James M. Masnov

James M. Masnov is a Columbian Distinguished Fellow at George Washington University's History Department. James earned his BA in History at Western Oregon University and his MA in History at Portland State University. His work has been published in both academic and general-readership publications. His first monograph, Rights Reign Supreme: An Intellectual History of Judicial Review and the Supreme Court, was published by McFarland Books in 2023. In recent years, just prior to joining the History PhD Program at GW, James worked as an adjunct professor of history at Chemeketa Community College and Linn-Benton Community College in Oregon, where he taught the U.S. Survey, the History of the United States in the 1960s, and a Community Education course of his own design covering the history of the Supreme Court.

James plans to pursue graduate work and a dissertation that will address the history of the Fugitive Slave Clause in the U.S. Constitution, the resulting laws of said clause (the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850), and scrutinize the inverse relationship between the ending of slavery in the United States and the rise of military conscription. Ultimately, James seeks to analyze the history of forced labor and compelled service in a nation ostensibly founded upon natural rights and the consent of the governed.