political Theory, NPSA; 2018

Tom Carsey Award, American Political Science Association; 2017

Prestage-Cook Award, Southern Political Science Association; 2017

Best Graduate Student Poster in Law and Courts, American Political Science Association; 2015

Hidden Laws

Hidden Laws: How State Constitutions Stabilize American Politics

State constitution reform guides and stabilizes American constitutional and political development. Using data sets and historical case studies, Robinson Woodward‑Burns shows how the federal government has repeatedly deferred to state constitutional reform to manage or address difficult national constitutional controversies, including conflicts over the regulation of slavery, banking and taxation, women’s suffrage, labor and welfare rights, voting and civil rights, and gender discrimination.

The Lost Clause

The Lost Clause: Reinterpreting the Declaration’s Silence on the Atlantic Slave Trade

Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Independence condemned King George III for maintaining the international slave trade. The clause denounced the “execrable trade” for violating enslaved people’s “rights of life & liberty,” thus alienating slave-trading congressional delegates, who forced Jefferson to cut the clause. Generations of scholars have mourned this deletion. This essay offers an alternate reading of the clause

Judicial Power and the Shifting Purpose of Article V

Judicial Power and the Shifting Purpose of Article V

Through a mixed-methods approach, we first document the shifting purpose of Article V at an aggregate level by coding all 11,969 proposed constitutional amendments throughout American history. We then substantiate the shifting purpose of Article V through a series of in-depth case studies focused on polygamy, women's suffrage, Equal Rights Amendments, and Federal Marriage Amendments. Taken together, this evidence helps us understand Article V as a repurposed institution and suggests that textually static constitutional provisions nonetheless may be open to reinvention at the behavioral level in subtle but important ways.

Rethinking Self-Reliance

Rethinking Self-Reliance: Emerson on Mobbing, War, and Abolition

A famous proponent of solitude and self-reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson rejected the conformity of Jacksonian mobs and mass parties for solitary nature walks, and so has long been read as an antipolitical figure. Recent scholars have reinterpreted Emersonian self-reliance to include extralegal boycotts of slave-made goods and resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act. This essay takes these accounts a step further, arguing that Emerson saw that some forms of extralegal cooperative action were compatible with self-reliance. 

The Person Who Changes the Constitution

The Person Who Changes the Constitution

One civil servant will determine whether the ERA gets added to America’s founding document—the question is which authority he’ll turn to for guidance.