| Constitutional Errors: What the “Founding Fathers” Got Wrong |
Joseph White, Ph.D. – Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, CWRU Center for Policy Studies |
Friday September 6, 2019
12:30-1:30 p.m.
***Alternate Room: Room LL06, Lower Level**
Kelvin Smith Library*
Case Western Reserve UniversityDear Colleagues:
“Constitution Day” approaches, and universities around the country are required to offer programs about the founding document of the United States. Normally, as at CWRU, they focus on constitutional law and questions of interpretation, rights, or liberties. Joe White helps sponsor our program, but he worries about sending the wrong message.
After all, the U.S. political system does not look so good at the moment, and that might have some relationship to the constitution. Over the centuries many reformers have said the constitution was flawed. But if you read the Federalist Papers, the authors sure seem like exceedingly smart and practical people. They were not dealing with an ideal world, and critics should not hope to be. For example, Madison made very interesting excuses for how the Senate is apportioned, but also said up front that each state had two senators because that was the only way to form a United States. His discussions of political ambition and divisions remain classics that professors keep assigning for good reason.
Yet he and his colleagues did misjudge how the system they designed would work. Some errors are obvious: expectations about how the electoral college would work were disproved as soon as Washington stepped down. Others were undone by the founders themselves, who quickly created political parties. And some are more subtle: how could a system justified as blocking selfish special interests encourage so many interest groups? So Joe will suggest what the brilliant men who wrote the Federalist missed, and what that means for us.
All best regards,
Joe White
Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Policy Studies
About Our Guest
Joe White is Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy, with his primary appointment in the Department of Political Science and secondary in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences. He also directs the Center for Policy Studies and so organizes the Public Affairs Discussion Group. Joe joined the CWRU faculty in 2000, having previously been at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine of Tulane University and a Research Associate and then Senior Fellow in the Governmental Studies Program of the Brookings Institution. Joe began studying federal budgeting when he entered graduate school at UC Berkeley in 1980. In 2014 he received the Aaron Wildavsky Award of the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management for lifetime achievement in the field. He is the author or co-author of two books and more than two dozen articles or book chapters on aspects of the topic. Most recently, “Long-term budgeting: A cautionary tale from U.S. experience” was published in the OECD Journal on Budgeting in August; and in May he testified to the Congressional Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform about possible less partisan improvements to the process. Some of his work can be found at http://policy.case.edu/research/health-care-federal-budget-articles/.
Where We Meet
The Friday Public Affairs Lunch convenes each Friday when classes are in session, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Our programs are open to all and no registration is required. We usually meet in the Dampeer Room of Kelvin Smith Library.
* Kelvin Smith Library requires all entrants to show identification when entering the building, unless they have a university i.d. that they can magnetically scan. We are sorry if that seems like a hassle, but it has been Library policy for a while in response to security concerns. Please do not complain to the library staff at the entrance, who are just doing their jobs.
Parking Possibilities
The most convenient parking is the lot underneath Severance Hall. We regret that it is not free. From that lot there is an elevator up to street level (labeled as for the Thwing Center); it is less than 50 yards from that exit to the library entrance. You can get from the Severance garage to the library without going outside. Near the entry gates – just to the right if you were driving out – there is a door into a corridor. Walk down the corridor and there will be another door. Beyond that door you’ll find the entrance to an elevator which goes up to an entrance right inside the doors to Kelvin Smith Library.
Schedule of Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:
September 13: Health Care 2020: Politics and Markets. With J.B. Silvers, John R. Mannix Medical Mutual of Ohio Professor of Health Care Finance.
September 20: Blockchain: From Cryptocurrency to Data Federation. With Vincenzo Liberatore, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
September 27: Social Media and Politics. With Lauren Copeland, Assistant Professor, Department of Politics and Citizenship, and Associate Director, Community Research Institute, Baldwin-Wallace University.
October 4: Hidden Costs of Waiting for Treatment: The Case of Orthopedic Surgery in Norway. With Mark Votruba, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Economics and Research Associate, Statistics Norway. ***Alternate Room: Room LL06, Lower Level, Kelvin Smith Library***
October 11: Small Steps and Giant Leaps: How Apollo 11 Shaped Understandings of Earth and Beyond. With Steven A. Hauck II, Professor and Chair, Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences. ***Alternate Room: Room LL06, Lower Level, Kelvin Smith Library***
October 18: Roe v. Wade in 2019. With B. Jessie Hill, Judge Ben C. Green Professor of Law.
