James W. Ely, Jr. is Milton R. Underwood Professor of Law and Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. He is the author or editor of sixteen books, including Ambivalent Legacy: A Legal History of the South (1984), An Uncertain Tradition: Constitutionalism and the History of the South (1989), The Bill of Rights in Modern America: After 200 Years (1993), The Chief Justiceship of Melville W. Fuller, 1888-1910 (1995), and Railroads and American Law (2001).