 Good evening, everyone, at least it's evening here in the Eastern Time Zone in Pittsburgh. Welcome to this annual event to celebrate Constitution Day at Carnegie Mellon University. My name's Keith Webster. I'm the Helen and Henry Posner Jr. Dean of University Libraries. And with my dear friend Gina Casolino, I'm honored to co-host this evening's event. We're here because any college that receives federal funding is required to offer programming to students and the wider community to honor Constitution Day. And since 2005, the University Libraries and the Division of Student Affairs have come together to present a series of lectures to fulfill our obligations and celebrate the Constitution. We deeply value our ongoing partnership with the Division of Student Affairs and with the Alumni Association to produce this event. I particularly wish to acknowledge my thanks to the Posner Foundation and the Posner family for entrusting Carnegie Mellon University Libraries with the care and use of the Posner collection. And most particularly, a very rare copy of the Bill of Rights, about which more in a few moments. I'm also grateful to Sonja Wellington, our Events Manager, who looked after all of the logistics for this evening's event. And Shannon Riff, our Associate Dean for External Relations in the University Libraries. I do hope Shannon is not with us this evening. She had a baby on Friday last week, our warmest good wishes to her and her family on that wonderful event. I'm also grateful to our speaker this evening, Professor Doug Colson, who I'll introduce in just a few moments. Lenny Chan, the Director of the Office of Community Standards and Integrity, who will moderate the question and answer part of this evening's event. And of course, Gina, Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students, who will offer some closing remarks. I mentioned the Bill of Rights and in the Posner collection, we have access to one of only four extant copies of the very first printing of the US Bill of Rights and its ratifications. My colleague, Dr. Sam Lemley, Curator of Special Collections, would be happy to talk with anyone who would like to learn more about our copy of the Bill of Rights. But to act as a bit of a teaser, Sam has prepared a brief video to let you know more about the Bill of Rights. So with a bit of magic, I hope that somebody somewhere will hit play and you will be able to enjoy Sam's presentation. Good evening, everyone. I'm Sam Lemley. I'm the Curator of Special Collections at Carnegie Mellon University Libraries. And tonight I'll be sharing something from the collection with you in introduction to tonight's event. So this is, I think, one of the most remarkable things in special collections at CMU. It's a printed pamphlet. It's about 11 inches tall. And at some point in the past, it was actually removed from its original binding. You can see that there are some small fragments of that original binding spine on the pamphlet's left-hand edge. You can also see that there's a small stain in the upper right portion of the first page and the outer leaves, right, the first and last pages that kind of serve as the pamphlet's binding in the absence of the original binding are noticeably darker and kind of stained. And that suggests that it's actually been in this disbound condition for some time and was probably handled in this condition for, you know, the centuries that it was in circulation before coming to CMU. So on the first page of the document, about a third of the way down, is the article or the document's title. And that's articles in addition to an amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America. Of course, this is a copy of the American Bill of Rights. It was printed in Philadelphia by Special Commission in January or February 1792. This particular copy was purchased by Henry Posner Sr. in 1963 and was later deposited with the libraries along with the rest of the Posner Memorial Collection by Henry Posner's son and family. So given the appearance of this document, it usually surprises visitors to Special Collections to learn that this is one of the rarest documentary artifacts that we have. And in fact, it actually might be the rarest single item we hold. Only five copies, including this one, are known to survive. So that's a vanishingly small survival rate, given the size of the original edition, which I'll get to in a minute. But, you know, apart from its rarity, what's fascinating about this document is that this printing of the Bill of Rights, it wasn't fully unprecedented. This was not the first time that the constitutional amendments that would become the Bill of Rights had been printed. In fact, they had been put into circulation fairly early, usually in the form of newspapers or broadsides as early as 1789, which was immediately after they were approved by Congress and sent to the states for debate, for ratification. So what does make or did make this particular printing of the Bill of Rights important and groundbreaking then is the context of its printing. And remember that it was printed likely in January or February 1792. In other words, immediately after Virginia became the 11th and final state to ratify on December 15, 1791. And it was Virginia's vote that met the requirement that three fourths of states ratify any proposed amendment to the Constitution. And remember too, at this point in American history, there were only 14 states and the Constitution itself was fewer than five years old. So this document that I'm holding, you know, putting it differently is it's the first form of the Bill of Rights that