Charles Howard McIlwain

Charles Howard McIlwain (March 15, 1871 – June 1, 1968) was an American historian, medievalist, and political scientist. He won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1924. He was educated at Princeton University and Harvard University and taught at both institutions, as well as the University of Oxford, Miami University, and Bowdoin College. Though he trained as a lawyer, his career was mostly academic, devoted to constitutional history. He was a member of several learned societies and served as president of the American Historical Association in 1935–1936.

Early life and career McIlwain was born March 15, 1871, in Saltsburg, Pennsylvania. In 1894 Princeton University awarded him a bachelor's degree. He then moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he served as a clerk within a law firm while studying the law. In 1897 he was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in Allegheny County. and began teaching Latin and history and coaching track and field at The Kiski School in Saltsburg. He left in 1901 to pursue a master's degree at Harvard University. After obtaining the degree in 1903 he began teaching history at Miami University. McIlwain remained at Princeton until 1910, when he left to become the Thomas Brackett Reed Professor of History and Political Science at Bowdoin College. There he published his first book, The High Court of Parliament and Its Supremacy, which caught the attention of fellow historians and led to his appointment The following year he received the Pulitzer Prize for History for this book. In 1926 he was appointed the Eaton Professor of the Sciences of Government at Harvard. At Oxford he was a member of Balliol College. and Yale University in 1951. He corresponded with the World Federalist Movement's Committee to Frame a World Constitution in the mid-1940s. He died on June 1, 1968.

Works 1910 - The High Court of Parliament and Its Supremacy. 1918 - The Political Works of James I (ed.) 1924 - The American Revolution: A Constitutional Interpretation. 1932 - The Growth of Political Thought in the West: From the Greeks to the End of the Middle Ages. 1936 - The Historian's Part in a Changing World (Presidential address to the American Historical Association) 1939 - 1940 - Constitutionalism Ancient and Modern. 1947 - The Historian