The Constitution in Jeopardy: The Futures of Constitutional Amendment in the Twenty-first Century
- This event has passed.
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm | Lecture
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm | Reception in Crocker with book sales and signing
Russ Feingold, an affiliate of the Constitutional Law Center and a former U.S. Senator and Stanford Law professor, and Peter Prindiville (’21), a non-resident fellow at the Center, return to Stanford to discuss their new book on constitutional amendment.
Over the last two decades, a fringe plan to call a convention under the Constitution’s amendment mechanism—the nation’s first ever—has inched through statehouses. Delegates, like those in Philadelphia two centuries ago, would exercise nearly unlimited authority to draft changes to our fundamental law, potentially altering anything from voting and free speech rights to regulatory and foreign policy powers. Such a watershed moment would present great danger, and for some, great power.
In their new book, Feingold and Prindiville distill extensive legal and historical research and examine the grave risks inherent in this effort. But they also consider the role of constitutional amendment in modern life, proposing a program of reform for the Constitution’s amendment mechanism. Though many focus solely on judicial and electoral avenues for change, such an approach is at odds with a cornerstone ideal of the Founding: that the People make constitutional law, directly. In an era defined by faction and rejection of long-held norms, The Constitution in Jeopardy examines the nature of constitutional change and asks urgent questions about what American democracy is, and should be.
|
|
Russ Feingold Russ Feingold is the President of the American Constitution Society. He served as a United States Senator from Wisconsin from 1993 to 2011 and a Wisconsin State Senator from 1983 to 1993. From 2013 to 2015, he served as the United States Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region of Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. During his 18 years in the United States Senate, Russ was ranked 6th in the Senate for bipartisan voting. He is a recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award and cosponsored the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold Act), the only major piece of campaign finance reform legislation passed into law in decades. Russ was the only Senator to vote against the initial enactment of the USA PATRIOT Act during the first vote on the legislation and was well-known for his opposition to the Iraq War and as the Senate’s leading opponent of the death penalty. He served on the Judiciary, Foreign Relations, Budget, and Intelligence Committees. Russ was Chairman or Ranking Member of the Constitution Subcommittee. |
|
|
Peter Prindiville Peter Prindiville is a non-resident fellow at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center. His current research focuses on the relationship between democratic institutions, popular movements, and constitutional change. He previously was a fellow on the Senate Judiciary Committee and a high school history and civics teacher in Mississippi, where he served as an AmeriCorps volunteer. Prindiville earned his J.D. from Stanford, a master’s degree from the National University of Ireland at Cork, where he was a Mitchell Scholar, and a B.S. in Foreign Service with honors from Georgetown. |
