The
Nineteenth Annual Program (2007-2008)
of the Symposium on Science, Reason, and Modern Democracy
and the LeFrak Forum
This
year's program will feature a lecture series on diverse
themes and a conference on the United States Supreme Court.
A. Lecture
Series:
Stephen
Biddle, Senior Fellow for Defense Policy, Council
on Foreign Relations, “US Strategy in Iraq,” Wednesday,
October 17, 8:00 pm, Lincoln Room, Kellogg Center. Dr.
Biddle has been a critic of the conduct of the war in
Iraq. His book, Military Power: Explaining
Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (2004), makes
major contributions to political science, military history,
social science methodology, and contemporary policy debates,
and has had a significant effect on thinking about military
policy. It received a number of major awards. Before
joining the CFR, Dr. Biddle taught at the US Army War
College.
Peter Feaver, Alexander F. Hehmeyer Professor of Political
Science and Public Policy, Duke University, and Director, The Triangle Institute
for Security Studies, “The ‘Surge’: the Politics of Wartime
Strategy,” Thursday, January 24, 8:00 pm, Lincoln Room, Kellogg Center. Professor
Feaver is one of the architects of the “surge." For the past two
years, he served as the Special Advisor for Strategic Planning and Institutional
Reform on the National Security Council Staff at the White House. He
has written widely on American foreign policy, nuclear proliferation, civil-military
relations, and US national security. His books include Choosing Your
Battles: American-Military Relations and the Use of Force (2004),
and Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations (new
edition, 2007).
Charles Butterworth, Professor of Government and Politics,
University of Maryland, College Park, “Islamic Political Philosophy and
Its Significance Today,” Tuesday, February 5, 8:00 pm, Big Ten Room C,
Kellogg Center. Professor Butterworth is a leading scholar of medieval
Islamic political philosophy. His publications include critical editions
of most of the middle commentaries by Averroes on Aristotle's logic and translations
of books and treatises by Averroes, Alfarabi, and Alrazi, as well as Maimonides. Professor
Butterworth is a graduate of Michigan State University. His lecture is
co-sponsored by The Muslim Studies Program and James Madison College.
David Blight, Class of 1954 Professor of American History,
and Director, Gilder-Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and
Abolition, Yale University, “Slaves No More: Newly Discovered Slave Narratives
and the Legacies of Emancipation,” March 19, 8:00 pm, Big Ten Room C,
Kellogg Center. Professor Blight is one of the foremost authorities on
the US Civil War and its legacies. His book Race and Reunion: The
Civil War in American Memory (2001) earned a number of awards, including
the Frederick Douglass Prize, the Lincoln Prize, three awards from the Organization
of American Historians, and the Bancroft Prize. His newest book, A
Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of
Emancipation, will be published shortly. Professor Blight is a graduate
of Michigan State University. His lecture is co-sponsored by James Madison
College.
Clifford
Orwin, Professor of Political Science, University
of Toronto, “Is Compassion Good?” Wednesday,
April 9, 8:00 pm, Lincoln Room, Kellogg Center. Professor
Orwin has written widely on ancient, modern, contemporary,
and Jewish political thought. He is also a regular
commentator on public affairs (in columns in Canada's
Globe and Mail and National Post). He is the author
of The Humanity of Thucydides (1994) and is
completing a book on the theory and practice of compassion.
Each guest will lead an informal follow-up seminar on the morning after his
lecture.
Conference: "The United States Supreme Court:
Contested Constitutional Doctrines," March 27-29, MSU
Union
After the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist, the retirement
of Justice O’Connor, and the debates over the confirmations
of their replacements, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice
Alito, the question of the place of the United States Supreme
Court in our constitutional structure is again near the top
of the nation’s political agenda. In the last
half-century - from Brown v. Board of Education to Roe v.
Wade to Bush v. Gore -- the Supreme Court has gradually assumed
an increasingly prominent and controversial place in American
political life. At least among party activists, few
questions today divide the Democratic Party from the Republican
Party more profoundly than the question of the proper tasks
of the Supreme Court, as protector of our liberties and constitutional
values and guardian of our constitutional design.
