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Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Prof. Keith Whittington to Speak March 6

Dear Princetonians: HAPPY NEW YEAR!

The University is graciously sponsoring another professor's visit this year. It is Professor Keith Whittington. The program will be held on March 6. It will likely be in the Ann Arbor area. If there any alumni in Ann Arbor that would like to host the program at their house, please contact me. Further details to follow. Information on Prof Whittington's talk is below:

Name: Keith E. Whittington
Department: Department of Politics
Talk Title: The Politics of Judicial Supremacy

Talk Description: Judicial review is usually understood to be inherently antidemocratic, and politicians frequently decry the "judicial activism" of out-of-control judges. In practice, however, the U.S. Supreme Court has often exercised the power of judicial review in ways that win political support for the Court. National political leaders have often found it in their political interest to support the active exercise of judicial review and protect the Court from its critics. Judicial activism is not simply an assertion of will by independent judges; politicians have encouraged and supported judicial activism and the rise of judicial supremacy.

Bio: Keith E. Whittington is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University. He is the author of Constitutional Construction: Divided Powers and Constitutional Meaning and Constitutional Interpretation: Textual Meaning, Original Intent, and Judicial Review, and editor (with Neal Devins) of Congress and the Constitution. He has published widely on American constitutional theory and development, federalism, judicial politics, and the presidency. He is the author of the forthcoming Political Foundations of Judicial Supremacy: The Presidency, the Supreme Court, and Constitutional Leadership in U.S. History, and editor (with R. Daniel Kelemen and Gregory A. Caldeira) of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics. He has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow and American Council of Learned Societies Junior Faculty Fellow, and a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Texas School of Law.