Constitution Day

Constitution Day 2023

Albertus Magnus College 2023 Constitution Day Talk - Tuesday, September 19

Relic: The Federal Constitution in Comparative Perspective

Dr. Kevin Elliott
Lecturer in Ethics, Politics, and Economics
Yale University

The American experiment, begun in 1776 and continued by the 1787 Constitution, helped birth a new form of government: representative democracy. Yet, like most experiments, the American constitution wasn't perfect the first (or even second) time around. Despite their best efforts, the framers labored in ignorance of how the new representative institutions they were inventing would work in practice. We now have more than two centuries of experience with representative democracy that they lacked. In this lecture, Kevin J. Elliott suggests that the framers might have made different choices if they had known what we know about the importance of political parties, the dangers of presidential systems of government, and the pathologies of unchecked judicial power. The US Constitution in its current form is a relic, falling far short of the state of the art in what we expect from good democratic institutions. Continuing the American experiment in the spirit of the framers requires learning history's lessons about how we can improve the Constitution.

Tuesday, September 19th

12:30pm - 1:30pm
Tagliatela Atrium
Or watch the talk virtually
https://albertus-edu.zoom.us/j/89486077298

Kevin J. Elliott is a political scientist and Lecturer in Ethics, Politics, & Economics at Yale University. He received his PhD from Columbia University in 2015, a Master’s in Political Theory from the London School of Economics, and his BA from UCLA. His main research interests are in political theory, particularly democratic theory, and focus on the ethics of democratic citizenship, political epistemology, and the normative justification and design of political institutions.

Sponsored by the Department of History and Political Science

 


Constitution Day 2022

The 27th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was ratified on May 19th,
1992. However, the Amendment was first submitted to the states for ratification on
September 25th, 1789. In this talk, Dr. Endersby will discuss the strange 202-year history
of the amendment and what its story means for American Politics and the way that
political change can, and does, happen in this country.


Constitution Day 2021

The 2021 Constitution Day presentation will take place on Friday, September 17th at 12:oo pm. Our presenter, Dr. Cheng, will give a talk on: The Twenty-Sixth Amendment at Fifty:  Reflections on the Past, Present, and Possible Future of the Voting Age Amendment. The Twenty-Sixth Amendment, ratified in 1971, lowered the minimum voting age for state and federal elections from twenty-one to eighteen.  Dr. Cheng will trace the Amendment's long history, from its origins during World War II through the protests and upheaval of the Vietnam War era.  Dr. Cheng will also  discuss some of the consequences of reducing the voting age and will conclude with a few remarks on current Twenty-Sixth Amendment-related litigation and controversies.


Constitution Day 2020 Information

Dr. Christina Wolbrecht, Professor of Political Science, Director of the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy, and the C. Robert and Margaret Hanley Family Director of the Washington Program at the University of Notre Dame, has accepted our invitation to be our 2020 Constitution Day speaker.  In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, Dr. Hanley's presentation is entitled, Rhetoric & Reality: A Century of Votes for Women.  A description of the talk is as follows:

How did women use the ballot once they secured it? In this talk, Christina Wolbrecht discusses how women have voted--and how politicians, parties, and the press have understood women voters--in the first one hundred years after the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

The talk will take place on Tuesday, September 15th at 12:30 pm.  The talk will be presented virtually.  Additionally, the event will be aired in the Behan Community Room, and light refreshments will be available.  


Constitution Day 2019 Information

Professor Reva Siegel, the Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale Law School, has agreed to be our guest speaker to commemorate Constitution Day.  As stated on the Yale website, "Professor Siegel's writing 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."  You may learn more about Professor Siegel at: https://law.yale.edu/reva-siegel

This year marks the centennial anniversary of the 19th amendment:  The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.  Professor Siegel's talk will take this amendment as a starting-point for the development of her talk.  

The talk will take place on Thursday, September 26th at 11:15 am in the Tagliatela Center Atrium.  The talk is free and open to the public.

