Events

Abraham Lincoln Lecture on Constitutional Law

Northwestern Pritzker School of Law presents the sixth annual Abraham Lincoln Lecture on Constitutional Law
featuring Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University.



Abraham Lincoln Lecture on Constitutional Law
with Eric Foner

Foner will examine the historical background and immediate motives for the enactment of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, their strengths and weaknesses as instruments for the pursuit of racial justice, and how the Supreme Court over time developed a highly restrictive interpretation of their purposes, with consequences we are still living with today.

Live Zoom Event
Tuesday, September 21, 2021
12:00 - 1:00 p.m. Central
Register to receive Zoom connection information

This program is pending approval for 1 general CLE credit in the state of Illinois.

Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, is one of the most prominent historians in the United States. He is the author or editor of over twenty books.  His publications have concentrated on the intersections of intellectual, political and social history and the history of American race relations. Reconstruction, 1863-1877: America’s Unfinished Revolution (1988), winner of the Bancroft Prize and Los Angeles Times book prize, along other awards, is regarded as the standard work on the era. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (2010), was awarded the Bancroft Prize, Pulitzer Prize for History, and the Lincoln Prize. As co-curator of two award-winning historical exhibitions, and through frequent appearances in newspapers and magazines and on radio and television discussion programs, he has also endeavored to bring historical knowledge to a broad public outside the university. His latest book, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution, was published in September 2019.

The Abraham Lincoln Lecture on Constitutional Law was established in 2016 by Professor Steven G. Calabresi. This lecture series honors President Lincoln’s extraordinary work as a lawyer and as the leader who ended slavery, and recognizes his personal connection to the Law School.

Previous lecturers include Gordon S. Wood, Alva O. Way University Professor Emeritus at Brown University; Akhil Reed Amar, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University; Daniel Farber, Sho Sato Professor of Law and Co-Faculty Director, Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at the University of California, Berkeley; Michael Stokes Paulsen (BA '81), Distinguished University Chair & Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas; and Annette Gordon-Reed, professor of history at Harvard University, and the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School.

Please contact Christine Breakey at christine.breakey@law.northwestern.edu or 312.503.4186 if you have any questions.