Law School to Host Constitution Day Lecture

Pro­fes­sor Jim Chen of the Uni­ver­sity of Louisville Louis D. Bran­deis School of Law will dis­cuss the legal devel­op­ments that pre­saged and par­al­leled the Civil War at a Con­sti­tu­tion Day event at the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico School of Law. The lec­ture takes place Mon­day, Sept. 17 at 11:30 a.m. in Room 2404. A pizza lunch will be included.

The title of Chen’s lec­ture is, “The Car­bonif­er­ous Con­sti­tu­tion: Land Grabs and Land Grants in Bel­li­cose America.”

Fol­low­ing is Chen’s syn­op­sis of his talk:

“Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ism as state­craft is not con­fined to the found­ing of a nation. Amer­i­can his­tory abounds with “con­sti­tu­tional moments” – epochal crises that gen­er­ate endur­ing changes in the legal cul­ture of the United States. Such moments do not con­sist solely of con­sti­tu­tional con­ven­tions, con­sti­tu­tional amend­ments, or even judi­cial inter­pre­ta­tions of the Con­sti­tu­tion. Statutes and treaties, espe­cially if under­taken and under­stood as exer­cises in prin­ci­pled law­mak­ing, con­tribute might­ily over time to the weav­ing of America’s con­sti­tu­tional fabric.

In honor of the 225th anniver­sary of the United States Con­sti­tu­tion, the 150th anniver­sary of the land-grant col­lege sys­tem, and the 100th anniver­sary of New Mex­ico state­hood, this pre­sen­ta­tion will focus on the legal devel­op­ments that pre­saged and ulti­mately par­al­leled the ulti­mate con­sti­tu­tional cri­sis in Amer­i­can his­tory: the Civil War. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848 (and its echo, the Gad­sen Pur­chase) capped a long series of treaties that lit­er­ally built the con­ti­nen­tal United States. These treaties also per­fected the addi­tion to the United States of the ter­ri­to­ries that would become the State of New Mex­ico. They rep­re­sent the pin­na­cle of Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion­al­ism and state­craft in what we may call America’s Pale­o­zoic Era, the four score years, minus one, that mark the tem­po­ral dis­tance from Inde­pen­dence Hall to Appo­mat­tox Court House.

Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Gad­sen Pur­chase were at once Omega and Alpha, as much the ful­fill­ment of Man­i­fest Des­tiny as har­bin­gers of the Civil War. Once seces­sion had split asun­der the United States, the land grabs that these treaties effected gave way to the cre­ation of the Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture and the trin­ity of great land grant statutes sig­naled north­ern leg­isla­tive supremacy dur­ing the Civil War: the Home­stead Act, the Mor­rill Land-Grant Col­lege Act and the Pacific Rail­way Act. Seen as a coher­ent legal pro­gres­sion, the land grabs of the Mex­i­can War and the land grants of the Civil War make up America’s Car­bonif­er­ous Con­sti­tu­tion, the final episode of fun­da­men­tal law­mak­ing in Amer­ica at its most bellicose.”

Chen joined the Uni­ver­sity of Louisville in 2007 as dean of Louis D. Bran­deis School of Law, serv­ing in that role until 2012. His works span sub­jects such as admin­is­tra­tive law, agri­cul­tural law, con­sti­tu­tional law, eco­nomic reg­u­la­tion, envi­ron­men­tal law, indus­trial pol­icy, leg­is­la­tion and nat­ural resources law. He is the coau­thor of Dis­as­ters and the Law: Kat­rina and Beyond (Aspen Pub­lish­ers, 2006), the first book to pro­vide com­pre­hen­sive cov­er­age of the legal issues sur­round­ing nat­ural dis­as­ters. This path­break­ing book is now in its sec­ond edi­tion under the title Dis­as­ter Law and Policy.

Story by Nancy Har­bert, UNM School of Law

Media con­tact: Ben­son Hen­drix (505) 277‑1816; email: bhendrix@unm.edu