This conference is a sequel to one on "The Idea of Constitutionalism" sponsored
by the Symposium in January 2007. At that conference, we approached our
current political and intellectual ferment from some distance, considering the
idea of constitutionalism in comparative, historical, and philosophical perspective. The
principal papers were delivered by Lawrence Alexander, Leslie Friedman Goldstein,
Gary Jacobsohn, Steven Kautz, Benjamin Kleinerman, Rogers Smith, Nathan Tarcov,
Mark Tushnet, Keith Whittington, and Michael Zuckert.
At this conference, we will focus on the U.S. Supreme Court and examine a range
of controversies regarding evolving constitutional doctrines. There will
be a keynote address and five panels, each of which will examine a particular
area of constitutional controversy.
All sessions will be in the MSU Union. They are free and open to the public.
Keynote Speech: Thursday, March 27, 6:00 pm
Michael W. McConnell, Judge, 10th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals, and Presidential Professor of Law, S. J.
Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah. Judge
McConnell is one of the nation's most distinguished scholars of constitutional
law and theory, specializing in the religion clauses of the First Amendment. He
is the author of “The Origins and Historical Understanding of the Free
Exercise of Religion,” 103 Harvard Law Review (1990)). He is a Fellow
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he was sworn in as a judge
on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on January 3, 2003. He is a graduate
of Michigan State University’s James Madison College.
Principal Papers:
Equality & Liberty: Friday, March 28, 9:00-10:45 am
Reva Siegel, Deputy Dean, Yale Law School, and the Nicholas deB. Katzenbach
Professor of Law and Professor of American Studies at Yale University. Professor
Siegel’s research draws on legal history to explore questions of law and
inequality, and to analyze how courts interact with representative government
and popular movements in interpreting the Constitution. She is the author
of Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (with Brest, Levinson, Balkin & Amar)
and co-editor of Directions in Sexual Harassment Law (with MacKinnon).
Property: Friday, March 28, 11:15 am-1:00 pm
Ilya Somin, George Mason University School of Law. Professor Somin’s
research focuses on constitutional law, property law, and the study of popular
political participation and its implications for constitutional democracy. His
work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern
University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, and Critical Review. He
currently serves as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review and he is
a regular blogger on The Volokh Conspiracy.
Executive
Power: Friday, March 28, 2:45-4:30
pm
Patrick F. Philbin, Partner, Kirkland & Ellis. Mr.
Philbin has represented clients in cases in the federal
courts of appeals and the Supreme Court and has argued
before the International Court of Justice at The Hague. From
2001-2005, he served at the Department of Justice, including
as an Associate Deputy Attorney General, where Mr. Philbin
oversaw and managed the national security functions of
the Department, including espionage, counterterrorism,
and counterintelligence investigations and applications
for electronic surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act.
Religion: Saturday, March 29, 2008, 10:00 am - 12:15
pm
Lawrence Sager, John Jeffers Research Chair in Law, Alice
Jane Drysdale Sheffield Regents Chair, and Dean of the University of Texas
School of Law. Dean
Sager is one of the nation’s preeminent constitutional theorists. He
is the author of Religious Freedom and the Constitution (with Christopher Eisgruber)
and Justice in Plainclothes: A Theory of American Constitutional Practice.
Federalism, Saturday, March 29, 2:30-4:45 pm
Robert F. Nagel, Rothgerber Professor of
Constitutional Law, University of Colorado Law School. Professor Nagel’s research focuses on the relationship
between the judiciary (and its interpretation of the Constitution) and the wider
context of American political culture. He is the author of Constitutional
Cultures: The Mentality and Consequences of Judicial Review and The Implosion
of American Federalism. In 2003, he was elected a Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Discussants and other participants will include Walter
Berns, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute; Shikha
Dalmia, Senior Analyst,
Reason Foundation;
Werner J. Dannhauser, Senior Research Scholar Emeritus, The Symposium
and Adjunct Professor, Ursinus College; James
W. Ely, Milton R. Underwood Chair
in Free
Enterprise and Professor of Law and History, Vanderbilt University Law
School; Daniel Halberstam, University of Michigan Law School; Benjamin
Kleinerman, James Madison
College, Michigan State University; Harry
Litman,
Visiting Associate Professor,
Rutgers University; former U.S. Attorney, Western District of Pennsylvania; Vincent
Phillip Muñoz, Department of Political Science, Tufts University; Rogers
Smith, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science,
University
of Pennsylvania; James R. Stoner, Jr., Department of Political Science, Louisiana
State University; and Judd Owen, Department of Political Science, Emory University.
The
lecture series and conference are supported, in part, by
a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
|
