Ken gormley, editor of this great book, the 11th dean of Duquesne University school of law and first appointed president of Duquesne University who will be the 13th president beginning july 1st. Barbara perry is professor of ethics and institutions at Uva Miller Center where she directs president ial studies and cochair of president ial history program. We have a wonderful returning friend, judge Kenneth Starr, the 14th president of baylor university, former solicitor general of the United States, judge on the us court of appeals of the dc circuit and moderator at the center for our Peter JenningsFirst Amendment program, such a friend to all of us. Moderating the program is scholar and resident Michael Gerhardt, distinguished professor of law at usc school of law. I will use my pt barnum like an amplified voice to say ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming ken gormley, barbara perry, Kenneth Starr and Michael Gerhardt [applause] just not enthusiastic about it. Thank you for that introduction. Always a wonderful opportunity to be with all of you. I am Michael Gerhardt at the National Constitution center. It is my privilege and pleasure to participate in this book. The wonderful introduction, i will jump in and get it started, remarkable conversation about a book that covers all the president s of the United States and their constitutional activities, like how could that be possible to do that in a single book, but we have a person who can answer that. Ken gormley will tell us about his experience putting together, what got you interested in this project and what were the Biggest Challenges . It is a real pleasure to be here, this is a fabulous place to talk about this book. I have taught constitutional law for 30 years and one of the things i have written some books about, president ial history, done big programs on them but one of the things that has always struck me is that typically books about the presidency are in lumps, dealing with warmaking powers, 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 was something brandnew. Never had we seen Something Like this in civilized society, this presidency. The framers like Alexander Hamilton talk about energy defining this office and energy is a perfect word because you see if you Pay Attention to what really goes on, it is the people and historical events that give meaning to the presidency. There are 1000 words in article ii that define the powers of the presidency and the framers anticipate that a lot of this would be filled out all the Time Starting with George Washington and over time we would give meaning to these provisions. So this is not something that comes down on high and we have clearcut powers. To the contrary we see colorful strongwilled people walk onto 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 meeting is given to the constitution and the president ial powers. Why this book . Because it occurred to me that to be able to connect the dots together would be something we have never seen before. There are so many connections between and among the presidency, that is how you can learn from this. When i set out to do it i specifically set out to have a chapter on each president and some of the publishers that you cant do that. Some of these president s, William Henry harrison in office for 30 days, you cant write a chapter about that. A short chapter. A great chapter, one of my favorites. Those publishers are the ones that i rejected. A book that had every president in it. I am not so presumptuous as to think i could master all the president s. That is why i many of you remember ran for president gary hart or studied president monroe, the monroe chapter, these are three of my fabulous chapters, fabulous authors, scientists, historians, legal scholars, people who specialize in this. The biggest challenge in writing this book is first of all dealing with this many authors who were all at the top of their game is a challenge and i rewrote and edited, most of these chapters 10 times each, very patient with me. The whole idea was to get the aerial view of how to connect the threads that bring together the different presidencies in different eras in American History. The biggest challenge, was not just doing the editing and wanted to read like a seamless story not a disjointed connection and you can find that is the case. One of the hardest things for me was writing the concluding chapter. This was an effort to take all 44 president s and bring some sense to it. Scenes that brought across presidencies, recurrent issues. And and it is proof person that none of this makes sense without historical context, you cannot understand president ial power or the presidencies of the United States without propelling them into action. And to go forward in this election in 2016. Without seeing justice scalia, and all the different people, and the founding. And a sensible man, George Washington. Tell us a little about George Washington. Let me say thank you. This is a wonderful and precious treasure at the National Constitution center. What we see in general washington, the context driving the mill you and circumstances in which the president is going to operate. Washington was a sensitive to the fear at of executive power. We came to a revolution after all. Throughout the populist country was a great trust in legislative bodies and great distrust of executive power. I want to share two quick stories. The frustration that some of the cabinet have in general washington, withholding the pen. He wielded the pen all of twice in eight years. If the great man would here and we said general, were there more bills that came to your desk, first in new york and here in philadelphia, you would like to have vetoed, i am sure he 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 exercised in such a way that people say wait a second, have we created a monarch . That was part of the conversation with the efficiency of