The Constitution of the United States of America

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America...

Why We Celebrate Constitution Day

As the fundamental law of the land, The Constitution is our most important guide to the obligations and the limitations of government in America . Constitution Day, September 17, is both an opportunity for celebrating our country's unique achievement in crafting a written body of fundamental laws for the people's government and it is also an important reminder of the knowledge necessary for good citizenship. As we know from the Declaration of Independence, the just powers of government are entirely derived from our consent. Constitution Day reminds us of those laws to which we give our consent as members of the body politic. We, here at the University of West Florida , are honored to contribute to the furtherance of a healthy civic life by providing resources to our students for their continuing education in the study of the Constitution.

September 2012 - Dr. Keith Gaddie

Does Thomas Jefferson Still Survive After Reapportionment?

Dr. Keith Gaddie is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Oklahoma. He has worked as a litigation consultant in voting rights and redistricting cases, for both major parties and for both plaintiffs and respondents, including cases in Florida, Illinois, New York, Virginia, Georgia, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wyoming, New Mexico and Texas.

Dr. Gaddie is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of fourteen books, including:

• The Economic Realities of Political Reform: Elections and the U.S. Senate (1995)
• David Duke and the Politics of Race in the South (1995)
• Regulating Wetlands Protection: Environmental Federalism and the States (2000)
• Elections to Open Seats in the US House: Where the Action Is (2000)
• Born to Run: The Origins of the Political Career (2004)
• Georgia Politics in a State of Change (2009)
• The Triumph of Voting Rights in the South (2009)

Further, Dr. Gaddie and Kelly Damphousse (Sociology) are the newly appointed editors of Social Science Quarterly.

Over the past several years, Keith has offered commentary, interviews, or served as a guest broadcaster for several local, national and international media outlets. From 2005-07 he was a regular new contributor and host for WKY-930 AM and KTLR-890 AM, and he currently serves as a regular contributor to KGOU 106.3 FM(National Public Radio) and KWTV-9 (CBS).

September 2011 - Dr. Michael Bailey

"American Exceptionalism: Past, Present, and Past Again"

Click for Flyer; Click here for transcript of lecture.

Michael Bailey (Ph.D. University of Texas) is associate professor of government at Berry College, where he has taught since 1998.  He teaches courses in American politics, and since his tenure at Berry College he has been the recipient of five teaching awards as selected by his peers and by the student body. Bailey’s primary research focus is on the American presidency, but he has also published on matters concerning public administration, issues of church and state, and the problems of governance facing liberal democratic nations.

 Bailey has also published several articles in national magazines (Touchstone and Prism) as well as contributed to a popular book on politics.  Presently Bailey is working on a manuscript that examines the Inaugural Addresses as a lens for understanding American political development over time. Bailey served as chair for the Department of government from 2008-2011. Bailey is married and has three daughters, each of whom daily pepper him with questions that reveal the limits of his knowledge.  

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September 2010 - Dr. James R. Stoner, Jr.

"Tradition and Modernity: The Original Constitution"

James R. Stoner, Jr. is Professor of Political Science at Louisiana State University, where he has taught since 1988. He is the author of Common-Law Liberty: Rethinking American Constitutionalism (Kansas, 2003) and Common Law and Liberal Theory: Coke, Hobbes, and the Origins of American Constitutionalism (Kansas, 1992), as well as a number of articles and essays. In 2009 he was named a Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, New Jersey. He is the 2010 recipient of the Honors College Sternberg Professorship at LSU. He has chaired the Department of Political Science since 2007, and is serving as Acting Dean of the Honors College this fall. 

Dr. Stoner received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1987 and his A.B. from Middlebury College. In 2002-03 he was a visiting fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and he served from 2002 to 2006 by presidential appointment on the National Council on the Humanities. In addition to researching American political thought and political development, Dr. Stoner continues work on a book tentatively titled Resisting Judicial Supremacy with Richard Morgan of Bowdoin College, and on a study of the political and constitutional thought of St. Thomas More.