could claim the force of law. And the first time that it's 10 articles appeared in print as an integral part of the United States Constitution. And for this reason, constitutional scholars and scholars of American history refer to this document, this printing as the official, the first official Bill of Rights. So instead of merely listing the ratified amendments, though, it also records the kind of legal deliberation and legislative compromise that led to ratification. So, you know, in a sense embedded in this document is the story of the contentious origin of the American Bill of Rights. And I think the best and most basic evidence for this is the fact that it lists 12 amendments rather than the more familiar 10. What many don't know is that of the 12 amendments that were originally proposed in 1789, only amendments three through 12 were ratified to become part of the Constitution. So, you know, for example, our First Amendment, which protects the freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, and the press was actually the third in the original form of those 12 articles. So besides that, though, beneath the printed amendments, beginning on page three appears a kind of roll call of states recording how each state voted on the question of ratification. And I find this fascinating because it turns out that the bulk of the Posner Bill of Rights, you know, actually isn't the Bill of Rights at all. You know, the amendments take up only one leaf or two pages out of 12, you know, but otherwise most of the document is given over to kind of an enumerative record of legislative bureaucracy. So I'm going to show Pennsylvania's vote on screen here, which appears on page nine. And Pennsylvania was one of the last states to submit its vote on ratification. And you can see that that vote is dated September 21, 1791, or about three months before Virginia's deciding vote. So after Virginia's vote to ratify was submitted to the federal government, Thomas Jefferson, who was then Secretary of State, commissioned the printing of this edition. And 135 copies were made and distributed to the 14 state legislatures to ensure that they had the sort of official and approved language of the amendments on file. So that's that's a very almost painfully brief documentary history of the Bill of Rights that only brings us to about 1792 1793. But I want to end with the observation, or sort of by looking forward right with the observation that this copy of the Bill of Rights offers a number of important lessons, most of which are still very much alive today. You know, famously Thomas Jefferson called the Constitution, a good canvas in need of some retouching. And I think revisiting this document reminds us that the American experiment is maybe always a good canvas in need of some retouching, you know, and that's that's part of its power and part of its beauty. You know, after all, this particular copy of the Pozner or the Pozner Bill of Rights, you know, lacks all the so called reconstruction amendments, including the 13th Amendment, which effectively ended slavery in the United States. And the 14th and 15th amendments, which respectively extended the rights of citizenship and the right to vote to recently emancipated enslaved people. So, you know, with that idea, kind of offered an introduction, I would invite all of you, anyone to reach out to me with questions about special collections, or the Pozner Bill of Rights. Thank you very much. Thank you as always, Sam, for your wonderful presentation. If anyone would like to know more about Sam's work and see some of his other recordings there are a series of videos and presentations available on the CMU library's YouTube channel. So please do look out for those if Sam has captured your interest. Also repeat again, our deepest thanks to the Pozner Fine Arts Foundation for having the trust in us to look after the remarkable Pozner collection. As always, especially grateful to Ann Malloy, the executive director of the foundation, and a member of the CMU Board of Trustees for her support and encouragement. So to the main event this evening, and it's my great pleasure to introduce and welcome Professor Doug Coulson, Associate Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon. Doug teaches in the areas of legal rhetoric argument and the history of rhetoric. Before entering academic life he practiced business and commercial litigation for nearly a decade and remains a licensed attorney in Texas. He is the author of Race, Nation and Refuge, the rhetoric of race in Asian American citizenship cases, published by Sunni Press in 2017. And his forthcoming book, Judicial Rhapsodies, Rhetoric and Fundamental Rights in the Supreme Court will be published by Amherst College Press next year. He has offered us the title keeping government out of religion and vice versa, metaphor, figureality and the First Amendment's religion clauses. Without further ado, I am going to hand over to Doug and invite him to deliver his presentation. All right. Thank you. I first want to thank the University Libraries and the organizers of tonight's event for inviting me to speak and for their effort in preparing the event, particularly Shannon, Sonia, Brian, Lenny, Sam, Dean Webster and Dean Casalina. And thanks to everyone for attending. But tonight I'm going to talk about the use of metaphors and figureality in interpretations of the Constitution, particularly in the establishment and free exercise clause of the First Amendment, if I can get this going. So you can see the full text of the First Amendment here, the establishment clause which bars laws respecting