The Seventeenth Century Executive
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is a leading authority on freedom of speech and religion, the relation of individual rights to government structure, originalism, and various other aspects of constitutional history and constitutional law.
The framers of the United States Constitution had many models to draw on for the executive of the new American republic—most of them bad, says McConnell. But in the 240 years since the founding of the U.S., he believes we have drifted toward an understanding of the executive power none of the original framers imagined—whether for starting war or for administering peace. In his Athenaeum talk, McConnell will argue that it is time for us to think about the limits, if indeed there are any.
Professor McConnell's Athenaeum talk is the inaugural lecture of the Charles Lofgren Program in Constitutionalism through the Salvatori Center at CMC.
View Video: YouTube with Michael McConnell