A discussion of the Constitution and the Courts at the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, presented in partnership with the Federal Judicial Center. The discussion includes a panel on interpreting the Constitution in the Founding Era featuring Akhil Reed Amar, Christopher Bonner, and Gerald F. Leonard moderated by Thomas Donnelly, lead scholar at the National Constitution Center. Following the panel is a discussion on the Constitution and the courts with Kevin Arlyck moderated by Julie Silverbrook, chief content and learning officer at the National Constitution Center.
This program is presented in partnership with the Federal Judicial Center.
Video
Participants
Akhil Reed Amar is the Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law at both Yale College and Yale Law School. He is the host of the Amarica’s Constitution podcast and has been cited by U.S. Supreme Court justices across the ideological spectrum in over 40 cases. A leading scholar of constitutional law and history, he is the author of numerous landmark works, including his most recent book, Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840-1920.
Kevin Arlyck is professor of law and associate dean at Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches civil procedure, federal courts, and legal history. His scholarship investigates the federal courts’ early history, with a particular focus on their involvement in national governance between ratification of the Constitution and the Civil War. He is the author of The Nation at Sea: The Federal Courts and American Sovereignty, 1789-1825. Previously, Arlyck clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Judge Robert Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He also held academic fellowships at Columbia Law and NYU School of Law, and spent several years in private practice at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe in New York.
Christopher Bonner is associate professor of history at the University of Maryland. He specializes in African American history and the 19th-century United States. Bonner’s first book, Remaking the Republic: Black Politics and the Creation of American Citizenship, was published in 2020 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. He is currently at work on a project examining how enslaved people navigated commercial networks as they sought to purchase freedom in the early 19th century.
Thomas Donnelly is lead scholar at the National Constitution Center. Prior to joining the Center in 2016, he served as counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, as a Climenko Fellow and lecturer on law at Harvard Law School, and as a law clerk for Judge Thomas Ambro on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Gerald F. Leonard is professor of law at Boston University Law School and a leading historian of American constitutionalism. He is the author of two books: The Partisan Republic: Democracy, Exclusion, and the Fall of the Founders’ Constitution, 1780s-1830s and The Invention of Party Politics: Federalism, Popular Sovereignty, and Constitutional Development in Jacksonian Illinois. Previously, Leonard clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter and for the Judge J. Dickson Phillips, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Julie Silverbrook is chief content and learning officer at the National Constitution Center, where she leads the strategy, development, and delivery of the Center’s content, public programs, and educational initiatives, advancing its mission of nonpartisan constitutional education and civil dialogue. She oversees the creation of public-facing constitutional content and works to ensure the Center’s programs, scholarly engagement, and educational resources operate as a coordinated national strategy serving students, educators, families, and lifelong learners across the country.
Additional Resources
- Annotated Declaration of Independence, National Constitution Center
- Interactive Constitution, National Constitution Center
- The Promise of America: Reflections on Our Enduring Ideals
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