Clough Center Lectures 2009-2010
FALL 2009
James W. Ely Jr., “What Ever Happened to the Contract Clause?” Wednesday, September 30, 4:30 p.m., Gasson 305. Open to the public.
Luncheon Seminar, co-co-sponsored by the Federalist Society, "Eminent Domain Reform After Kelo," with James W. Ely, Thursday, October 1, 12:30 p.m. (by invitation)
James W. Ely, Jr. is the Milton R. Underwood Professor of Law and Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. Ely is the author of numerous articles and many books, including The Bill of Rights in Modern America (Indiana University Press, 2nd ed. 2008) (with David Bodenhamer), The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court (Oxford University Press, 2nd edition 2005)(with Kermit L. Hall, Joel B. Grossman, and William M. Wiecek), The Oxford Companion to American Law (Oxford University Press, 2002)(with Kermit Hall, David S. Clark, Joel B. Grossman, and N.E.H. Hull), The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights (Oxford University Press, 3rd ed. 2008), and The Chief Justiceship of Melville W. Fuller, 1888-1910 (University of South Carolina Press, 1995). From 1987-1999, he was editor of the American Journal of Legal History.
Marc F. Plattner, “Pluralism, Populism, and Liberal Democracy,” Thursday, October 22, 4:30 p.m., McGuinn 121. Open to the public.
Luncheon seminar with Marc Plattner, Friday, October 23, 12-1:45 p.m., McElroy Conference Room. (by invitation)
Marc F. Plattner is the editor of the Journal of Democracy, a quarterly publication that addresses the problems and prospects of democracy around the world. He is currently director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies, and vice-president for research and studies at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), where he served as director of program from 1984 to 1989. Plattner is the author of many articles and books, including How People View Democracy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)(with Larry Diamond), Democracy Without Borders? Global Challenges to Liberal Democracy (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), Electoral Systems and Democracy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006)(with Larry Diamond), World Religions and Democracy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005)(with Larry Diamond and Philip Costopoulos), and Human Rights in Our Time (Westview Press, 1984).
Aurelian Craiutu, Harvey Mansfield, Cheryl Welch, and R. Shep Melnick: Book roundtable discussing Craiutu’s Tocqueville's Views on America after 1840: Letters and Other Writings (Cambridge University Press, 2009)(with Jeremy Jennings), November 9, 4:30 p.m., Heights Room (Corcoran Commons). Open to the public.
Luncheon seminar with Aurelian Craiutu and Vlad Perju on ongoing revisions to the Romanian Constitution, Monday, November 9, 12-1:45 p.m., McGuinn 521. Craiutu is chair of the Commission revising the Romanian Constitution, and Perju serves on that Commission. RSVP Required.
Aurelian Craiutu is associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, and an affiliate scholar at the University’s Russian and East European Institute, The WEST European Studies Institute, and the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. In 2008-2009, he was a Member of School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2008-2009). Professor Craiutu's research interests include French political and social thought (Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Constant, Madame de Staël, Guizot, Raymond Aron), varieties of liberalism and conservatism, democratic theory as well as theories of transition to democracy and democratic consolidation in Eastern Europe. He is the editor of two new volumes on Alexis de Tocqueville, Tocqueville's Views on America after 1840: Letters and Other Writings (Cambridge University Press, 2009)(with Jeremy Jennings) and Conversations with Tocqueville (Lexington Books, 2009)(with Sheldon Gellar). He is also the editor of America through European Eyes (Penn State University Press, 2009) (with Jeffrey C. Isaac) exploring not only Tocqueville’s take on 18th century America, but also the works of lesser-known French and British thinkers.
Cheryl Welch is visiting professor and director of Undergraduate Studies in the Government Department at Harvard University. Her teaching and research interests are in the areas of the history of political thought, the philosophy of the social sciences, liberal and democratic theory, constitutional jurisprudence, and human rights. She is the author of Liberty and Utility: The French Ideologues and the Transformation of Liberalism (Columbia University Press, 1984), Critical Issues in Social Theory (Academic Press, 1989)(with M. Milgate), De Tocqueville (Oxford University Press, 2001), and numerous articles in journals and collective volumes. She is also the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he studies and teaches political philosophy. He is the author of numerous books, covering topics of political philosophy from Burke to Machiavelli. With his late wife Delba Winthrop, he is the translator of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (University of Chicago, 1996) and author of Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2007). Professor Mansfield was chairman of the Harvard University Government Department from 1973-1977, has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships, and has been a Fellow at the National Humanities Center. He has won the Joseph R. Levenson award for his teaching at Harvard, received the Sidney Hook Memorial award from the National Association of Scholars, and, in 2004, the National Humanities Medal was bestowed on him at the White House by the president of the United States.