September 2009 - Dr. Hadley Arkes

Hadley Arkes has been a member of the Amherst College faculty since 1966.  He was the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence, and was appointed, in 1987, as the Edward Ney Professor of American Institutions.  He has written five books with Princeton University press: 

• Bureaucracy, The Marshall Plan, and the National Interest (1972)
• The Philosopher in the City (1981)
• First Things (1986)
• Beyond the Constitution (1990)
• The Return of George Sutherland (1994)

His most recent book,  Natural Rights and the Right to Choose, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2002.    His articles have appeared in professional journals, but apart from his writing in more scholarly formats, he has become known to a wider audience through his writings in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Weekly Standard, and National Review, where he has been a contributing editor.  Professor Arkes has been a contributor, also, to First Things, a journal that took its name from his book of that title.  For eight years he wrote a column for Crisis magazine under the title of “Lifewatch,” and he resumes that column occasionally with pieces for National Review Online.  

Professor Arkes has been the founder, at Amherst, of the Committee for the American Founding, a group of alumni and students seeking to preserve, at Amherst, the doctrines of “natural rights” taught by the American Founders and Lincoln.   With the same mission, he has preserved his connection to the Madison Program at Princeton University, and served, in 2002-03, as Visiting Professor of Public and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School, and Vaughan Fellow in the Madison Program.

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September 2008 - Dr. Marc Landy

Marc Landy has a B.A. from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University. He and Sidney Milkis wrote Presidential Greatness (Kansas U. Press, 2000). He is an author of the Environmental Protection Agency From Nixon to Clinton: Asking the Wrong Questions. He is an editor of Seeking the Center:Politics and Policymaking at the New Century (2001) and The New Politics of Public Policy. His textbook, American Government: Balancing Liberty and Democracy (co-authored with Sid Milkis) was published November 2003 from McGraw Hill.

In addition to teaching undergraduates and graduate students, he regularly teaches public officials from Ireland and Northern Ireland about American Politics through a series of executive programs run by the Irish Institute. His recent articles include: “The Bush Presidency after 9/11: Shifting the Kaleidoscope” in the inaugural issue of the E Journal Forum, “Local Government and Environmental Policy,” in Martha Derthick ed., Dilemmas of Scale in American Federal Democracy (Cambridge U. Press 1999) and “The Politics of Risk Reform”, co-authored with Kyle Dell.

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September 2007 - Dr. Gordon Lloyd

Dr. Gordon Lloyd earned his bachelor’s degree in economics and political science at McGill University. He completed all coursework toward a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago before receiving his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in government at Claremont Graduate School. The co-author of three books on the American founding and author of two forthcoming publications on political economy, he also has numerous articles and book reviews to his credit. His areas of research span the California constitution, common law, the New Deal, slavery and the Supreme Court, and the relationship between politics and economics. He has received many teaching, research, and leadership awards including admission to Phi Beta Kappa and an appointment as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar for the Oklahoma Scholarship Leadership Program.

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September 2006 - Hadley Arkes

Dr. Hadley Arkes is the Edward N. Key Professor of Jurisprudence and American Institutions at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  He has written five books with Princeton University Press:

• Bureaucracy, The Marshall Plan, and the National Interest (1972)
• The Philosopher in the City (1981)
• First Things (1986)
• Beyond the Constitution (1990)
• The Return of George Sutherland (1994)

His most recent book, Natural Rights and the Right to Choose (2002), was published by Cambridge University Press. His articles have appeared in professional journals, but apart from his writing in more scholarly formats, he has become known to a wider audience through his writings in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard and National Review, where he has been a contributing editor. Arkes has also been a contributor to First Things, a journal that took its name from his book of that title. For eight years he has written a column for Crisis magazine under the title of "Lifewatch," and he resumes that column occasionally with pieces for National Review Online.

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