Volume on the presidency and the constitution, and here they are. The editor of the book is the 11th dean over the Duquesne University school of law and was just appointed president of Duquesne University. He will serve as duquesnes 13th president beginning july 1st. Barbara perry is professor of ethics and institutions at uvas miller center, where she directs president ial studies and cochair of the president ial oral history program, and we have a wonderful returning friend of the center, judge kenneth starr, the 14th 14th president of baylor university, former solicitor general of the United States, and judge on the u. S. Court of appeals for the d. C. Circuit, and this inspiring moderator here at the center for our Peter JenningsFirst Amendment program. Such a great for us. Moderating todays program is our resident, mikeat gear gerhart from usc school of law and i will now use my unamplified voice to say, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming our guests. [applause] just not enthusiastic enough. Thank you, jeff, for that introduction. As far as the great wonderful opportunity to be here with all of you. I am mike gerhart, and its my distinct previous and pleasure to have been able to participate in this book. Im going to jump right in and get started, remarkable conversation bat book that literally covers all the president s of the United States and their constitutional activities, the question might be how could that be possible to do that in a single book. We have the person here who can answer that, him about to become a president , who will tell us about his experience in putting this together, what got you interested in this project and what died you think was the biggest challenge in doing it. Well, its pleasure to be here and fap fabulous place to to talk about the book. Taught constitutional law, and one thing i have written books about great moments in president ial history and done big programs on them but one thing has always struck me is that typically books about the presidency are in lumps dealing with warmaking powers or wartime powers, domestic powers, big subjects. But the more you see it playing out, it really doesnt happen that way at all. The powers of the presidency when this office was created it was something brand new. Never had we seen Something Like this in a civilized society. This presidency, and the framers like Alexander Hamilton talked about energy, defining this office, and energy is a perfect word because you see, if you Pay Attention to what really goes on, that it is the people and historical events that give meaning to the presidency. There are barely a thousand words in article 2 that defines the purrs of the presidency, and the framers anticipated that a lot of this would be filled out over time, starting with George Washington, they hoped, but that over time, we would give meaning to these provisions. And so this was not something that just comes down on high and we have very clearcut powers. To the contrary. You see colorful, strongwilled people, walk on to the stage, being elected president of the United States and this book tries to capture how forces push and tug and buffet them around and that is how mean is given to the constitution and the president ial powers. Why this book . Because it occurred to me that to be able to connect all these dots together would be something we have never really seen before. There are so many connections between and among presidencies that is how you can learn from this, and so when i set out to do it, michael, i specifically set out to have a chapter on each president , and some of the publishers said you cant do that. Some of these president s, William Henry harrison were in office for 30 days if you cant write a chapter about that. Yeah, you can, short chapter. Its one of my favorite. Those publishers are the ones i rejected. I want to have a book that has every president in and it im not so presumptuous to think i could master all president s and thats why i got great authors, gary hart, ran for president , have studied president monroe and written a book about him. These are three of my fabulous chapters i moon my fabulous authors. Got political scientists, historians, legal scholars, people who specialize in the the biggest challenge in writing this book was to first of all, dealing with this many authors, who are all at the top of their game, is a little bit of a challenge, and i admit i rewrote and ed ited most of the chapters eight times each. They were very patient. But the whole idea was to get the aerial view how you connect together the threads that bring together the different presidencies, different eras of American History, and the biggest challenge wag not just doing the editing i wanted hit to read like a story, not like a disjointed collection of essays, and i hope you find that is the case. But one of the hardest things for me was writing the concluding chapter because this was an effort to take all 44 president s, and bring some sense to it, themes that crossed across presidencies, recurrent issues, and that i tell you issue just hold myself up in my office at home and worked on this for months to try to pull it together, and for me that was the greatest part of this, because you do see in the end i think this book is Proof Positive that number of this makes sense without historical context. That you cannot understand president ial power or the presidency of the United States youth understanding the events that propelled them into action and the people who moved them, and that is how we learn so much, and i think well be able to learn Going Forward in this election, in 2016, and Going Forward you are going to watch. The putting together the dots. Thank you, ken. The question is, where do you begin a book like this . When i was in philadelphia, not too long ago, i had the privilege of