BodyText1
Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University, will be the David Norton guest speaker on Wednesday, October 9, at 5 pm, in Trabant Multipurpose Room B. The title of his talk is, “Constitutional Structures and Civic Virtue”.
Abstract:
In his lecture, Professor
George will explain the system of constitutional structural constraints on the
exercise of power by the federal government by which the American founders
hoped to protect liberty, prevent tyranny, and create a form of republican
government that would survive the pathologies that had destroyed all previous
republics. He will argue that this system of constraints represents, however,
as the founders themselves acknowledged, secondary or “auxiliary” protections.
What is primary—and indispensable—is a supportive political culture that cannot
exist in the absence of civic virtue. But civic virtue itself cannot exist in
the absence of flourishing non-governmental institutions of civil society that
are its primary transmitters and upholders.
This lecture is free and open to the public. A reception will be held immediately following the lecture in Multipurpose Room A.
