Amending Americas Unwritten Constitution

Amending America's Unwritten Constitution

The Institute for Liberal Arts at md传媒国产剧 College with support of The University of Texas Law School welcome faculty and graduate students to Conference on Amending America鈥檚 Unwritten Constitution Convened by Richard Albert (Texas) Ryan C. Williams (md传媒国产剧 College) Yaniv Roznai (IDC).

Recent constitutional scholarship reveals renewed interest in how unwritten constitutional norms and conventions underlying U.S. constitutional practice can and do change. This conference aims to advance the field by focusing on theoretical, conceptual, and practical questions concerning what it means to 鈥渁mend鈥 America鈥檚 鈥渦nwritten constitution鈥 (including what has been called the 鈥渟mall-c constitution鈥), how the 鈥渦nwritten constitution鈥 can be amended if at all, and who the relevant constitutional actors are in catalyzing and concretizing these changes."

The Conference will take place at: Stokes Hall South, Room S195, md传媒国产剧 College,听307 Beacon St., Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, on md传媒国产剧 College's Chestnut Hill Campus.

Schedule of Events
Location: Stokes Hall South, Rm S195


May 16, 2019

Time听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听

Session Information

9:00am

Welcoming Remarks

9:15am

Plenary Lecture

The Unwritten Constitutions of the United States

听(Maryland)

10:15am

Break

10:30am

Plenary Lecture

Enumerating Amendments

听(Texas)

11:30am

Break

11:45am

Plenary Lecture

Unwritten State Constitutions?: In Search of a Constitutional Audience

听(Wisconsin)

12:45pm

Luncheon Keynote Lecture

Amending an Unwritten Constitution: Comparative Perspectives

Mark Tushnet听(Harvard)

2:15pm

Plenary Lecture

Circumventing the 鈥淯nwritten鈥 Constitution

听(Illinois)

3:15pm

Break

3:30辫尘鈥5:00辫尘

Concurrent Panels

Chairs: Mark Graber and Sandy Levinson

Chairs: Vik Amar and Carolyn Shapiro

Chair: Miriam Seifter听

May 17, 2019

Time听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听

Session Information

9:00am

Plenary Lecture

The Unwritten Foundations of (All) Written Constitutions

听(Virginia)

10:00am

Break

10:15am

Plenary Lecture

The Courts鈥 Role in Unwritten Amendments

听(Chicago-Kent)
11:15am

Break

11:30am

Plenary Lecture

The Role of the People in Unwritten Amendment

听(Johns Hopkins)
12:30pm

Lunch

2:00pm

Concurrent Panels

Chair: Frederick Schauer

Chair: Emily Zackin

Chair:听Mark Tushnet

3:30pm

Break

3:45辫尘鈥4:30辫尘

Closing Plenary Session

Keynote Lecturers

 VIKRAM AMAR

VIKRAM AMAR

Dean and Iwan Foundation Professor of Law听
University of Illinois College of Law听

Dean Amar became dean at the Illinois College of Law in 2015, after having been a professor for many years at law schools in the University of California System. He is one of the most eminent and frequently cited authorities in constitutional law, federal courts, and civil procedure. He has produced several books and over 50 articles in leading law reviews. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Yale Law School, and served as a law clerk to Associate Justice Harry Blackmun of the Supreme Court. He writes a monthly column for听AboveTheLaw.com听and a biweekly column for听Justia.com


MARK GRABER

MARK GRABER

University System of Maryland Regents Professor
University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law

Mark A. Graber is the Regents Professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law.听 He writes on constitutional law, constitutional theory, constitutional development and pretty much any other topic on which "constitution" is used as an adjective.听 He may be best known for Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil (Cambridge 2006), "The Non-Majoritarian Problem," 7 Studies in American Political Development 35 (1993), and for far too many posts on various listservs.


SANDY LEVINSON

SANDY LEVINSON

W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law
The University of Texas Law School

Sanford Levinson, W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood Jr. Centennial Chair in Law at the University of Texas Law School and Professor of Government, University of Texas at Austin, is the author of over 350 articles and book reviews in professional and popular journals, as well as a regular contributor to popular blog Balkinization. His most recent book is Framed: America鈥檚 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance (2012). He was elected the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association in 2010.


FREDERICK SCHAUER

FREDERICK SCHAUER

David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Virginia School of Law

Frederick Schauer is David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia and Fran Stanton Professor of the First Amendment, Emeritus, at Harvard University.听 He is the author of听The Law of Obscenity听(BNA 1976),听Free Speech: A Philosophical Enquiry听(Cambridge 1982),听Playing By the Rules: A Philosophical Investigation of Rule-Based Decision-Making in Law and in Life听(Clarendon/Oxford 1991),听Profiles, Probabilities, and Stereotypes(Harvard 2003),听Thinking Like a Lawyer: A New Introduction to Legal Reasoning听(Harvard 2009), and听The Force of Law听(Harvard 2015).