being to see Justice Scalia in one of his last public appearances, and he said in response to a question who among all the different people might you most respect in the world of constitutional law, particularly with the founding, his answer was, the indispensable man, George Washington, so judge starr, tell us about George George washingt. Thank you. This is such wonderful and precious treasure here at the National Constitution center, so, jeff, thank you for your exemplary and energetic litership which is what we see in general washington. Think of what ken just said about the context driving the milieu and the circumstances of which the president is going to operate, and washington was extremely sensitive to the fear of executive power. We just come through a revolution, after all, and so throughout the populist country was a great trust in legislative bodies and great distrust of executive power. And when we see i want to share two quick stories. The first is the frustration that some of the cabinet had in general washington withholding the veto pen. He wielded that pen all of twice in eight years. If the great man were here, and we could say, general, were there more bills that came to your desk, first in new york and then here in philadelphia, that you would have liked to have vetoed . He, im sure, would say, yes. Many bills he did not agree with. But he had the sense of selfrestraint at that particular time. Not weakness but a sense of, lets allow the evolution of the process and not have as it were executive energy in such a way that people say, wait a second. Have we created a monarch . And that was part of the conversation with the inefficiency of separation of powers. Maybe we need energy in the executive that unidentified executive known as a monarch. The second story has to do with the generals common sense and the nature of the constitutional experience. Ken gormley the for this he note that there were only 1,000 words in article 2, and the lack of eknew. Racing of powers enumeration of powers in contrast to article 1 is quite revealing, and we all know that as students, avocational or otherwise of the constitution. Great detail with respect to article 1, including a lot of thou shalt not, congress, too the following. But so much was left undefined and one of the undefined clauses was the advice advise and consent clause. What does that mean . To go to the senate with respect to the Supreme Court appointment or, in this instance, treaty. Well, one day in new york, general washington showed up. He had a treaty. And he said, in effect, this is a wonderful chapter by the way it would would just be tedious. He used that word, tedious to put something in writing so he was an efficiency guy. A good military man. So he shows up and apparently the senate was not entirely ready for the great man to show up, and he presented here with the 15 points in this proposed treaty that the Vice President , john adams, presiding over the world residents greatest deliberative body, then proceeds to read. The problem is no one could hear mr. Adams. Theres so much noise pouring in from the street. The senators didnt know what was up. They said, play it again, sam. So, he read it again. Met with stony silence. They didnt quite know what to do. And so questions started being asked, and, general is sitting there, waiting for all of this to unfold. He wanted their consent. Well, he didnt get it. And he was quite dismayed by that and sort of thundered a bit and saying, my word, we need to get this show on the road and so forth. So he went away, but the general had a firey temper, and part of his struggle in life was to control that temper, and so he goes out in a bit of a huff, but cooler heads prevailed. He came back in a couple of days, again, in person, and the treaty with the native american tribe, was in fact approved by the United States senate. Since that time, no president has shown up in the senate to seek the consent of the senate, and so there it was. He was simply doing what an efficient, good military man would do, let get this show on the road and get it concluded. And it just points otherwise again just the richness of the experience and how the experience of the president ended up giving meaning to the constitution. Of course, the book on president ial and the constitution must include one of the few president s might be said to be on the same parallel as George Washington. Not many can claim to be as great. One that often times is listed among the greats is Abraham Lincoln. Barbara perry who joins us. Telephone us about Abraham Lincoln. Thank you for having us here today and to our great leader, for producing these tomes. It even has a red ribbon marker in it that makes it feel biblical. Who can think of a better book to have as we come to this amazing president ial election were facing in november. Highly recommend it to all of you. My friend and colleague, Bill Peterson wrote this chapter on lincoln. He is at lsu, shreveport, but i have a soft spot in my heart for Abraham Lincoln. Because im a kentuckian show. First president ial birth place i went to. And lincoln often times will even outshine on lists of great president s. He sometimes sneaks ininto number one position over general George Washington, president George Washington. Why is that . So Bill Peterson point outside carefully and clearly in this chapter, you have the fact that Abraham Lincoln in the civil war, read so much into the constitution, particularly in the commanderinchief clause. He brought him back to cover just about anything that he felt was necessary to undertake during the civil war. Volves live that was an unprecedented situation that happened on his watch. He was convinced that it was better to read more into the constitution and expand the power of the president and perhaps on occasion violate the constitution if that