an establishment of religion, and the free exercise clause, which bars those prohibit which bars laws prohibiting the free exercise of religion, form the first words of the First Amendment and therefore the first words of the Bill of Rights. The United States Supreme Court Justice Wiley Rutledge once wrote that for James Madison, who is primarily responsible for drafting the Bill of Rights. The two clauses represented correlative and co extensive ideas representing only different facets of a single great and fundamental freedom that of freedom of conscience or belief. The two clauses are collectively referred to as the religion clauses. The United States Supreme Court has interpreted interpreted these clauses through a series of conspicuous metaphors at various times different justices have written that the clauses represent an imperfect line. A scale in which religion and government are balanced, a boundary designed to avoid excessive entanglements, a tight rope to be traversed, and a blurred and distinct and variable barrier. Most famously, though, is the metaphor of the clauses representing a wall of separation between church and state. Judge Daniel Thomas of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama wrote in 1966 that no constitutional principle is more firmly embedded in our history than what Thomas Jefferson termed the wall of separation between church and state, the principle that Judge Thomas wrote was fundamental to our liberty. The metaphor of a wall of separation or wall metaphor is most commonly attributed to Jefferson's 1802 letter to the Danbury Connecticut Baptist Association, in which he wrote the that he revered the religion clauses for the wall of separation between church and state. The phrase may also have been inspired by early American sources, such as the Puritan minister Roger Williams 1644 letter to John Cotton, and the metaphor of a protective hedge or wall was common and the rhetoric of colonial New England. To you offering in butts the words separation of church and state, or an accurate and convenient shorthand for the First Amendment itself, and the words have become as Daniel drives back rights, more familiar to the American people than the actual text of the first amendment. The Supreme Court justices with widely divergent opinions on separation ism used the wall metaphor and early religion clause cases, the court was almost never comfortable with the sweeping and rigid implications. It was immediately questioned even by justices who strongly favored separation ism. The court is largely disfavored and unused and constitutional interpretation today, even in public discourse, while we still talk about the separation of church and state, the idea that a wall separates them is less common. In early critiques of the wall metaphor some justices also questioned the entire idea of using metaphorical language to interpret the religion clauses. And applying the establishment clause to the states through the due process clause of the 14th amendment in 1947 in the column the board of education decided the year after Everson. Just a Stanley read objected to the wall metaphor by declaring that a rule of law should not be drawn from a figure of speech. This declaration itself ironically combines the metaphor drawn with the parallelism of rule of law and figure of speech. It participates in a larger attitude toward metaphor embodied in modern language policies, which sought to eliminate all forms of figurality and stylistic embellishment in favor of a plain style of speech often aligned with mathematics and distinguished from poetry. In the 16th century metaphors and figures such as various forms of repetition of ideas across texts or the repetition of sound or meaning on the level of sentences and clauses were at least viewed as necessary stylistic embellishments to give speech the persuasive aura of aristocracy and an aristocratic society. But by the 17th century the English philosopher john lock wrote that all the artificial and figurative application of words that eloquence has invented merely insinuate wrong ideas and our perfect cheats metaphor and figureality frustrated the clarity and precision to which early modern reformers aspired in their effort to recognize only those truths discoverable by deductive logic in the scientific method. The modern aspiration for mathematical precision in language has impacted legal discourse, no less than other domains of language. Modern legal discourse often promotes the idea that it belongs to a technical domain of language that is complete autonomous and hermetic, unaffected by culture politics or rhetorical considerations. And in a democratic legal system, you do of course want the law to be as determinable and accessible as possible in keeping with the dispersal of power that forms the basis of democracy, rather than permit a small number of elites to wield secret knowledge of the law. The question is what format accessibility takes and what limits natural language itself sets to legal determinacy. But contemporary studies across a variety of disciplines have long recognized that metaphors and figures come from the same tradition, and that both carry argumentative rather than merely stylistic importance. The rhetorical scholar gene fauna stock writes for example that metaphor and figureality, both belong in the pragmatic or situational and functional dimension of language and open a window on a fundamental generative cognitive process. They are not merely expressive fauna stock nodes, but form a verbal summary that epitomizes a line of reasoning, a condensed or even