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[Between Power and Authority: Arendt on the Constitution and the Courts]

OSUN and Hannah Arendt Center present:

Between Power and Authority: Arendt on the Constitution and the Courts

Thursday, March 7, 2024 – Friday, March 8, 2024
Multiple Locations at Bard College

  • Overview
  • Registration
  • Schedule

Registration

The event will take place in-person and will be free and open to the public. Please direct any questions to Nicholas Dunn ([email protected]). 

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Schedule


Thursday, March 7, 2024

Opening Panel – 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM [Weis Cinema]
Simon Gilhooley (Bard College)
“What Wasn't Constitutional Authority?: The Constitution and Supreme Court in Historical Context”
Peter Rosenblum (Bard College)
“Hannah Arendt's Appealing and Impossible Vision of the American Constitutional order”
Shmuel Lederman (Haifa University)
“The year when colonialism came back home: An Arendtian interpretation of Israel's Constitutional and Security Crisis”

Chair: Thomas Wild (Bard College)
 
Plenary Session – 2:30 PM – 4:30 PM [Weis Cinema]
Roger Berkowitz (Bard College)
“Between Power and Authority: Hannah Arendt on the U.S. Constitution and the Supreme Court”
Olivia Guaraldo (Verona)
“Constitutio libertatis: Hannah Arendt's theoretical attempt at thinking institutions”
Dana Villa (Notre Dame)
“Arendt on Authority” 

Chair: Peg Birmingham (DePaul University)

Keynote Address – 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM [Bito Auditorium]
Peg Birmingham (DePaul University), “The Problem of Constitutional Authority in a Secular Age”
*2nd Annual De Gruyter-Arendt Center Lecture in Political Thinking*

Chair: Nicholas Dunn (Bard College)

Friday, March 8, 2024

Morning Paper Sessions [Olin 202]
10:00 AM – 10:45 AM
Kim Maslin (Hendrix College)
“An Institution for Judgement: Towards a First Principle of Politics” 

Chair: Yarran Hominh (Bard College)
 
11:00 AM – 11:45 AM
Shree Agnihotri (London School of Economics)
“Memory, Work, Action: An Arendtian Explanation of the Role of the Judiciary in a Constitutional Democracy”
 
Chair: Lucas Pinheiro (Bard College)

Afternoon Paper Sessions [Olin 202]

2:00 – 2:45 PM
Pinchas Huberman (Yale)
“The Deregulatory First Amendment: An Arendtian Critique”

Chair: Maxim Botstein (Bard College)

3:00 PM – 3:45 PM
Gabriele Parrino (Scuola Normale Superiore)
“Founding a Res Publica: Hannah Arendt’s Roman Constitutionalism” 

Chair: Thomas Bartscherer (Bard College)

4:00 PM – 4:45 PM
Mel Topf (Roger Williams University)
“Judicial Power and Judicial Legitimacy: Hannah Arendt on the Crisis of Authority” 

Chair: Jana Schmidt (Bard College)

5:00 PM – 5:30 PM - Cemetery Tour [Optional]
 

This event occurred on:  Keynote Speaker: Peg Birmingham (DePaul University)

Organised by Nicholas Dunn (Bard College)

The U.S. Supreme Court today faces a crisis of legitimacy. More than half of Americans have an unfavorable view of the Court—the lowest in over three decades. Following a slate of rulings on abortion, affirmative action, student debt, and freedom of religion, an increasing number of Americans no longer believe the Court is impartial, viewing it as simply another partisan institution. As a result, many are calling for various reforms of the Court, including term limits and packing the court. At the same time, the Court has, even at this moment, has struck down racially motivated gerrymandering in Alabama and has refused to accept the Independent State Legislature Theory that would allow states to overturn the will of their voters. There is little doubt that politics is at play in the Supreme Court; at the same time, the Court still gives credence to the idea of the rule of law and not men. 
 
In On Revolution, Hannah Arendt places the American constitutional tradition at the center of her inquiry into the founding and preserving of political freedom. The success of the American Revolution, for her, consisted in two things: its unleashing of citizen power through the principle of  federalist dispersion of power and its institutionalization of authority in the Supreme Court and the United States Constitution. Regarding the former, Arendt argues that the embrace of federalism allowed for the multiplication and flourishing of power within a stable system. Regarding the latter, Arendt offers an original reading of the Supreme Court as the successor of the Roman Senate. The Court's authority combined with the surprising fact that the Constitution came to be worshiped allowed the United States to achieve authority for its laws absent religious sanction. This authority tied together permanence and change, permitting the country to develop and grow while also maintaining order and stability. In short, the combination of power and authority that emerged from  the worship of the United States Constitution became the modern condition for the possibility of founding free government.
 
This conference aims to bring together scholars of Arendt’s constitutional thought and those working in political and legal theory more broadly to pursue the following questions: Is the Supreme Court still a legal institution, one that wields and deserves the authority imbued by the rule of law? Is the Supreme Court simply an undemocratic institution of power? If the latter, should we abandon the charade that the Supreme Court is above politics?  Or, should we work to uphold the reality and the illusion that the Court is a legal and not simply a political institution? Any answers to these questions request that we face what is lost if and when the Supreme Court is no longer recognized as a seat of authority. We are especially interested in papers that address: Arendt’s conception of power and/or authority, Arendt’s constitutional and/or legal theory, and the relevance of all of this for current discussions of the Supreme Court and constitutional politics.

Registration and Format
The event will take place in-person and will be free and open to the public. Please direct any questions to Nicholas Dunn ([email protected]). 
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