"Preserving the Constitution"

Sandy Levinson

I have just discovered that the presentations given at a  panel on "Preserving the Constitution," which was part of a conference at Princeton in May, sponsored by the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions,  headed by Robert George, are available on C-Span, http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Preservingt.  The first talk is by Amherst Professor Hadley Arkes, followed by myself, University of Virginia Professor of Government James Ceaser, and Georgetown Law Center Professor Louis Michael Seidman, with some comments by Harvard Professor  Harvey Mansfield, Jr., the honoree of the conference.  As you might gather, there was a genuine diversity of views represented on the panel (though I was the only person advocating a new constitutional convention).

UDATEe:  I've been taken to task for referring to this panel, which did indeed consist entirely of white males (and middle-aged and even older to boot), as offering a "genuine diversity of views" with regard to the issue under discussion, i.e., the desirability of venerating/preserving the existing Constitution as against more-or-less ignoring it (Mike Seidman's argument in On Constitutional Disobedience) or having a new constitutional convention for the purpose of considering necessary amendments in order to make it less dangerously pathological.  I don't want to argue that our panel was an absolutely perfect panel, nothing better than which could possibly be imagined, and I will readily agree that some topics of debate cry out for "diversity" as that term is often defined, often remarkably unhelpfully--see the opening essay in my book Wrestling With Diversity--in our contemporary public language (including, especially, the opinions of the United States Supreme Court, by whomever written).  But I continue to believe that the panel put together by Robert George in fact provided conflict of ideas, courteously but strongly presented, relevant to the issue of constitutional preservation.  I do not think there would have been anywhere near the relevant intellectual diversity had, for example, Justice Thomas replaced Mike Seidman or Sandra Day O'Connor spoken in my stead.  With very mixed feelings, I have decided to allow comments, though, perhaps naively, I would far prefer that they actually address the various presentations available courtesy of C-Span instead of the higher metaphysics of "diversity," save for those people who actually take the trouble to track down and read my book! 
Posted 7:39 PM by Sandy Levinson [link]