PUBLISHED:August 28, 2008

Duke's Program in Public Law presents series on "lessons learned" from the Bush administration

Aug. 28, 2008 — In September, the Program in Public Law will launch a semester-long examination of key legal and constitutional policy issues that have arisen during the Bush administration. The “Lessons Learned” series of public lectures will feature a roster of distinguished scholars, each of whom will address a specific topic, gauging significant issues and priorities that lie ahead, and suggesting ways in which the country ought to build on the experiences of the last eight years.

University of Chicago law professor David A. Strauss will launch the “Lessons Learned” series on Sept. 10, 2008, with a talk entitled “The Bush administration and the Supreme Court: Lessons Learned.” A scholar of constitutional law and the federal courts, Strauss is also a former assistant U.S. solicitor general and frequent Supreme Court advocate.
This event will begin at 12:15 p.m. in room 3041 of Duke Law School. A light lunch will be served on a first-come, first-served basis.

“Presidents and their administrations exert great influence over the country’s public policy agenda, including over matters of legal and constitutional policy,” says Christopher Schroeder, Charles S. Murphy Professor of Law and Public Policy Studies and director of the Program in Public Law. “In discharging their constitutional responsibility to protect and defend the Constitution, presidents must also interpret the Constitution, and those interpretations then shape our on-going national conversation over its meaning, as well the content of cases that come before the Supreme Court. Furthermore, one of a president’s greatest legacies comes from the judges and justices he or she nominates to the federal bench, whose terms of office far outlive the president’s own.” In addition to the courts, topics to be addressed in the series are voting rights, science, civil rights, executive power, international law, and gender and reproductive rights.

A full schedule of the lectures in the Lessons Learned series, is available here.