Hamilton, Hip-Hop, and the Law

Stephen Rohde reviews Hamilton and the Law: Reading Today’s Most Contentious Legal Issues Through the Hit Musical, edited by Lisa A. Tucker, at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

"The very first essay, “Lin-Manuel Miranda and the Future of Originalism,” by Richard Primus, professor of law, theory, and history of the US Constitution at the University of Michigan Law School, exemplifies the best of this thought-provoking collection. ...
"... Primus posits that what shapes constitutional law is not the actual original meaning of the Constitution but instead 'the original meaning as understood by judges and other officials at any given time.' Therefore, 'how judges imagine the original meaning of the Constitution depends on their intuitions — half-historical, half-mythical — about the Founding narrative.' If you change the myth, you can change the Constitution, and 'Hamilton is changing the myth.'"

See The Federalist, by Publius (Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay), in Great Books of the Western World (first edition, 52 Vol., 1952) volume 43, and (second edition, 60 Vol., 1990) volume 40.