diagram like rendering of the relationship among a set of terms. The legal scholar Maximilian del Mar recognizes both metaphors and figures as important artifacts of legal inquiry. That signal their own artifice and call upon us to participate in legal thought, enabling sustaining inquiry in important ways. Del Mar notes that figures are highly memorable, making them more likely to be reused perhaps because they resonate. And that is a form of gesture and invite our interaction with them. Similarly, the constitutional scholar Robert sigh writes that the power of judicial metaphor is furthered by the fact that it's moving quality tends to find reception and a wider circulation and later opinions, and secondary media, which increases the chance that it will be connected to others. He notes that the metaphorical content of judicial opinions plays an important role in the construction of the political imagination with the potential to cultivate political intimacy, or a sense of affinity among the citizens, a regenerative power with the capacity to level and legitimate the law. The metaphor was first cited by the Supreme Court in the 19 in a 19th century polygamy case but its power as a means of understanding the religion clauses and the controversy surrounding the metaphor really began with justice you go blacks opinion in the 1937 case of ever send the board of education in ever send black wrote that the First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state, which must be kept high and impregnable, preventing even the slightest breach. This was a landmark Supreme Court case involving a New Jersey bus voucher program that reimbursed parents for money. They spent on transportation. The case inaugurated the most substantial body of religion clause jurisprudence by recognizing the rights reflected in the court's religion clauses are sorry and the religion clauses as fundamental rights that applied not only to the federal but to state governments through the 14th Amendment. As developed in American law that doctrine of fundamental rights has recognized that certain rights are so implicit in the concept of ordered liberty that restrictions on them must be regarded with heightened scrutiny. This particularly emerged in the extension of the bill of rights to state governments through the incorporation or absorption of the most important guarantees of the bill of rights and to the new process clause of the 14th Amendment, because the bill of rights itself only directly limits the power of the federal government. In the 1937 case of Palco v. Connecticut the court first formulated the doctrine under which guarantees and the bill of rights could be accepted or rejected as fundamental based on whether they were implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. More recently and controversially, the current court has asserted that for a right to be fundamental it must also be deeply rooted in the nation's history and tradition. And despite the recency of these developments, a legal scholar Milton Convites explains that the process of identifying some rights and liberties, but enjoy more dignity or have a higher rank than others and therefore deserve more protection can be traced to the early years of the American colonies. James Madison first identified certain rights as preeminently important natural rights, speaking of the great rights, the trial by jury freedom of the press and liberty of conscience, while more reluctantly recognizing other guarantees in the bill of rights. Madison initially opposed the entire idea of a bill of rights because he thought the enumeration of rights was unnecessary and inconsistent with the idea of popular rights, but he eventually supported the enumeration of certain rights in response to a public outcry for a bill of rights and due to the usefulness of constitutional enumeration to certain rights in public debate. The discursive commitment to certain rights in a solid manner. Madison concluded, so that they became incorporated with the national sentiment could promote political acculturation and be a good ground for an appeal to the sense of the community. In other words, the compelling purpose of the bill of rights was not it's strictly legal efficacy, but it's power to shape the beliefs, desires and ethical commitments of the American people in support of a rights based order. After Justice Black wrote of the high and impregnable wall in Everson the court held in McCollum the Board of Education in 1948, then an Illinois school program in which students were released from their secular classes on a voluntary basis during school hours to attend religious instruction was an unconstitutional establishment of religion these were so called released time programs. In McCollum, not only did justice read object that a rule of law should not be drawn from a figure of speech, but even justices who concurred in the decision expressed misgivings about the wall metaphor. Justice Felix Frankfurter concluded his concurring opinion in McCollum on a poignant note, for example, by alluding to Robert Frost's poem Mending Wall, writing that if nowhere else in the relation between church and state good fences make good neighbors. Frankfurter's qualifying phrase if nowhere else in the aphoristic saying good fences make good neighbors from Frost's poem. Gesture to his discomfort with the metaphor, the opening line of Frost's poem something there is that doesn't love a wall, which is also repeated near the end of the poem is as famous as the poem's final line good fences make good neighbors. The neighbor and frost poem who tells the