1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
For more than fifty years, Walter Berns has analyzed the American constitutional order with insight and profundity. It is only fitting that as we mark this year’s Constitution Day—September 17, the day thirty-nine members of the Constitutional Convention signed the draft constitution—we examine his work on the meaning of the Constitution and the American regime it supports. At this event, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia will give opening remarks in celebration of the Constitution, and Leon R. Kass (Madden-Jewett Chair, AEI), Jeremy A. Rabkin (Professor, George Mason University School of Law), and Christopher Demuth (D.C. Searle Senior Fellow, AEI) will discuss Walter Berns’s lasting contribution to constitutional studies.
Registration and Luncheon
12:30 PM
Introduction:
ARTHUR BROOKS, AEI
12:40 PM
Opening Remarks:
ANTONIN SCALIA, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
1:00 PM
Discussion Panel:
LEON R. KASS, AEI
JEREMY A. RABKIN, George Mason University School of Law
CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH, AEI
Moderator:
GARY SCHMITT, AEI
2:00 PM
Adjournment
For more information, please contact Barrett Bowdre at barrett.bowdre@aei.org, 202.862. 5946.
For media inquiries, please contact Véronique Rodman at vrodman@aei.org, 202.862.4871.
Antonin Scalia is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Born in Trenton, New Jersey, he married Maureen McCarthy and has nine children: Ann Forrest, Eugene, John Francis, Catherine Elisabeth, Mary Clare, Paul David, Matthew, Christopher James and Margaret Jane. He received his A.B. from Georgetown University and the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and his LL.B. from Harvard Law School and was a Sheldon Fellow of Harvard University (1960–61). He was in private practice in Cleveland, Ohio (1961–67); a professor of law at the University of Virginia (1967–71); a professor of law at the University of Chicago (1977–82); and a visiting professor of law at Georgetown University and Stanford University. Justice Scalia was chairman of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law (1981–82) and its Conference of Section Chairmen (1982–83). He served the federal government as general counsel of the Office of Telecommunications Policy (1971–72), chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States (1972–74), and assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel (1974–77). He was appointed judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1982. President Reagan nominated him as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat September 26, 1986.
Jeremy Rabkin is a professor of law at the George Mason University School of Law. Before joining the faculty in June 2007, he was a professor of government at Cornell University for 27 years. Mr. Rabkin is a renowned scholar in international law and was recently confirmed by the US Senate as a member of the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of Peace. His full-length books include Law Without Nations? (Princeton University Press, 2005), The Case for Sovereignty (AEI Press, 2004), Why Sovereignty Matters (AEI Press, 1998) and Judicial Compulsions: How Public Law Distorts Public Policy (Basic Books, 1989). He also co-edited (with L. Gordon Crovitz) The Fettered Presidency, Legal Limitations and the Conditions of Responsible Policymaking (AEI Press 1989). He also has written numerous chapters in edited books, articles in academic journals and essays.
Christopher DeMuth was president of AEI from December 1986 through December 2008. Previously, he was administrator for information and regulatory affairs in the Office of Management and Budget and executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief in the Reagan administration; taught economics, law and regulatory policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; practiced regulatory, antitrust and general corporate law; and worked on urban and environmental policy in the Nixon White House.
Gary J. Schmitt is the director of the Program on Advanced Strategic Studies at AEI and the director of AEI's program on American citizenship. Mr. Schmitt is a former staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He was executive director of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board during President Ronald Reagan's second term. Mr. Schmitt's work focuses on longer-term strategic issues that will affect America's security at home and its ability to lead abroad. His books include Of Men and Materiel: The Crisis in Military Resources (AEI Press, 2007), to which he was a contributing author and editor with Tom Donnelly; Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence (Brassey’s, 2002), coauthored with Abram Shulsky and now in its third edition; and U.S. Intelligence at the Crossroads: Agendas for Reform (Brassey’s, 1995), a co-edited volume to which he is a contributing author. His two most recent books, to which he is also editor and contributing author, are The Rise of China: Essays on the Future Competition (Encounter Books, May 2009) and Safety, Liberty and Islamist Terrorism: American and European Approaches to Domestic Counterterrorism
(AEI Press, 2010).