MIRIAM SEIFTER

MIRIAM SEIFTER

Assistant Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School

Miriam Seifter's research and teaching interests include administrative law, federalism, state and local government law, energy law, and property law. Her recent work focuses on executive power and the separation of powers at the state level, and on the role of states and interest groups in the federal regulatory process. Her publications appear or are forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, the NYU Law Review, the UCLA Law Review, and the Virginia Law Review, among others. In 2017, UW Law students honored Professor Seifter with the Classroom Teacher of the Year Award, and in 2018, she received one of twelve Distinguished Teaching Awards from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For her article Gubernatorial Administration, Seifter was named the 2017 winner of the American Constitution Society's Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law. Professor Seifter received a B.A. magna cum laude from Yale University, an M.Sc. with distinction from Oxford University, and a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was the Environmental Fellow and an Articles Editor on the Harvard Law Review. After law school, she served as a law clerk for Chief Judge Merrick Garland on the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Supreme Court of the United States. Prior to joining the UW Law faculty, she was a Visiting Researcher and Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and worked in private practice at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP in San Francisco.


CAROLYN SHAPIRIO

CAROLYN SHAPIRIO

Associate Professor of Law and IIT, Chicago-Kent College of Law & Co-Director, Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States (ISCOTUS)

Professor Shapiro is the founder and co-director of Chicago-Kent's听听(ISCOTUS). Her scholarship largely focuses on the Supreme Court, its relationship to other courts and institutions, and its role in our constitutional democracy, as well as on other structural constitutional law issues. Her work has appeared in a variety of law reviews. From 2014 through mid-2016, Professor Shapiro took a leave of absence from Chicago-Kent to serve as Illinois solicitor general. She has argued cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Seventh Circuit, the Illinois Supreme Court, and the Illinois Appellate Courts.


MARK TUSHNET

MARK TUSHNET

William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Mark Tushnet is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.听 He is the co-author of four casebooks, including the most widely used casebook on constitutional law, has written numerous books, including a two-volume work on the life of Justice Thurgood Marshall and, most recently, Advanced Introduction to Free Expression, and has edited several others. He was President of the Association of American Law Schools in 2003.听 In 2002 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.


EMILY ZACKIN

EMILY ZACKIN

Assistant Professor of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University

Emily Zackin is Assistant Professor at the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences at Johns Hopkins University.听 Professor Zackin is the author of Looking for Rights in All the Wrong Places: Why State Constitutions Contain America鈥檚 Positive Rights (Princeton University Press, 2013), which focuses on three political movements that added positive rights to state constitutions. She spent the 2016-7 academic year as a member in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Her current book project focuses on the role of debt and debtors' movements in American constitutional and political development.


Convenors

RICHARD ALBERT

RICHARD ALBERT

William Stamps Farish Professor of Law, The University of Texas LawSchool

Richard Albert is the William Stamps Farish Professor of Law at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of 鈥淐onstitutional Amendments: Making, Breaking, and Changing Constitutions鈥 (Oxford University Press, 2019). His scholarship on constitutional amendment has been translated into Chinese, French, Hungarian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. A former law clerk to the Chief Justice of Canada, he holds degrees in law and political science from Yale, Oxford and Harvard.


RYAN C. WILLIAMS

RYAN C. WILLIAMS

Assistant Professor of Law, md传媒国产剧 College

Ryan Williams is an Assistant Professor at md传媒国产剧 College Law School, where he teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, constitutional history, civil procedure, and the law of the federal courts. Before joining md传媒国产剧 College, he was a Sharswood Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School from 2011 to 2013, and an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School from 2013 to 2016.


YANIV ROZNAI

YANIV ROZNAI

Senior Lecturer, Harry Radzyner Law School
Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya

Dr. Yaniv Roznai is a Senior Lecturer at the Harry Radzyner School of Law, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya. He holds a PhD and LL.M from the LSE. Yaniv is the Co-Founding Chair of the Israeli Association of Legislation, and an elected board member and former secretary of the Israeli Association of Public Law. His book, 鈥淯nconstitutional Constitutional Amendments - The Limits of Amendment Powers鈥 was published in 2017 with Oxford University Press, and was awarded the Inaugural ICONS Book Prize. Yaniv is also the winner of the 2018 Israeli Association of Public Law Gorni Prize for Young Researchers.



The Conference will take place at:

Stokes Hall South, Room S195
md传媒国产剧 College,听307 Beacon St.
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467

(On md传媒国产剧 College's Chestnut Hill Campus.)

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