Constitution Day 2020

Constitution Day is the annual celebration of the day that representatives to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia completed and signed the U.S. Constitution in 1787. The observance of this day began as “I am an American Day” in 1940 and later as Citizenship Day in 1952 when the celebration was moved to September 17 to commemorate the signing of the original document. Constitution Day as we observe it today was recognized as a federal holiday in 2004, when Senator Robert Byrd passed a bill designating September 17 as the day for citizens to commemorate the signing of the U.S. Constitution and to thoughtfully engage with the nation’s founding document.

(Photo by Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame)

Michael Zuckert is Nancy R. Dreux Professor of Political Science Emeritus at University of Notre Dame.  He is currently visiting Professor at the School for Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. He has taught and written in the areas of modern political thought and American constitutionalism.  He was the founding editor of the journal American Political Thought.

Zuckert is author of several books, including The Anti-Federal Writings of the Melancton Smith; Launching Liberalism: John Locke and the Liberal Tradition; Thomas Jefferson and the Politics of Nature: Essays in Response to Michael Zuckert’s Natural Rights Republic; and Natural Rights and the New Republicanism. Zucketrt was also senior scholar for Liberty!  (1997), a six-hour public television series on the American Revolution, and served as senior advisor on the PBS series on Benjamin Franklin (2002) and Alexander Hamilton (2007).

2015
Jack Rakove, “What Did the Constitution Really Mean? Two Interpretations”

2016
Akhil Reed Amar, “The Constitution at a Crossroads”

2017
Michael J. Klarman, “The Constitution as a Coup Against Public Opinion”

2018
Carol Berkin, “Born in Crisis: The Emergence in the 1790s of an American Identity”

2019
Alan Taylor, “Competing Constitutions: North America, 1783-1795”

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