R. Shep Melnick is the Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr. Professor of American Politics at Boston College. He teaches a variety of courses on American politics, including Democracy in America (the centerpiece of which is a careful reading of Tocqueville’s book by the same name), Courts and Public Policy, Ideas and Institutions in American Politics, Bureaucracy, Rights in Conflict, and the American politics graduate field seminar. His research and writing focuses on the intersection of law and politics. His first book, Regulation and the Courts (Brookings Institution Press, 1983), examined judicial influence on the development of environmental policy. His second, Between the Lines (Brookings Institution Press, 1994), investigated the ways in which statutory interpretation has shaped a variety of entitlement programs. His current research project looks at how the Rehnquist Court is reshaping our governing institutions. Melnick is co-chair of the Harvard Program on Constitutional Government and a past president of the New England Political Science Department. Before coming to Boston College in 1997 he had taught at Harvard University and served as chair of the Political Science Department at Brandeis University.
Vlad Perju is assistant professor of Law at Boston College Law School. The author of several articles, Perju specializes in comparative constitutional law, constitutional theory, global constitutionalism, and social and political philosophy. In 2008, he was appointed by the president of Romania to a commission (chaired by Aurelian Craiutu) to analyze Romania’s current constitutional regime, and study possible constitutional reforms.
Danièle Hervieu-Léger, "Secularization and Contemporary Religious Renewal in Europe," Monday, November 16, 2009, 12-1:30 p.m., McGuinn 3rd floor lounge. RSVP Required. RSVP to Clough.Center@bc.edu
Danièle Hervieu-Léger is the director of studies at l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. She is the former head of France’s Centre National de la Récherche Scientifique, and, from 1993-2004, was director of the French center for interdisciplinary studies on religions and the editor in chief of the international journal, Archives de Sciènces Sociales des Réligions. An eminent scholar of the sociology of religions, Hervieu-Léger has devoted a significant part of her research to the theoretical interpretation of religion’s modern manifestations, including secularization, individualization of belief, forms of religiosity and of communalization and institutional transformations. Her studies have also concentrated on modernity’s transmission, conversion and formation of religious identities. Her most recent works concentrate on the process of dislocation and the remodeling of the Christian cultural matrix of European societies. Hervieu-Léger has been awarded the decoration of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honor) for her academic achievement. Danièle Hervieu-Léger has published over two hundred articles and sixteen books that have been translated into several languages, including the following works in French, with a literal translation of each title provided: La religion en miettes ou la question des sectes (Religion’s Break-up, or the Question of Sects) (Calmann-Lévy, 2001), Sociologies et religion, Approches classiques (Sociologies and Religion, Classic Approaches) (University Press in France, 2001), and Catholicisme, La fin d'un monde (Catholicism, the End of a World) (Bayard, 2003), Religion as a Chain of Memory (Rutgers University Press, 2000).
James Q. Wilson, "Thinking About Crime, Again - What Have We Learned?" Monday, November 16, 2009, 4:45 p.m., Higgins 310.
Allan C. Hutchinson, "Tensions Between Democracy and Constitutionalism." Luncheon Seminar, Tuesday, November 17, 2009, 12:00. Barat House, First Floor (Boston College Law School)
A member of the Osgoode Hall Law School faculty since 1982, Professor Hutchinson is one of Canada’s most prominent legal theorists. As well as publishing in most of the common-law world's leading law journals, he has written or edited many books. Much of his work has been devoted to examining the failure of law to live up to its democratic promise. His latest publications are: Evolution and the Common Law (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and The Companies We Keep: Corporate Governance for a Democratic Society (Irwin Law, 2006). He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 2004 and named a Distinguished Research Professor by York University in 2006. In 2007, he received the University-wide Teaching Award and was a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School.
SPRING 2010
Jean-Louis Bruguière, “Transatlantic Cooperation to Fight Against Terror,” Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière is one of France’s foremost counter-terrorism officials. He is at the forefront of the formulation and prosecution of global counter-terrorism measures, particularly as they relate to joint French-U.S. initiatives. For more than 20 years, Bruguière has headed the Counter-terrorism Unit of the Paris District Court. In that capacity, he has investigated hundreds of suspected terrorists, including the notorious “Carlos the Jackal” (1994). Bruguière is credited with helping foil terrorist plots against the World Cup in 1998 and Strasbourg Cathedral in 2000. He tried to warn the United States of the threat al Qaeda posed prior to September 11. His counter-terrorism methods have sometimes provoked controversy, including his liberal use of search warrants and wiretaps. He is popularly known in France as “le Sheriff.”