served the cause of the union to win the war, because the thought was if the union loses the war well lose the constitution. So obviously its important to save that and save the union. What are some examples of his use of the commander in chief power during the war . Very famously he expanded that to form a blockade around the southern ports to try to make sure that necessities as well as war materiale would not come into the southern port. In the end the Supreme Court, particularly after he had named several members of the court, supported that action in the cases. He also famously infamously, depending on ones view, suspended the writ of habeas corpus, a genuine right that we hold in this country, to know why we are placed in prison, if we into ever have that beefalos. He suspended that power even though it was power granted to the congress, he also used military tribunalsment this came back as an issue with the Guantanamo Bay prisoners during this war on terror. But he decided that military tribunals would be the way to go. And he promulgated promulgated e proclamation and made a is during the time of war the president has the power to emaps pate the slaves because they were technically property. The dread ask the decision had not granted citizenship to slaves so while lincoln may wanted to view them as citizens they were not under he law viewed in that way. They were viewed as property. This was an instrumental approach he used. So in those states that were still under confederate control. The emancipation proclaim make freed the slaves help thought he could do that, seizing property from the enemy. This served a dual purpose for him because those emancipated slaves could then serve in the union army. Lincoln also enlisted one of the most renowned political scientists of the era, a man named Francis Lieber to draft what he called general orders number 100. Sometimes known as the lieber code, or lincolns code. This is the first effort, the first attempt every made in history to articulate a set of rules to govern the rules of war and how war was to be conducted. The lip lip code banned the use of poison, banned the use of torture and other practices that previously had used in wartimes by military leaders through the ages. The code was designed to try to protect these freed slaves who were joining the union or those who had been free and joined the union from the north, joined the union army, because there were instances where if they would be taken by and captured by the confederates, they would be shot on sight or be tortured. So, this is another one of the gifts, this code of military war, use of military force, that has been handed down to us in the rules of law by Abraham Lincoln. These then formed part of the Hague Convention and then even to us the more famous general neva cop strengths of the 20th geneva conventions to apply to wartime. Think Bill Peterson is so correct in ending his chapter in book on lincoln to say, particularly with the poetic gettysburg address, both in style and substance, that lincoln really for the first time in our countrys history, combined the declaration of independence with the u. S. Constitution, and that we view that both documents today as governing us but they were not only bound in the country but used throughout the world. Thank you, barbara. Of course, so much that is rich and interesting in this book. Were going to not be able to spend as much time on the 19th 19th century as we would like. It may seem that were talking about only giants or president s that are considered to be great. Its my task to remind us about the 19th century, and other president s who perhaps time has to some extent forgotten and whom we might think had relatively uneventful presidencies. Its my job to say thats not the case. Now, wont talk about the lesser known president s like harrison or taylor. Those presidencies are rich in activity, perhaps surprisingly, but i want to talk about franklin pierce, a president who may by rated among the worst in American History, which is a distinction that none of them yearns for. But pierce served for four years, had an interesting and one might say tragic presidency. In this is a chapter that paul wrote, and he is an expert in this field. That among the things that makes the pierce presidency interesting is its the only presidency there was not a single change in the cabinet over four years. I think that pierce is a weak president , but he did some things that were not so weak, and well talk about that now in a second. Pierce began his presidency in the remarkably tragic way. This worst possible tragedy that could possibly befall somebody. On the way to washington for the inauguration his train derailed and he literally sees his son killed before him. So if you if you wonder if its affected him, just rae the gnawing all address. But it also destroyed his life and it sent pierce to church, and he refused to do business over the weekend except once. It was contingent sent to him from congress, including steven douglas, and one people that pierce paid closest attention to is secretary of war, jefferson davis. They came to him with a bill because what they wanted to do was to change the way slavery was rig late held in the territory. The bills became known as the kansasnebraska act. They asked pierce to consider it, and even asked him to write it out in hand to ensure it was what they wanted. Piecer did that reluctantly bud did it. This law then changed the way slavery was dealt with in the territories so it became a function of what became known as popular sovereignty. New territories, new states, would decide according to what the majority in each of those different realms wanted. In kansas didnt work out quite so well. What happened in kansas to make a long story short, is there was a civil war. One part of kansas didnt want slavery, other