“Talmud, Internet Unlock James Madison”

For nearly 200 years, there has been a broad disconnect between the insight contained in Madison’s [Notes of the Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787] — which is deeply relevant even to the health-care case the Supreme Court will begin hearing next week — and just about anyone’s ability to access it. Historians dip into the Notes. But even they rarely slog through it cover-to-cover.

The Center for the Constitution at James Madison’s Montpelier estate in Virginia has been trying for years to figure out how to unlock the document. Now, in a partnership with Brookings, they’ve put it online to test a kind of scholarly Wikipedia for American history. And if their idea works, it could reframe how researchers tap and study dated documents — and how the rest of us understand even more modern ones.

“Talmud, Internet Unlock James Madison,” Miller-McCune, March 23, 2012

Also see “James Madison, Father of the Constitution (1751-1836)“.