MACON, Ga. – Mercer University will celebrate Constitution Day with two separate lectures organized by the Walter F. George School of Law and the College of Liberal Arts during the month of September.
Noted constitutional law scholar Louis Michael Seidman will give a lecture, titled “Constitutional Skepticism,” at noon on Tuesday, Sept. 17, in the first-floor moot courtroom of the Law School.
Dr. Vincent Phillip Muniz, associate professor of religion and public life at the University of Notre Dame, will give a lecture, titled “Did the Founders Intend to Separate Church from State?,” from 6-7:15 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 23, in the Medical School auditorium. This event is made possible through the generous support of the Jack Miller Center for Teaching America's Principles and History.
Both lectures are free and open to the public.
Constitution Day, which is observed annually on Sept. 17, was established by federal law in 2004, and commemorates the ratification of the U.S. Constitution on that date in 1787. In addition to commemorating the formation and signing of the U.S. Constitution, the holiday recognizes those who have become U.S. citizens.
Seidman is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1971, after which he served as a law clerk for J. Skelly Wright of the D.C. Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. After that, he was a staff attorney with the D.C. Public Defender Service and joined the Law Center faculty in 1976. He teaches a variety of courses in the field of constitutional law. Seidman co-authored a constitutional law casebook and is the author of many articles concerning criminal justice and constitutional law. His most recent book is “On Constitutional Disobedience” (Oxford, 2012). In 2011, Seidman was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Munoz graduated from Claremont McKenna College in 1993. He teaches on political philosophy, constitutional studies and American politics. Recently, he has focused his research on the theme of religious liberty and the American Constitution. In 2009, Dr. Munoz published “God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson,” which won the Hubert Morken Award for the best publication on religion and politics from the American Political Science Association. He published a First Amendment church-state casebook titled “Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents” in 2013.
About Mercer University
Founded in 1833, Mercer University is a dynamic and comprehensive center of undergraduate, graduate and professional education. The University enrolls more than 8,300 students in 12 schools and colleges – liberal arts, law, pharmacy, medicine, business, engineering, education, theology, music, nursing, health professions, and continuing and professional studies – on campuses in Macon, Atlanta and Savannah – and four regional academic centers across the state. The Mercer Health Sciences Center, launched July 1, 2012, includes the University's medical, nursing, health sciences and pharmacy schools. Mercer is affiliated with four teaching hospitals – Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah, the Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon, and The Medical Center and St. Francis Hospital in Columbus. The University also has educational partnerships with Warner Robins Air Logistics Center in Warner Robins and Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta. It operates an academic press and a performing arts center in Macon and an engineering research center in Warner Robins. Mercer is the only private university in Georgia to field an NCAA Division I athletic program. www.mercer.edu