narrator good fences make good neighbors is also portrayed as a dark and enigmatic figure. Justice Robert Jackson expressed similar misgivings about the wall metaphor in his concurring opinion in McCollum. The court was likely to make the legal wall of separation between church and state as winding and as the famous serpentine wall designed by Mr. Jefferson for the university founded referring to the famous serpentine wall of the University of Virginia. Jackson also waxed eloquent about the potentially, potentially irresolvable nature of the relationship between church and state, writing that perhaps subjects such as mathematics physics or chemistry, or can be completely secularized, but it would not seem possible to teach other practice or appreciation of the arts. If we are to forbid exposure of youth to any religious influences music without sacred music architecture minus the cathedral or painting without the scriptural themes would be eccentric and incomplete even from a secular point of view. In the 1952 case of Zorak the claws on Jackson also wrote that the wall which the court was professing to erect between church and state has become even more warped and twisted than I expected. The court explored various metaphors over the years in the 1971 case of lemon the curtsman. Chief Justice Warren Berger summed up the court's interpretation of the religion clauses. He recognized that the language of the clauses was not precisely stated but at best opaque, and that total separation of church and state was not possible in an absolute sense. The court concluded that the line of separation far from being a wall is a blurred and distinct and variable barrier depending on all the circumstances of a particular relationship. The court formulated a three part test in lemon to determine the degree or extent of the relationship between church and state in particular scenarios. The deal with focus on with the remainder of my time is a different figure that appears in early religion clause cases. In contrast to met a wall metaphor another figure is pervasive both in Madison's thought about the religion clauses and in the courts early religion clause jurisprudence. This figure anticipates, I argue, the court's position in lemon. Specifically the figure of chiasmus often appears in Madison's thought and in the courts early religion clause cases exemplified here in justice Jackson's expression of the relationship between the religion clauses. In his dissenting opinion and ever since one intended, not only to keep the state's hands out of religion but to keep religions hands off the state. As a figure of thought or arrangement the term chiasmus derives from the Greek letter Chi represented by an X referring to the transposition or crossing. Chiasmus is used to refer to any inverted parallelism or repetition of ideas or grammatical structures in reverse order repetition and reverse essentially without larger with whether across larger portions of the text, or an entire text or distilled stylistically in the sort of inverted by colon reflected in Jackson's descent and ever soon. The words are repeated in reverse order at the level of inverted clauses particularly in a by colon, such as Jackson's specific variety of chiasmus, known as anti metabolism is formed, sometimes expressed in shorthand by the Latin phrase vice versa. Justice black for example wrote to never send that neither a state nor the federal government can openly or secretly participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. Parallelism reflected in the figure of chiasmus has an ancient lineage that predates the appearance, its appearance in Greek rhetoric, appearing much earlier and Samira Akkadian and eukaryotic texts from the third millennium before the common era, as well as in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. This is common in ancient rhetoric poetics and wisdom literature. Rudolph gashie writes that far from representing a mere style stylistic figure chiasmus is one of the earliest forms of thought, an originary form that allows the drawing apart and the bringing together of opposite functions or terms, and entwines them within an identity of movements, while infinitely deferring closure through the substitutability implied by its asymmetry. According to Robert Harriman chiasmus moves one toward a center that proves to be empty a space only for crossing a movement that ultimately lends itself to mystification. In famous examples of chiasmus the Greek Sophos Gorgias of leontini famously advised debaters that when their opponent was serious, they should use humor and when their opponent uses humor, they should be serious. The figure is also served as an important organizing principle for philosophical and legal thought. The tallest allegory of transformation the ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuang Ji writes that after waking from a dream in which he was a butterfly. He questioned whether he was really a man dreaming of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming of being a man. In legal thoughts this row writes that a magistrate is a speaking law and a law is a silent magistrate. Justice Jackson once famously famously wrote that the Supreme Court is not final because we are infallible but we are infallible only because we are final. The relationship between church and state is prevalently expressed through the figure of chiasmus both in Madison 1785 tracked remonstrance and memorial against religious assessments, which is widely viewed as a precursor to the religion clauses and on which many of the courts justices relied in early