Constitution Day

Constitution Day commemorates the ratification of the U.S. Constitution by the nation’s founders on September 17, 1787.

Oberlin College will observe Constitution Day, September 18th with a lecture by Professor Thomas M. Keck, OC '92, Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics, Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. “Free Speech and Democratic Backsliding in the Contemporary U.S.”

Keck is among the country’s foremost experts on the modern Supreme Court and has been cited extensively by the media for recent rulings such as Dobbs v. Jackson. Keck is the author of Judicial Politics in Polarized Times and The Most Activist Supreme Court in History, as well as articles in the American Political Science Review, Constitutional Studies, Journal of Law & Courts, Law and Society Review, and Law and Social Inquiry.

Keck has also published a series of papers investigating democratic backsliding in the United States, with particular attention to the role of courts, including an early assessment of President Trump’s efforts to undermine U.S. constitutional democracy, a historically informed analysis of Court packing in the U.S., and a broad engagement with the literature on democratic erosion, backsliding, and abuse. He is currently writing a book on the judicial protection of free speech in the context of democratic backsliding.

Sponsored by the JD Lewis Memorial Lectureship, Law and Society Program, Office of Alumni Engagement and the General Counsel’s Office