Edward Samuel Corwin

CORWIN, EDWARD SAMUEL

Edward Samuel Corwin was a noted historian, political scientist, and CONSTITUTIONAL LAW scholar.

Born January 19, 1878, on a farm in rural
Plymouth, Michigan, Corwin graduated Phi
Beta Kappa from the University of Michigan in
1900, where he was president of his class. He
entered graduate school at the University of
Pennsylvania, earning his doctor’s degree in
1905. Corwin then took a teaching position at
Princeton University, where he began a long
association with WOODROW WILSON, then pres-
ident of Princeton.Wilson had recruited Corwin
to be one of the first faculty at the university to
teach undergraduates in small seminars called
precepts, one of Wilson’s many educational
innovations. Wilson and Corwin quickly
became friends, though Corwin often disagreed
with Wilson’s more conservative views. Corwin
was selected by Wilson to update his book Divi-
sion and Reunion, and Corwin wrote part 6 of
the text, which was published in 1909.
In 1911, Corwin was promoted to full pro-
fessor. Seven years later, he was appointed to a
chair first occupied by Wilson, the McCormick
Professor of Jurisprudence, which Corwin held
until his retirement from Princeton in 1946. In
1924, he also became chair of the newly formed
Department of Politics. Corwin was known at
Princeton as a demanding yet popular professor;
students regularly voted his courses on constitu-
tional interpretation as the most difficult but
also the most valuable.
While pursuing his teaching career, Corwin
authored an impressive number of books and
articles. In his first book, National Supremacy—
Treaty Power vs. State Power (1913), Corwin
explored the complex relationship between fed-
eral and state powers in foreign affairs. His later
books, including The President: Office and Pow-
ers (1940, 3d ed. 1948), The Twilight of the
Supreme Court (1934), Court over the Constitu-
tion (1938), Constitutional Revolution, Ltd.
(1941), The Constitution and World Organiza-
tion (1944), Total War and the Constitution
(1947), and Liberty against Government (1948)
established him as a preeminent authority on
the Constitution. Some of his books—including
The Constitution and What It Means Today (first
published in 1920 and now called Edward S.
Corwin’s Constitution and What It Means Today)
and The Constitution of the United States of
America: Analysis and Interpretation (1949)—are considered standard texts in the field of constitutional
law and are still kept current.
In addition to his work at Princeton, Corwin
served as a visiting professor and lecturer at
major universities, including Johns Hopkins
University, New York University, Boston University,
and Yale University. From 1928 to 1929, he
was visiting professor at Yenching University, in
Beijing.He was also the recipient of a number of
major awards, including the American Philosophical
Society’s Franklin Medal in 1940 and
the Henry M. Phillips Prize in the Science and
Philosophy of Jurisprudence in 1942.
Corwin’s expertise eventually led him to federal
government service. In 1935, he became
adviser to the Public Works Administration, and
from 1936 to 1937, he acted as special assistant
and consultant to the attorney general, on constitutional
issues. He publicly supported President
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT’s COURT-PACKING
PLAN—a bill proposed by Roosevelt to expand
the U.S. Supreme Court so that he could nominate
justices who would uphold NEW DEAL legislation—
but opposed Roosevelt’s run for a
third term as a breach of tradition.
Corwin maintained an active career following
his retirement from Princeton in 1946. During
the 1947–48 academic year, he served as a
visiting professor at Columbia University, and
from 1949 to 1952, he was an editor for the Legislative
Reference Section, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS,
where he directed a major research
project that resulted in the multivolume Constitution
Annotated: Analysis and Interpretation
(1952). In 1954, he became chairman of a
national committee opposed to the Bricker
Amendment, S.J. Res. 1, 83d Cong., 1st Sess.
(1953), which had been proposed to restrict the
president’s treaty-making power.
Corwin, who died in 1963 at the age of 85,
carries the distinction of being the only nonlawyer
among the ten legal scholars and writers
most frequently cited by the Supreme Court of
the United States. Corwin was acutely aware of
his important role, noting that “if judges make
law, so do commentators.”

FURTHER READINGS
Loss, Richard. 1981. Corwin on the Constitution. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press.