Private College Autonomy’s Partisan Origins

A new history of Dartmouth v. Woodward shows the 1819 ruling was a hard‑fought partisan conflict, not a neutral legal inevitability. The Marshall Court, spurred by Daniel Webster’s (sometimes factually shaky) argument, effectively invented 'private' corporate status that insulated colleges from state control after New Hampshire had physically seized Dartmouth’s buildings. Modern claims of apolitical university autonomy rest on this political construction. — It reframes today’s campus interventions as part of a long political lineage, weakening 'unprecedented overreach' narratives and highlighting that legal autonomy is contingent and contestable.