Herbert Storing

Emblematic of Storing's concern with the founding is his treatment of the Federalist-Anti-Federalist debates, to whose study he contributed his 1981 seven-volume study, The Complete Anti-Federalist, which was described by a The New York Times reviewer as "a work of magnificent scholarship" and its publication a "civic event of enduring importance." Storing believed that the debate illuminated the deepest commitments of the American regime because the Anti-Federalists felt it was in their interest to expose the true character of the new constitutional order. The debate was made profound because the critique of the proposed constitution developed by the most thoughtful of the Anti-Federalists, such as Brutus or the penetrating writer Mercy Warren, forced the Federalists to give a more sophisticated defense of their creation than they might otherwise have done. For Storing, the issues raised in this debate, some of which were unresolved at the time and remain unresolved today, pertain to the essential nature of the American regime, and are therefore of enduring relevance to scholars of all aspects of American politics.

At the time of his death in September 1977, Storing was Robert Kent Gooch Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia, where he also served as director of the Study of the Presidency at the White Burkett Miller Center for Public Affairs. He was also a member of the President's Commission on White House Fellows.

Storing began teaching and writing about race and politics well before the topic became important for the field of political science. For example, Storing published his first writing on race and politics, "The School of Slavery: A Reconsideration of Booker T. Washington," in 1964, whereas the Race, Ethnicity, and Politics section of the American Political Science Association was not founded until 1995. His singular contribution was to show how black Americans are culturally in the position to see the American regime more clearly than do white Americans.

Storing served as senior research assistant at the London School of Economics; as assistant, associate, and professor of political science at the University of Chicago (1956–77) where he worked closely with Joseph Cropsey; and as director of the Telluride summer program at the Hampton Institute in 1967. He was Visiting Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Jurisprudence at Colgate University from 1968 to 1969, and part-time professor of political science at Northern Illinois University from 1969 to 1975.

Storing received his A.B. degree from Colgate University in 1950. He then attended the University of Chicago, earning his A.M. in 1951 and Ph.D. in 1956. His dissertation chair was C. Herman Pritchett and he studied with Leonard D. White, Robert Horn and Leo Strauss. He was a Fulbright Scholar to the United Kingdom from 1953 to 1955 and also received research grants from the Rockefeller, Ford, and Relm Foundations and from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Herbert J. Storing (January 28, 1928 – September 9, 1977) was an American political scientist with broad ranging interests who is best known for reviving the serious study of the American Founding. The renowned constitutional theorist and American politics scholar Walter Berns called him "the most profound man I have encountered in the field of American studies."

Storing was born on January 29, 1928, in Ames, Iowa. His father, James A. Storing, was a professor, Provost and, for a time, acting president of Colgate University. He served in the U.S. Army after World War II, from 1946 to 1948.

Prior to Storing, 20th-century scholars tended to study the American Founding Fathers from the standpoint of historicism, contextualism, and ideological history. The approaches characterized the political thought of all of the founders as tethered to the extant practices and opinions of the late 18th and the early 19th centuries. Characteristic of that approach was Charles A. Beard’s 1913 book Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, which maintained that "the structure of the Constitution of the United States was motivated primarily by the personal financial interests of the Founding Fathers."

Relatedly, Storing articulated and developed Frederick Douglass’ critique of the constitutional theory that was (ironically) shared by the radical abolitionists—such as William Lloyd Garrison—and the defenders of slavery—such as Roger Brooke Taney. Following Douglass’ insights, Storing contended that while peripheral elements of the 1789 Constitution either maintained slavery—the "three-fifths clause" and the "fugitive slave clause"—or tacitly acknowledged it—the clause prohibiting the outlawing of the slave trade until after 1808—the core elements of the Constitution were progressively egalitarian.