The Walter Berns Constitution Day Lectures: 2011-24

The first 13 of the AEI Walter Berns Constitution Day Lectures are now collected in one volume. Given by distinguished scholars, judges, and political figures--and edited by AEI Senior Fellow Gary J. Schmitt--the lectures cover a host of topics providing a deeper understanding of the US constitutional order and its underlying principles. The volume also reissues a 2011 panel discussion by Christopher DeMuth, Leon R. Kass, and Jeremy A. Rabkin honoring longtime AEI colleague Walter Berns's still relevant and important scholarship on the Constitution and the American republic.

About the Author :
Gary J. Schmitt is a senior fellow in the American Enterprise Institute's program on Social, Cultural and Constitutional Studies. He has been a scholar at AEI since 2005, writing on and directing programs in national security and civic education. In government, Dr. Schmitt was a staff director on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and executive director of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. In recent years, he has focused on the American presidency and constitutional issues. His most recent book is McCulloch v. Maryland at 200: Debating John Marshall's Jurisprudence (2020). James W. Ceaser is the Harry F. Byrd Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia and director of the Program for Constitutionalism and Democracy there. His writings and scholarship have focused on American politics, presidential selection and elections, and political thought. Ceaser is the author of several books, including Nature and History in American Political Development: A Debate (2008) and Presidential Selection: Theory and Practice (1979). He is a frequent contributor in the popular press. Liz Cheney served as the US representative for Wyoming's at-large congressional district from 2017 to 2023. Before her election to Congress, she served in the State Department as deputy assistant secretary of state and principal deputy assistant secretary of state for the Middle East. She is the coauthor--along with her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney--of Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America (2015). At the time of her Constitution Day lecture, Representative Cheney was serving in the House of Representatives. Christopher DeMuth is a Distinguished Fellow in American Thought at the Heritage Foundation. Mr. DeMuth was president of the American Enterprise Institute from 1986 to 2008 and the D. C. Searle Senior Fellow at AEI from 2008 to 2011. He served in the Nixon administration in various capacities, and from 1981 to 1984 he was executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief under President Ronald Reagan. He writes extensively on regulatory policy, law, and political economy. Philip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In 2014, he established Columbia Law School's Center for Law and Liberty. His research has focused on constitutional issues related to religious liberty and contemporary debates about administrative law, constitutional interpretation, and free speech. He is the author of several volumes, including The Administrative Threat (2017) and Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (2014). Leon R. Kass has served as dean of the faculty at Shalem College in Jerusalem since 2021 and is professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Committee on Social Thought. After serving as chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005, he joined AEI as the Hertog Fellow in Social Thought and is currently a senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute. His scholarship has ranged widely, involving issues in biomedical ethics, civic and liberal education, and biblical exegesis. His latest book is Founding God's Nation: Reading Exodus (2021). At the time of his Constitution Day remarks, Dr. Kass held AEI's Madden-Jewett Chair. Brett M. Kavanaugh has served as an associate justice of the US Supreme Court since 2018. Before joining the Supreme Court, he was a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit from 2006 to 2018 and previously worked under President George W. Bush as assistant to the president and staff secretary in 2003 to 2006 and as associate counsel to the president in 2001 to 2003. He was serving on the DC Circuit Court when he gave the 2017 Constitution Day lecture. Yuval Levin has served as the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute since 2019, where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. Before joining AEI, he was a vice president and Hertog Fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center from 2007 to 2019. Dr. Levin is also the founder and editor of National Affairs and senior editor of The New Atlantis. His most recent book is American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation--and Could Again (2024). Wilfred M. McClay holds the Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization at Hillsdale College. Before coming to Hillsdale in 2021, Dr. McClay was the G. T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma and the director of the Center for the History of Liberty. He served for 11 years on the National Council on the Humanities and is a member of the US Semiquincentennial Commission. His most recent book is Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story (2019). Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. He formerly served as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit from 2002 to 2009. He also was assistant general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget and assistant to the solicitor general in the Department of Justice. His latest book, coauthored with Nathan S. Chapman, is Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience (2023). Michael B. Mukasey is a retired partner and of counsel at Debevoise & Plimpton. He served as the 81st United States Attorney General from 2007 to 2009 under President George W. Bush and as a federal judge in the Southern District of New York from 1988 to 2006, including six years as chief judge. His career has focused on national security law and terrorism-related cases, and he received the Learned Hand Medal for excellence in federal jurisprudence by the Federal Bar Council in 2004. Jeremy A. Rabkin was a professor of law at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School from 2007 to 2024. Previously, Dr. Rabkin was a professor of government at Cornell University for over two decades. He has served on the Council of Academic Advisers of the American Enterprise Institute and the Center for Individual Rights' board of directors. He has written extensively on topics in international law, state sovereignty, the Constitution, civil rights, and public law. His most recent book is Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules of War (2017), which he coauthored with John Yoo. Neomi Rao has served as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit since 2019. Previously, she was a professor of law at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School from 2006 to 2017 and founded the law school's C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State in 2014. She also was the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from 2017 to 2019 and special assistant and associate White House counsel to President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2006. Diana Schaub is a professor of political science at Loyola University Maryland and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Her scholarship has centered on issues in political philosophy and American political thought and history--with a particular focus on Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass--and the relevance of core American ideals to contemporary challenges and debates. She also was a member of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2004 to 2009 and is a contributing editor of The New Atlantis and a member of the National Affairs publication committee. Her latest book is His Greatest Speeches: How Lincoln Moved the Nation (2021). James R. Stoner is the Hermann Moyse Jr. Professor and director of the Eric Voegelin Institute at Louisiana State University (LSU), where he has taught since 1988. He also chaired LSU's Department of Political Science from 2007 to 2013. His academic research focused on topics in political theory, English common law, and American constitutionalism. From 2002 to 2006, he served on the National Council on the Humanities. His most recent book, coedited with Paul O. Carrese and Carol McNamara, is Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity in Higher Education (2023). Catherine H. Zuckert is the Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor of Political Science Emerita at the University of Notre Dame and an advisory board member for the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. She served as editor in chief of The Review of Politics from 2004 to 2018. She has written extensively on topics in political philosophy, literature, and the American regime's philosophical foundations. Her most recent book is Machiavelli's Politics (2017). Michael P. Zuckert is the Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame and has been a clinical professor in the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University since 2019. His scholarship has focused on topics in political philosophy, modern natural rights, and American constitutionalism. He was the founding editor of American Political Thought. His latest book is A Nation So Conceived: Abraham Lincoln and the Paradox of Democratic Sovereignty (2022).