Rejoinder to Gordon Wood

Abstract

Gordon Wood mentions that in 1987, as part of the Hebrew University's program of events marking the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, he delivered the annual Samuel Paley Lectures in American Civilization at the University in Jerusalem. If I, as chairman of the Department of American Studies was, as he says, a gracious host, he was no less a gracious guest and, moreover, a fascinating lecturer. A synopsis of his remarks is included in the volume that I edited, The Constitutional Bases of Political and Social Change in the United States, comprising lectures delivered at a bicentennial conference later that year and attended by prominent American and Israeli constitutional scholars, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, now Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and Aharon Barak, now President of the Israeli Supreme Court.