This year’s Constitution Day Debate at 51 will feature Gary Lawson, Philip S. Beck Professor of law at Boston University, and Julian Davis Mortenson, James G. Phillipp Professor of law at the University of Michigan, debating “Is the Administrative State Constitutional?”
The annual debate will take place from 4:30 to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 13, in Persson Auditorium, and it is sponsored by 51’s Forum on Constitutional Government and the Center for Freedom and Western Civilization.
Constitution Day brings to campus seasoned experts in their fields to debate topics facing the nation as a way to celebrate the national holiday and to encourage informed discourse among students. Since 2005, 51 has celebrated the holiday with a debate on a variety of constitutional issues. Recent topics have included abortion, affirmative action in college admissions, NSA surveillance, and free speech vs. hate speech.
As debate moderator and Professor of Political Science Stanley Brubaker observes: “The SEC, FTC, EPA, FDA, FEC, NLRB, FCC and countless other familiar acronyms fill the landscape of the federal government and comprise what has been called the Administrative State. It brings a level of expertise and scale of regulation to the myriad complexities of a modern economy far beyond the capacity or competence of Congress.
“But it also raises serious questions for a constitutional system built on the premise of self government and structured on the principle that legislative, executive, and judicial functions should not be concentrated within a single authority.”
According to Brubaker, “In recent years, Justices and scholars have been looking with renewed intensity at the question of whether this system, with its broad delegation of policy making authority from congress to executive agencies, is compatible with the original principles of our constitution.”
This year’s Constitution Day debate brings together two of the leading voices in this profoundly important issue.
Professor Lawson, a summa cum laude graduate of Claremont Men’s College and Yale Law School, has authored or co-authored nine editions of a textbook on administrative law, a textbook on constitutional law, five university press books, and more than 100 scholarly articles on topics ranging from aspects of constitutional theory and history to the proof of legal propositions. His works have been cited in 21 opinions of United States Supreme Court Justices. He clerked twice for Justice Antonin Scalia, first at the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and then at the United States Supreme Court. He is also a founding member and serves on the Board of Directors of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. Lawson is also a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution.
Professor Mortenson, a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard College and salutatorian of his class at Stanford Law School, is an engaged scholar and award-winning teacher. He served as law clerk for Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. He is co-author of Foundation Press’s new casebook in constitutional law and is currently working on a comprehensive account of presidential power at the American founding with a book under contract with Harvard University Press. Mortenson is also an active litigator, working, among other causes, to secure the rights of same-sex couples, to facilitate gun control, and to secure the rights of Guantanamo detainees to challenge their incarceration. His recent Columbia Law Review article, co-authored with Nicholas Bagley, “Delegation at the Founding,” mounted an originalist defense of the administrative state and ignited a firestorm of debate within the legal academy.