The Walter Berns Constitution Day Lectures: 2011-24

In September 2011, AEI honored longtime AEI colleague Walter Berns with a panel dedicated to discussing his scholarship on the Constitution and the republican polity it supports. At this event, former AEI President Arthur C. Brooks announced that henceforth, AEI's annual Constitution Day celebration would be named in honor of Walter.

This volume is a collection of the 13 Walter Berns Constitution Day Lectures given since 2012. Walter's own work ranged widely, addressing issues on such diverse topics as civil and religious liberties, free speech, capital punishment, political philosophy, political science, presidential selection, and patriotism.

It's fitting that the lectures named after him cover an equally broad array of topics related to the Constitution and the American republic.

James W. Ceaser is the Harry F. Byrd Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia and director of the Program for Constitutionalism and Democracy there. His writings and scholarship have focused on American politics, presidential selection and elections, and political thought. Ceaser is the author of several books, including Nature and History in American Political Development: A Debate (2008) and Presidential Selection: Theory and Practice (1979). He is a frequent contributor in the popular press.

Liz Cheney served as the US representative for Wyoming's at-large congressional district from 2017 to 2023. Before her election to Congress, she served in the State Department as deputy assistant secretary of state and principal deputy assistant secretary of state for the Middle East. She is the coauthor--along with her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney--of Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America (2015). At the time of her Constitution Day lecture, Representative Cheney was serving in the House of Representatives.

Christopher DeMuth is a Distinguished Fellow in American Thought at the Heritage Foundation. Mr. DeMuth was president of the American Enterprise Institute from 1986 to 2008 and the D. C. Searle Senior Fellow at AEI from 2008 to 2011. He served in the Nixon administration in various capacities, and from 1981 to 1984 he was executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief under President Ronald Reagan. He writes extensively on regulatory policy, law, and political economy.

Philip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In 2014, he established Columbia Law School's Center for Law and Liberty. His research has focused on constitutional issues related to religious liberty and contemporary debates about administrative law, constitutional interpretation, and free speech. He is the author of several volumes, including The Administrative Threat (2017) and Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (2014).

Leon R. Kass has served as dean of the faculty at Shalem College in Jerusalem since 2021 and is professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Committee on Social Thought. After serving as chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005, he joined AEI as the Hertog Fellow in Social Thought and is currently a senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute. His scholarship has ranged widely, involving issues in biomedical ethics, civic and liberal education, and biblical exegesis. His latest book is Founding God's Nation: Reading Exodus (2021). At the time of his Constitution Day remarks, Dr. Kass held AEI's Madden-Jewett Chair.