September 8, 2006
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417
AMHERST, Mass.—The Colloquium on the Constitution and the Imagining of America will convene its semiannual meeting at Amherst College to discuss “Imagining a New Constitution for the United States in the 21st Century” on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 15 and 16. The guest speakers will be Geoffrey Stone, professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School; John Podesta, the director of the Center for American Progress; Kathleen Sullivan, professor of law at Stanford Law School; Nan Aron, the director of the Alliance for Justice; and Jeffrey Rosen, professor of law at George Washington University School of Law. Sponsored by the Amherst College Colloquium on the Constitution and the Imagining of America and by Smith College, all events will take place in the Amherst College Alumni House and are free and open to the public.
At 3:30 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 15, Martha Umphrey, associate professor of law, jurisprudence and social thought at Amherst College, will open the colloquium. At 4 p.m. Austin Sarat, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst, will introduce Geoffrey Stone, who will speak on “Civil Liberties in Wartime: In Search of a 21st Century Constitution.”
At 9 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 16, Carleen Basler, assistant professor of American studies and sociology at Amherst, will introduce Kathleen Sullivan, who will speak on “Separating 21st Century Powers.” At 11 a.m. Tom Dumm, professor of political science at Amherst, will introduce Nan Aron, who will speak on “Judicial Selection in the 21st Century: Is the Advice and Consent Clause Working?” At 2 p.m. Catherine Ciepiela, professor of Russian, will introduce Jeffrey Rosen, who will speak on “Constitutional Futurology: How the Courts Can Serve America in 2025.” At 4 p.m. Dumm will moderate a roundtable among all the guests and participants on “Imagining a New Constitution for the 21st Century.”
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