Town Hall

For Debate: Should the Constitution Be More Democratic?

September 19, 2019

Recent calls to reform or amend the Electoral College as well as constitutional battles from redistricting to voting rights, have raised the question of whether the U.S. constitutional system of representative democracy is too democratic or not democratic enough. Leading constitutional scholars Randy Barnett and Vikram Amar join Center President and CEO Jeffrey Rosen to debate.

This program is generously sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation.
 


Participants

  • Randy Barnett is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he directs the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. He has published 11 books and over 100 articles and reviews, including a forthcoming new book and video series, An Introduction to Constitutional Law: 100 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know, co-authored with Josh Blackman.
     
  • Vikram Amar is Dean of the University of Illinois College of Law. He has produced several books, over 60 articles in leading law reviews, and is a co-author (along with Akhil Reed Amar and Steven Calabresi) of the upcoming edition of the six volume Treatise on Constitutional Law. He writes a biweekly column on constitutional matters for Justia.com and a monthly column on legal education for abovethelaw.com. Amar is also an elected member of the American Law Institute.
     
  • Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
     

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