2006 Program: Separate Branches, Balanced Powers: Madison's Legacy
This program focused on whether the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances are truly fundamental to American government. Questions discussed included: Are the branches of American federal government sufficiently separated? Are powers of government sufficiently balanced? Is the problem identified by Madison in Federalist No. 51-how should government be organized to be effective and yet avoid dangerous concentrations of power-still relevant? Of the three forms of government-executive, legislative, and judicial-which do you think has been most dangerous and capable of "everywhere extending the sphere of its activity"? Following Montesquieu, Madison identified political liberty as the end to which separation of powers-and checks and balances-were the means. Is this still the essential purpose of these two principles in contemporary American government? Might there be other means to achieving that end? How have other constitutional governments addressed this?
2005 Program: The Jury and American Democracy (May 1, 2005)
This program focused on the role the jury plays in our system of government. Questions discussed included: Are juries democratic? If so, what are the distinctive elements of the American jury system as a democratic institution?
Are juries an essential component of our system of government? What are the origins of the American jury? What are its animating principles? How has it changed over time? Is the Founders' vision of the jury vital and relevant in twenty-first century America? Other areas of discussion focused more heavily on ideas and attitudes prevalent at the time in which the Constitution was written and ratified, as well as on recent Supreme Court decisions that have addressed the role and significance of juries in our justice system.
Prior Series: Representing the Lawyer in American Culture
The series was devoted to an examination of how lawyers are, and have been, represented in
American culture. The premise and orientation of the series is that, because of the
seminal role that law and lawyers play in American culture, exploring fundamental legal
identities and attributes will help elucidate who we are as Americans. In considering
“law” culturally as an integral part of the humanities, the series focuses on
how we can better understand these representations and the meaning they have for us.
Ultimately, the frame of reference is how these subjects explicate American
mores—what Tocqueville characterized as the habits of heart and mind that represent
“the whole moral and intellectual state of a people.” With respect to the five
different attributes explored by the series, each of the public programs will consider how
the American lawyer has been represented in art, literature, legal and other texts,
artifacts, and media culture. The panelists will reflect on legal identities and
attributes drawn from both historical and contemporary cultural practices.
Program I: Representing the American Lawyer as Reformer (May
1, 2001)
How, specifically, has legal reform been understood in the American context? What is its
dynamic? What are its guiding principles and values? How has legal reform been understood
and represented as expressing popular will, exercising reason, or realizing justice? Where
does “lawyers’ reform” take place (e.g., litigation, adjudication,
legislation, public opinion and media, ethics, legal practice and technology)? What are
the fundamental attributes that characterize the American lawyer as reformer? Who are
exemplary models? Why? How have representations of the lawyer as reformer changed
throughout American history?
Program II: Representing the American Lawyer as Celebrity
(August 4, 2001)
How have we represented and understood the American lawyer as celebrated? How do publicly
recognized—“celebrated”—lawyers act? How are they perceived by others?
Which lawyers are “celebrated,” e.g., lawgivers, trial lawyers, judges,
civil rights lawyers, “TV” lawyers? How has this changed historically? What has
been the impact of media culture on our representations and understandings of the
“famous” lawyer? How have lawyers represented and understood themselves as
celebrated? Who exemplifies the American lawyer as celebrity—as famous? What do our
vari-ous representations of the lawyer as celebrity tell us about lawyers’
professional identity, our legal culture, and, more broadly, ourselves as Americans?
Program III: Representing the American Lawyer as Judge (May 1, 2002)
How have we represented the American judge as embodying the democratic rule of law, the
relationship between law and governance when the people are sovereign? How have we
represented and understood judges in the process of becoming—and being—judges?
How have we represented their essential qualities? How has this changed historically? How
are our representations of the judge and adjudication dependent on those of the lawyer and
of lawyerly qualities? On the judge’s independence from the lawyer in particular and
“independence” from—what and whom—more generally? Who exemplifies the
lawyer as judge in American culture?
Program IV: Representing the American Lawyer as Rhetor (May 1, 2003)
What does the "lawyer as rhetor"—orator, communicator, storyteller, persuader, advocate—mean? Is this an essential attribute of the American lawyer’s legal identity? How have we understood, in a cultural and historical sense, the law as rhetorical and lawyers as rhetors? How do lawyers persuade—in courts of law and in the court of public opinion? To what extent are lawyers storytellers? Does our adversarial legal system elicit truth and foster justice? What gives persuasion in law its force? How can a focus on the lawyer as rhetor help us explore relationships of persuasion and truth, emotion and reason, advocacy and evidence, and legality and ethics in American legal culture? Who are models for the American lawyer as rhetor, a master of persuasion?
Program V: Representing the American Lawyer as Citizen (April 27, 2004)
Thomas Jefferson argued that the American lawyer must aspire to be a “public
citizen.” This phrase is echoed today in the language of the profession’s ethics
codes, such as in the preamble to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Is the
American lawyer as citizen simply aspirational? How does the American lawyer’s legal
identity relate to her civic identity—and vice versa? What are the ties that
bind—or separate—the “lawyer” and the “citizen” in our
law-based democracy? Who exemplifies the American lawyer as citizen? How has the American
lawyer as citizen been represented culturally?
