Meet Jonathan Gienapp: the ‘Michael Jordan’ of the Stanford history department

Published Feb. 3, 2025, 10:22 p.m., last updated Feb. 5, 2025, 9:38 p.m.

Jonathan Gienapp, an associate professor of history and law, hasn’t missed a Patriots game in 31 years. Growing up in Massachusetts with the American Revolution in his “backyard,” his father, William Gienapp, helped inspire his journey in American history. Gienapp’s father was also a historian of the American Civil War and Gienapp’s main companion at Patriots games.

Now, at Stanford, Gienapp is a scholar of constitutional, political, legal and intellectual history of the early United States.

To Gienapp, there isn’t a more urgent question than constitutional interpretation: “None of us who’s alive today had any say in making the Constitution law. We didn’t vote on it, but it is our law. Does that change how we interpret it?”

Historians Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood shaped Gienapp’s interest in 18th-century in American history, along with undergraduate history classes at Harvard University. He focused on the Constitution of the United States in his graduate education at Johns Hopkins University, which continued to be his focus as a professor at the University of Mississippi and now Stanford.

Gienapp is known around campus as the “Michael Jordan of the Stanford history department,” according to Johann Smith ’24 M.A. ’25.

From talking to classmates, Smith said that taking Gienapp’s classes is a combination of happiness and sadness – happiness because Gienapp is the professor, sadness for not discovering him sooner.

When Gienapp started at Stanford as an “intellectual historian,” Jack Rakove, a professor of history, suggested that Gienapp study the “lawyer’s debate about originalism,” which he has since taken to. According to Rakove, Gienapp’s research into constitutional history has become a “fabulous asset” in the history department and the university as a whole.

One method of interpretation is constitutional originalism, which reads the Constitution’s meaning in the context of when it was written. This is the topic of two of Gienapp’s books: “The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era,” published in 2018, and “Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique,” published in 2024.

By interpreting the Constitution through the 18th-century perspective, originalists “impose far more on the past than they take from it,” Gienapp said, “creating a past that never existed as though they lived in that past as though people thought like them in that past.”

Gienapp had a “messy” process for his two manuscripts. “All students read finished works, which does not give you a good glimpse of how non-linear and frustrating the writing process is,” he said, which really involved a lot of “stumbling around” and “bursts of epiphanies.”

But for both projects, Gienapp credits his students. To Gienapp, this is the fundamental reason why being at college contributes to the development of ideas and thinking, whether it be in debates in class or with friends.

Gienapp’s appreciation for legal thinking as a historian is notable, according to law professor Pamela Karlan. Gienapp “straddles the two disciplines superbly,” Karlan wrote to The Daily.

History professor Kathryn Olivarius echoed Gienapp’s “encyclopedic knowledge” of areas outside of his direct area of expertise, she said.

Gienapp’s students further emphasized his breadth of knowledge, especially within his classroom setting. “It’s difficult at Stanford sometimes to find a professor who is not solely focused on their scholarship or research in one capacity or another,” David Mollenkamp ’19 JD ’25 said. “Professor Gienapp breaks the mold and he genuinely seems to care about students.”

Karlan added that one of her undergraduate students kept referring to things he’d learned in Gienapp’s class, highlighting the profound, memorable impact of Gienapp’s teachings.

Sachin Singh ’26 echoed: “He treats us as equals and helps us develop our intellectual interest.”

In particular, Gienapp’s class on originalism “brings history to life” in two ways, he said.

The first is through the incorporation of recent historical developments. In fall quarter, he taught about United States v. Rahimi, a major second amendment decision that was handed down in October 2023. In 2022, he taught about the Dobbs v. Jackson decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on abortion.

Second, the wide range of student voices from different walks of life “nicely captures what it means to be a constitutional citizen and to debate the constitution,” Gienapp said.

“People flock to his class,” Smith said. “People who study history, philosophy, science and computer science; people who hold views and opinions from the left, the right and the center.”

Gienapp’s presence as a professor is also notable. “He’s attracted this whole knot of students,” Rakove said. “He’s very amiable. He looks like a big kid.”

Gienapp’s colleagues and students are fans of him even outside of history. 

“Ask him about the New England Patriots,” Baird Johnson ’24 JD ’27 wrote. “Name any week in the last 20 years — he can tell you who they played and the score.”

Catherine Wu '28 is a writer for the Arts & Life section. Contact her at arts 'at' stanforddaily.com.

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