October 25: Brexit Trick or Treat. With Luke Reader, Full-Time Lecturer in English.
November 1: Local News: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. With Joseph Frolik, Executive Editor, Ideastream.
November 8: TBA. With Peter Shulman, Associate Professor of History.
November 15: Will We Ever Have Paris? The U.S. and the International Politics of Climate Change. With Matthew Hodgetts, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science.
November 22: The (New?) Israeli Government. With Peter J. Haas, Abba Hillel Silver Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies.
November 29: Thanksgiving break
December 6: Papers Please: Challenging Citizenship in the United States. With Cassandra Burke Robertson, John Deaver Drinko – Baker Hostetler Professor of Law and Director, Center for Professional Ethics. |
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September 4, 2019
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Upcoming Events
Battle for the Ballot Box
Join a student panel for the 2019 CWRU Constitution Day program featuring Alora Thomas-Lundborg, J.D., Senior Staff Attorney, American Civil Liberties Union Voting Rights Project and Hans A. von Spakovsky, J.D., Senior Legal Fellow, Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, The Heritage Foundation, Monday September 16, 2019, 4:00 p.m., CWRU School of Law, Room 157, 11075 East Blvd., Cleveland, Ohio 44106. Free and open to the public. Sponsored by the Office of the President, Office of Government and Community Relations, Department of Political Science, Center for Policy Studies, and School of Law.
The USA was founded in pursuit of a more perfect union. In the Elections Clause (Art I, Section 4) and several amendments (XIV, XV, XVII, XIX, XXIII, XXIV, and XXVI), the Constitution enshrines, explicitly or implicitly, the right to vote — a political and legal journey that continues to be challenging and complex.
Though the American republic is certainly more democratic than it once was, issues such as voter ID laws, voter registration purges, and partisan gerrymandering have raised concerns about electoral fraud and discrimination against minorities. Recent Supreme Court decisions — Shelby County v. Holder (2013) and Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) — have failed to address key questions. How do states balance the integrity of elections and the individual right to vote? What role does the federal government have in preserving democracy throughout the USA?
The CWRU Student Constitution Discussion Roundtable is pleased to welcome Alora Thomas-Lundborg, J.D., and Hans von Spakowsky, J.D., to discuss critical questions on the right to vote.
The U.S. Health Policy Community: A View from Europe
A discussion with Ulrike Lepont, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Montpellier, Wednesday September 18, 2019, 12:30 – 2:00 p.m., Mather House, Room 100, 11201 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH. Free and open to the public. Refreshments Will Be Provided. Cosponsored by the CWRU Center for Policy Studies and the Master of Public Health Program.
American health policy involves not only political institutions and their elected and appointed officials but a whole ecology of experts who produce research and proposals, promote ideas at conferences and in the press, and advise policy-makers. Ulrike LePont’s strikingly original dissertation used both documents and extensive interviews to outline how this health policy community influenced choices from 1970 – 2010. Join us as she describes the community that American analysts may take for granted because they are part of it.
Ulrike Lepont did her doctoral research in France with the groups of scholars at Université Montpellier 1 and Université Versailles-Saint-Quentin-Yvelines. Her thesis – “Shaping Policies at the State’s Margins: The role of experts in American health care reforms (1970-2010)” was approved at Montpellier in December, 2014 and in 2015 received the public policy dissertation prize from the association française de science politique. She has published articles based on this work in Revue française de science politique, Revue française de sociologie, Politix, and Gouvernement et action politique. She is now presenting her work at U.S. conferences and has papers under submission to U.S. journals.
Dr. Lepont’s further research has investigated other examples of the politics of ideas, such as the idea that health care costs can be reduced by improving quality (rather than more quality having to be paid for) and a comparison of how economists’ views changed, or did not, in France and the United States after the 2008 financial crash. She has served as a lecturer at Université de Versailles Saint Quentin, a postdoctoral researcher with French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), and as a member of the research teams for the PRINTEMPS, a joint CNRS/UVSQ project that focuses on professional worlds (such as commitments, knowledge and expertise) and how their members are socialized and build their careers. Dr. Lepont also is currently part of the ANR Desorbercy project, which focuses on how the structures of politics, economics, and finance respond and change in contexts of disorder and expert uncertainty about what to do.
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