cases, as well as in the courts early religion clause jurisprudence itself. In Madison's remonstrance, our chiasms appear prominently both in the language and structure of the document. The remonstrance consists of 15 paragraphs which structurally form a single chiasmus centered around the eighth paragraph itself containing two chiasms on the sentence level. This figureality also seems to reflect a broader tendency in Madison toward eloquent moderation and harmony. In the central paragraph of the remonstrance Madison indicts religious establishment, as in some cases erecting a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of civil authority, and in others upholding the thrones of political tyranny. This chiasmic movement depicts religious establishment as either religion exploiting government or government exploiting religion. This includes with the chiasmas that adjust government protects its citizens in their religious freedom, no less than in their property. Neither invading the equal rights of any sect nor offering any sect to invade, nor suffering any sect to invade those of another. The claim of the central paragraph of Madison's remonstrance that adjust government protects religious freedom, no less than property is also expressed in more explicitly chiasmic form in Madison 1792 essay on property. In the essay he writes that as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may equally be said to have a property in his rights. He then repeats the initial chiasmus in the final sentence of the essay, if the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property and the property and if Madison cannot be characterized as what is called a chiasmic personality in which chiasmus is so central to his thought that it practically constitutes a psychological condition. It's at least central to his thinking about rights and about religious freedom in particular in the courts early religion clause cases justices not only drew on Madison's chiasms, but revealed a propensity to use the figure themselves. Moving to the examples I've already cited. And Justice Frank further quoted these two chiasms from the American lawyer and judge, Jeremiah black and McCollum the manifest object of the men who framed the institutions of this country was to have a state without religion and a church without politics. They seem to have been perfectly sincere in their belief that the members of the church would be more patriotic and the citizens of the state more religious by keeping their respective functions entirely separate. And lemon. Chief Justice burger wrote that despite the difficulty of discovering the right balance between church and state, the history of many countries that tests to the hazards of religions intruding into the political arena, or of political power intruding into the legitimate and free exercise of religious belief, and that government is to be entirely excluded from the area of religious instruction and churches excluded from the affairs of government. The figure of chiasmus not only entwines opposing functions or terms in an identity of movements. In short, Herman notes, it is fundamentally a figure of social interaction. The philosopher Emmanuel levin os describes a pleasure of contact at the heart of the chiasm, and Herman writes that the social dimension activates the cognitive reciprocity of interpersonal interaction prior to all other social patterning. It is precisely analogous to the visual experience of looking at another person or at one's mirror image, an experience of doubling which depends on both proximity and distance, and on there being empty space between one and once double. He explains that chiasmus can suggest mutual constitution as one term so depends on the other, it does not matter which comes first, and indifference displays syntactically in the syntax of the figure. This leads to a relationship more aligned with perpetual abeyance or deferral than obstruction one that according to Herman is not allow one to settle on either side of the equation. This is used when what needs to be said eludes representation. Chiasmus itself supplies no principle of resolution, Herman writes but rather perpetual oscillation, a ping ponging back and forth, like a small prison house of language. This comparison of the misgivings about the wall metaphor, almost from its inception, and the prevalence of chiasmus that surrounds interpretations of the religion clauses that the clauses represent more chiasmus of church and state than a wall with important differences. Chiasmus of chiasmus and Madison's thought, and in the courts early religion clause cases serves to interpret the clauses as less stable than ever since high and impregnable wall, signifying instead a perpetual oscillation between church and state that eludes precise representation and infinitely deferred closure that does not allow one to settle on either side of the equation. Ivo Strecker describes the potential of chiasmus to shatter expectations and conventions, which forms its rhetorical energy and leads to both pleasure and pain. As the figure first shatters expectations but ultimately fails to gain lasting adherence because it provides no principle of resolution. This sententious chiasmus may have shattered expectations and his struggle for religious liberty in the 19th century. In the courts early religion clause jurisprudence, they led only to the small prison house of language that Robert Herman describes as a word and distinct and variable barrier of lemon. In other words was incipient in the chiasms of the Everson and in Madison's remonstrance, in which