Constitution Day

Handwriting the Constitution

Dates: September 17-18
Location: Reed Library, Events Space
Open to the Public
Activity: paper, pen, and space will be provided to handwrite the U.S. Constitution. Resulting
copies may be posted on the wall.
Display: Student posters on modes of Constitutional interpretation.

Artist Morgan O’Hara brought paper and sharpies to the New York Public Library main reading room, and began copying the Constitution. Others joined in. The idea is that the process of copying a document, something they used to do in grammar schools, helps you experience the words more closely and enhances comprehension and understanding. We follow this idea with a supplies and a space for copying. The copies may be posted on nearby walls.

Reading the text is essential to understanding the Constitution. However, it is only a first step. There are a variety of interpretative techniques, or modalities, that have been employed by judges, justices, and scholars of the Constitution. Students of American Constitution Law and Civil Rights and Liberties will produce posters explaining and illustrating each of the modalities of interpretation. They show how they have been used in the past, and why they are crucial to understanding our Constitution today. These eight posters will accompany the event.

For background, see: NY Times: The Constitution, By Hand

"Are Trump's Actions Constitutional? Immigration, Judicial Independence, and
Democratic Institutions"

Guest Speaker: Anna O. Law, Herbert Kurz Chair of Constitutional Rights Political Science, CUNY Brooklyn College
Date: September 18
Time: 3:00-4:30 pm
Location: Williams Center S-204 ABC
Open to the Public

Anna Law holds the Herbert Kurz Chair in Constitutional Rights. Her publications appear in both social science and law journals and investigate the interaction between law, legal institutions and politics. Her first book, The Immigration Battle in American Courts (Cambridge University Press 2010), examined the role of the federal judiciary in U.S. immigration policy, and the institutional evolution of the Supreme Court and U.S. Courts of Appeals. Law is a former program analyst at the bipartisan, blue-ribbon United States Commission on Immigration Reform. She has shared her expertise with the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Department of Homeland Security and National Science Foundation. In 2007, she appeared as a recurring narrator with other academic experts and two Supreme Court justices in the PBS award winning documentary. Her current projects include a second book on immigration federalism and slavery, and National Science Foundation funded research on gender & asylum.

Calling a Constitutional Convention in New York: The Process and the Issues

Guest Speaker: Peter Galie, Professor Emeritus, Canisius College, and co-editor of New York's Broken Constitution: The Governance Crisis and the Path to Renewed Greatness
Date: October 3
Time: 3:30 - 4:50 pm
Location: The Garden at Reed

This talk is part of the Democracy 101 series. 
 

For more information, contact chausovs@fredonia.edu