Bernard Bailyn, “How Historians Get it Wrong: The American Constitution, for Example,” March 9, 2010
Bernard Bailyn is the Adams University Professor and James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History, emeritus, at Harvard University. He also serves as a senior fellow in the Society of Fellows and is the director of the International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World. His historical work centers on early American history, the American Revolution, and the Anglo-American world in the pre-industrial era. From 1962-1970, he served as editor-in-chief of the John Harvard Library. From 1967-1977, and 1984-1986, he was editor of the journal Perspectives in American History. Bailyn was director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History from 1983 to 1994. Bernard Bailyn is the author many books, including The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967), which won both the Pulitzer Prize in History and the Bancroft Prize (1968), The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1974), which won the National Book Award in History (1975), and Voyagers to the West (Knopf, 1986), which won the Pulitzer Prize in History, the Saloutos Award of the Immigration History Society, and distinguished book awards from the Society of Colonial Wars and the Society of the Cincinnati. He is the editor of numerous volumes including Pamphlets of the American Revolution (Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1965), the first volume of which was awarded the Faculty Prize of the Harvard University Press. He holds numerous honorary degrees, he received the Thomas Jefferson Medal, the Henry Allen Moe Prize of the American Philosophical Society, the medal of the Foreign Policy Association for his work on the International Seminar on Atlantic History, the Bruce Catton Prize of the Society of American Historians for lifetime achievement in the writing of history, the Centennial Medal of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and in 2004 the Kennedy Medal of the Massachusetts Historical Society. In 1998, he delivered the first Millennium Lecture at the White House, attended by the President and the First Lady of the United States.
Kristi Anderson, “The Integration of Immigrants into the Civic and Political Life of Five U.S. Cities.” Wednesday, February 17th, 2010.
Kristi Andersen is the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor and Maxwell Professor of Teaching Excellence at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University. She is an expert on women and politics, political parties, and American political history. Her recent research, which is sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation, focuses on how political parties and other civic organizations incorporate immigrants into American political life. Andersen’s other publications focus on various aspects of the gender gap, civic participation, the prospects for electing more women to Congress, and the changing meanings of U.S. elections. Her book After Suffrage: Women in Partisan and Electoral Politics Before the New Deal (University of Chicago Press, 1996) won the American Political Science Association’s Victoria Schuck Award for the best book published on women and politics. Her earlier book, The Creation of a Democratic Majority, 1928-1936 (University of Chicago Press, 1979) has been influential in shaping our thinking about the significance and the scope of the New Deal realignment.
Michael Gerhardt, “The Constitutional Significance of Forgotten U.S. Presidents.” March 18, 2010;
Luncheon seminar on Gerhardt’s experience advising Senator Patrick Leahy on the Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination, March 19, 2010 (by invitation)
Michael J. Gerhardt is the Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor in Constitutional Law and the director of the Center for Law and Government at the University of North Carolina Law School, Chapel Hill. He is the author of several books, including The Power of Precedent (Oxford University Press, 2008), and the second editions of The Federal Appointments Process: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis (Duke University Press, 2003), and The Federal Impeachment Process: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis (University of Chicago Press, 2000). Professor Gerhardt is currently working on a book, titled The Constitutional Significance of the Forgotten Presidents, to be published by Yale University Press. He recently served as special counsel to U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy and the Senate Judiciary Committee for the hearings concerning the appointment of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Gerhardt has a long history of providing expert advice to both Congress and the media on such topics as the impeachment of President Clinton, the constitutionality of the Senate filibuster, and the Alito Supreme Court nomination.
Conference, Spring 2010
"Obama and Executive Power: The Case of National Security" April 9, 2010.
Participants will include Akhil Reed Amar, Gabriella Blum, Benjamin Wittes, Timothy Crawford, Mara Liasson, James Q. Wilson, George Brown, Marc Landy, Hugh Heclo, and Daniel Kanstroom.
(organized by Marc Landy, Political Science Department, Boston College, and George Brown, Boston College Law School)
Junior Fellows Conference, Georgetown University (Spring 2010)
Co-sponsored by the Clough Center, the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University and the Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American Democracy.
BOSTON AREA PUBLIC LAW WORKSHOP
The Clough Center Public Law Workshop provides a venue for public law scholars and graduate students from Boston College and other Boston-area colleges and universities to meet periodically throughout the academic year and discuss work in progress.
The Workshop is organized by Professor R. Shep Melnick (BC) (melnicrs@bc.edu) and Tom Burke (Wellesley) (tburke@wellesley.edu).
Schedule
Fall 2009
Michael Greve, American Enterprise Institute, “Conservatives and the Courts,” Tuesday, October 13, 2009.
Lynn Mather, professor of Law and Political Science, University of Buffalo, “Rethinking Lawyer Fidelity,” Wednesday, November 11, 2009.
Clough Center Lectures 2008-2009
Boston Area Legal Events
Boston College Law School events calendar
Boston College Legal History Roundtable
Elizabeth Battelle Clark Legal History Series at Boston University Law School
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Harvard Law School Faculty Workshop
Harvard Law School Legal History Colloquium
Harvard Law School Public Law Workshop
Northeastern University School of Law events calendar