the justices in Everson drew fairly heavily as well as in the continuing prevalence of the figure in Everson and lemon. The figure magnified the value of both church and state, without privileging either, a peon to both religion and secular life which proved more durable than the obstruction symbolized by a wall. The figure simultaneously represents both attraction and aloofness, a relationship that for better or worse leaves substantial room for interpretive debate. And with that, I look forward to your questions. Thank you. Thank you so much Doug for that informative and timely presentation. As we transition to the question and answer part of tonight's program just as a reminder that you can submit questions through the Q&A function in Zoom. So Doug, we got a great interesting question to start with so do you think that political party affiliations with certain religions violates the founding fathers ideals. Sorry, could you repeat that. Sure. Do you think that political party affiliations with certain religions or I would say religious views violates the founding fathers ideals. I'm not enough of a historian to know the what the founders really would have thought of that my my instinct is probably not I think they were somewhat libertarian really about the question and so you know in terms of leadership today I think it is very complicated when parties openly espouse a particular set of religious beliefs. It simply calls into question whether they can be trusted to set those aside when they're governing. Great. Thank you. The first question is a little lengthy so I'm going to make sure that I get it right for you it starts off with. Hi Doug thanks for this talk this was very interesting and quite a, quite a bit I didn't know. I'm struck by how chiasmus in the strict separation of a wall seems to create such a sharp divide. That is there seems to be no space for recognition of the necessary overlap, given the facts that many voters in a democracy. And their lives via church or religion. I'm wondering if you can comment some on whether you think this creates an unrealistic divide. And if that's a bad thing. Yeah, I'll try to answer the question as best I can understand it I am. I think it's interesting that Madison was so cynical as the drafter of the Bill of Rights of its of its potential for legal efficacy and I wonder if that didn't even potentially lead to a certain way of writing it he was clearly according to his statements, intending it to foster a sort of culture of rights. He felt that in a time of emergency. Maybe this was very prescient on his part that in a time of emergency nobody would pay attention to it anyway. You know, I think of this particularly with regard to the religion clauses and this idea of chiasmus as a kind of mystifying figure. And that being deeply embedded in his own thought as to whether that was not a kind of a resolution that he was fully aware it represented. I think it could be resolved with any kind of precision. I think in terms of today's situation with religion that this your resolution if you accept the argument leads to a situation where trust in the Supreme Court becomes fairly important. And today, for example, the Supreme Court's approval ratings are apparently as low as they have ever been so I think in many ways, both the political branches and populous has been a little bit comfortable with the court just sort of sifting it out through the process on a case by case basis, but potentially incendiary politics can erupt, you know, in short order, if you don't have some stable way of resolving those issues. I'm not sure if that answers the question or not. I think it gets at the root of the question so thank you for that. So do you think the current religious makeup of the Supreme Court is operative as a factor in the outcomes of recent cases. That's a kind of speculation I would like to engage in what I think you know as an as an attorney in legal ethics the appearance of impropriety is an important category that's legally recognized right. And I think of that when I think of the court and it's legitimacy which is again, you know, even more important when you have some very indeterminate constitutional provision that people feel very passionately about. And so it does concern me the sort of religious, you know, makeup of the court as we understand it, being imbalanced just simply because of the appearance, but whether or not that actually determines the outcome of their votes. I don't know. Thank you. So do you believe that the current Supreme Court is the most polarized it has ever been. Not a Supreme Court historian but yes, I think it's extremely polarized. Let's put it that way I think. I think the concern a lot of people have is that this court, judging from the last term seems to be in a hurry to change a lot of things and and that's a judicial temperament that I don't think people are used to. Great. So, Dean Webster mentioned in your intro that you have a book coming out next year. Have the recent major rulings of the court forced you to reexamine or revisit any of your writing or research. Excellent question and the answer is yes to an extent. That was not a very happy experience for me with everything changing so particularly the dog's opinion the new abortion ruling touches on the fundamental rights doctrine and and suggest at least to a lot of legal commentators that more may be coming. I had to delay my final draft to wait and see what the court said. I ultimately do some brief analysis of the case it lends itself to what I am talking about in the book which is more about a particularly