William M. Treanor

A constitutional historian and theorist, Treanor's work on the original understanding  of the Constitution has challenged conventional wisdom on a range of central issues in ways that have altered scholarly debate: he wrote  one of the first studies arguing that republican ideology was a dominant school of thought at the time of the founding and influenced constitutional doctrine; showed that judicial review was prevalent before Marbury to a dramatically greater extent that had been previously recognized; demonstrated that the Constitution as drafted provided only limited protection for private property; argued convincingly  that the founders gave Congress, rather than the President, the power to declare war out of a concern that President's desire to be remembered as a great leader would cause them to enter conflicts not in the national interest; and showed that the founding generation looked principally to structure, rather than text, in constitutional interpretation.