Constitution Day 2017

Wach YouTube Video >

Constitution Day 2016

To commemorate Constitution Day, this year the College is pleased to welcome Norman Siegel, J.D. who will deliver a presentation entitled, "Freedom of the Press: More Important Than Ever." Albertus Magnus College holds an educational speaking program to celebrate and honor Constitution Day annually.

Freedom of the Press: More Important Than Ever

Who is it?

What is it?

Why do we have it?

As part of our annual celebration of Constitution Day, Professor Michael Geary provided us with insight into these key questions during this pivotal election year.

Date: Thursday, September 22, 2016
Time: 11:15 a.m.
Place: Tagliatela Academic Center, Albertus Magnus College

Mr. Siegel is a partner in the law firm, Siegel Teitelbaum & Evans, LLC. A graduate of New York University’s School of Law, Mr. Siegel has had a long and distinguished career as a civil rights and civil liberties attorney. For fifteen years, he served as the Executive Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. To learn more about Mr. Siegel, go to: http://stellp.com/nsiegel.html

Constitution Day 2015

New Networking Opportunities: Career Conversations with Alumni 

UConn Professor Douglas Spencer, J.D. delivered this year's Constitution Day talk Tuesday, September 15, 2015 at 11:15 a.m. in the atrium of Tagliatela Academic Center. Professor Spencer's talk focused on the Voting Rights Act

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, and the Act has been the center of much discussion and controversy in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby vs. Holder. Learn more about Professor Spencer and this event here

Constitution Day 2014

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25TH TAGLIATELA ATRIUM 11:15AM 

Constitution Day 9/25- Thursday- 11:15 a.m. Tagliatela Academic Center Race, The Federal Constitution, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Speaker- Randall Kennedy 

GUEST SPEAKER: HARVARD PROFESSOR, RANDALL KENNEDY 

Constitution Day 2013

This year's Constitution Day speaker is Professor David A. Yalof, Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Connecticut. Professor Yalof received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He is the author of numerous articles and books including Pursuit of Justices: Presidential Politics and the Selection of Supreme Court Nominees (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), which was the winner of the American Political Science Association's Richard E. Neustadt Prize for the best book on the Presidency published in 1999. His most recent book is Prosecution Among Friends: Presidents, Attorney Generals, and Executive Wrongdoing (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2012).

The focus of Professor Yalof's Constitution Day talk will be an analysis of the Supreme Court's decisions regarding same-sex marriage and is entitled: "Same-Sex Marriage and the U.S. Constitution: Why Bad Analogies and False Comparisons Present the Greatest Threat of All".

Recently, Professor Yalof offered reflections in UCONN Today on the landmark Supreme Court decisions made in a single week this summer regarding voting rights, affirmative action, the defense of marriage act, and proposition 8.

Professor Yalof will speak on Thursday, September 26, 2013 at 11:15 am in the atrium of the Tagliatela Academic Center.

Randall Kennedy is Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School where he teaches courses on contracts, criminal law, and the regulation of race relations. He was born in Columbia, South Carolina. For his education he attended St. Albans School, Princeton University, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. He served as a law clerk for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the United States Court of Appeals and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court. . He is a member of the bar of the District of Columbia and the Supreme Court of the United States. Awarded the 1998 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for Race, Crime, and the Law, Mr Kennedy writes for a wide range of scholarly and general interest publications. His most recent books are For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law (2013), The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency (2011), Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal (2008), Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption (2003), Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (2002), The Persistence of the Color Line (2011) and For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law (2013). A member of the American Law Institute, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Association, Mr. Kennedy is also a Charter Trustee of Princeton University.

Constitution Day 2012

constitution day details from 2012 archive

Constitution Day 2010

The College's second event this fall to celebrate Constitution Day took place November 3 at noon in the St. Albert Atrium of the Tagliatela Academic Center.

Zaheer Ali, former project manager and senior researcher of the Malcolm X Project at Columbia University was the speaker.