effusive register of impassioned argument in Supreme Court opinions around fundamental rights so my book doesn't really depend upon the status of the fundamental rights doctrine, but I did have to wait and at least see what they said. So good principles of government can coincide with moral principles offered by religion. So are there any kind of good principles that happen to be found in religion, or are we a nation founded on religious principles that happen to be generalizable to secular thinking. There is a beautiful chiasmus right there. I didn't write that. Yeah, I think. And in a certain way, what did interest me in looking at the religion clauses in this way is in Madison's remonstrance. I can't recall the exact language but he sort of privileges the sovereignty of religious conscience over secular faith and loyalty to secular authority. So I think that our history has allowed both, in certain ways, and tracing, you know, a single origin for that, I think is not the best way to look at it. I think it's a kind of chicken and egg question and there's a process and a relationship. Now I know Doug you mentioned earlier that you're not a Supreme Court historian but and you probably don't want to speculate but I do find this question very interesting. What do you think Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would think of today's Supreme Court. I think, you know, Madison was very concerned about factionalism and wrote a famous federalist paper about that and his solution was to try to create enough factions that no one of them could dominate all of the others. I do wonder if they really have the ability to imagine the kind of sharp partisanship that we experienced today and they certainly I don't think at least Madison would not have liked the idea of this very strong two party system that we have. Maybe it's better than a multi party system in some ways but I don't think they would have imagined it to be that way at least. And I always think of Jefferson wanting to amend the Constitution or rewrite the Constitution every 20 years. And I think of that in light of current constitutional conflicts of how impossible that would be for for us today. That's just a reflection. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. So I think this will be our last question but the style and use of language has changed over time. Does that seem to impact the way citizens understand the thoughts of founders today, the founders today. Sorry, could you repeat that I missed the first part. The style and use of language has changed over time. Does that seem to impact the way citizens understand the thoughts of the founders today. I have no doubt that it does. I can't, you know, think of it like a concrete example. But this is essentially the part of the conflict between originalism and a living constitutionalism. I know that you can go back and know with any degree of certainty what the founders thought about a particular thing, let alone the entire body of people responsible for ratifying the Constitution is some humility because of our distance in time and yes our different language evolves. The Constitution I don't think can be insulated from the natural evolution of language. Absolutely. So thank you Doug again for sharing your expertise with our community as we celebrate Constitution Day 2022. At this time it's my privilege to announce or introduce our Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Gina Casolino. Lenny thank you so much. Doug you said you know when we were prepping for tonight's lecture that you prefer to go by Doug but I'm going to call you Professor Carlson because I feel like I'm back in the classroom what it, what an intellectually rigorous lecture. You've given us so much to think about and I love the thoughtful questions posed by our audience thank you so much to Lenny for moderating some, some Q&A. For those who know me well they know that I love the power of the written and spoken word and Professor Carlson you, Coulson excuse me, you have given us such beautiful language to ponder as we think about these foundational values of our democracy as they're understood and as they're conveyed I've definitely got some things I need to go back and rewatch as many of our students say they like to do rewatching the lectures on zoom really can sort of help imprint the learning so Doug thank you so much for sharing with us tonight. Thank you. It's been it's been really terrific as we wrap up our program I do want to recognize the partnership as has been referenced by Dean Webster at the at the beginning of our program our partnership with the libraries and student affairs to bring this annual event to our community. Our libraries serve as a physical and a spiritual home base to convene and deeply explore the intellectual issues of the day and as Professor Coulson has lifted up there, there really couldn't be more important issues of the day that we're that we're living through in this period of history. And likewise in student affairs we are committed to the holistic development of our students, including a lifelong commitment to intellectual curiosity, and tonight's been a great opportunity to provide opportunity to provide opportunity for all of us to do just that. Thank you, everybody for joining us, and thank you to the teams from the university libraries from student affairs, and of course our featured speaker Doug Coulson for bringing us tonight's program we're so pleased that you all could join us and we look forward to seeing you again at next year's Constitution Day program. Have a good evening everybody. Thank you.