New Books In Law

In her new book, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution (Harvard University Press, 2020), historian Lindsay M. Chervinsky traces the origins of the President’s cabinet in American government. Chervinsky combines the history of the American Revolution with studies of early American political institutions to illustrate how the cabinet developed. Exploring the cabinet’s inception, Chervinsky argues that traditional narratives about the cabinet don’t tell the whole story and, in fact, that the cabinet itself is a rather under-researched aspect of the American presidency. While George Washington did build the cabinet and, even more importantly, made use of the cabinet in developing policy and seeking input and advice, Chervinsky reveals that it was not until well into Washington’s first term that the cabinet really came into full usage, and this was only after Washington had experimented with other options. The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Instituti