Winant Lecture in American Government 2026 - recording now available

A recording of the 2026 Winant Lecture in American Government is now available on the RAI YouTube channel.

This year's lecture, entitled States and American Constitutional Development, was delivered by Emily Zackin (Associate Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University and Winant Visiting Professor of American Government at Oxford).

This lecture argues that a near-exclusive scholarly focus on the U.S. Constitution has produced several important misconceptions about the nature of America’s constitutional system. First, prevailing theories of constitutional governance define constitutions as spare, legal frameworks and often posit that they empower courts. However, the design of state constitutions reveals a more complex and contingent relationship between constitutions and courts than this standard model allows. Second, I argue that our emphasis on the federal Bill of Rights has distorted our view of the American rights tradition. Constitutions in the United States do reflect a fear of government overreach (as the Bill of Rights conveys), but they also include demands for a protective and welfare-oriented state. Finally, a careful look at the role states play in shaping constitutional meaning helps us to challenge the well-worn trope that states function as “laboratories of democracy.” Rather than isolated sites of neutral experimentation, states have historically served as crucial lawmaking arenas for political actors marginalized at the national level. Taken together, these arguments recast our understanding of the way Americans have used constitutions in the project of self-government.

Emily Zackin is the 2025-2026 John G. Winant Visiting Professor of American Government, and an Associate Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. Her work focuses on federalism,  American political and constitutional development, and the complex interplay between policy, law, and social movement activism.