separation of powers. The unified executive known as a monarch. The second story has to do with the generals common sense and inchoate nature of the constitutional experience. Thank you for doing this prodigious labor of law, a great contribution. He noted there were only 1000 words in article ii, and the lack of enumeration in contrast to article 1, as students, avocational or otherwise in the constitution, great detail with respect to article i and a lot of thou shalt not, you have these powers etc. So much was left undefined and one of the undefined causes was the advice and consent clause, to the senate with respect to a Supreme Court appointment, a treaty, one day in new york general washington showed up. This is a wonderful chapter, it would be tedious, put something in writing, he was an efficiency guy, he shows up and the senate was not entirely ready for the great man to show up and he presented with 15 points in this proposed treaty that Vice President john adams presiding over the worlds greatest deliberative body proceeds to read. No one could hear mister adams. There was so much noise pouring into the street, senators didnt know what was up. Play it again, sam. He read it again, met with stony silence. They didnt know what to do. Questions started being asked. The general was sitting there waiting for all of this to unfold. He wanted their consent. He didnt get it. He was quite dismayed by that, saying my word, we need to get the show on the road. He went away, the general had a fiery temper as part of his struggle in life, to control that temper. So he goes out in a bit of a huff but he came back in a couple days in person and the treaty with the native american tribes 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. There it was. He was simply doing what an efficient, good military man would do, get the show on the road and get it concluded and the richness of the experience and how the experience of the president ends up giving meaning to the constitution. It must include one to be on the same parallel as George Washington. And claim to be as great, often times among the great is Abraham Lincoln. Barbara perry joins us, talk about that. Thank you to the Constitution Center for having is here today and our great leader, ken gormley, for producing this tome. It has one of those red ribbon markers that makes it feel biblical. Who can think of a better book to have as we come to this amazing president ial election we are facing in november so i highly recommend it to all of you. My friend and colleague wrote this chapter on lincoln when at lsu shreveport. I have a soft spot in my heart for Abraham Lincoln because i am a kentuckian by birth. The first president ial birthplace i ever went to in kentucky, our home in louisville. Lincoln often times will outshine lists of great president s, sneak into the number one position over general George Washington. Why is that . Bill peterson points out carefully and clearly in this chapter, Abraham Lincoln in the civil war read so much into the constitution, particularly in the commanderinchief clause, brought back to coverage everything he felt was necessary to undertake during the civil war. Obviously 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 powers 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 we will lose the constitution so obviously it is important to save that and save the union. What are some examples of his use of the commanderinchief powers during the war . Very famously he expanded that to a form formal blockade in southern ports to make sure necessities and more material would not come into the southern ports. In the end the Supreme Court particularly after he named several members of the court supported that. Action and the prized cases. He also famously or 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 ever have that, he suspended that even though that was how it was not granted to the president but to the congress. He used military tribunals because it came back as an issue with the Guantanamo Bay prisoners during the war on terror. Military tribunals are the way to go in terms of trying confederates. Also promulgated the emancipation proclamation under the commanderinchiefs power. He made the case that during a time of war the president would have the power to emancipate slaves because they were still technically property. The dred scott decision had not granted citizenship to slaves, so while lincoln might have wanted to view them as citizens they were not under the law at that time viewed in that way, they were viewed as property. This was the instrumental approach he used. In those states that were still under confederate control the emancipation proclamation freed the slaves. He felt he had the power to do that in time of war against seizing property from the enemy. This served a dual purpose for him because those emancipated slaves could serve in the union army. Lincoln also enlisted one of the most renowned political scientists of the era, francis lee berg, to grant what were called general order number 100 under sometimes known as lincolns code. This was the first effort, the first attempt ever made in history to articulate a set of rules to govern the rules of war and how war was to be conducted. Lincoln code band the use of poison and torture and other factors that previously had been used in wartime by military leaders. The code in part was designed to protect the 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, captured by the confederates they would be shot on site or tortured. This is another one of the gifts, this code of military war, use of military force that had been handed down to us in the rules of law by Abraham Lincoln. Since forms part of the Hague Convention and to us the more famous Geneva Convention of the 20century to apply to wartime. Bill peterson is so correct in ending his chapter in the book on lincoln to say particularly with the poetic gettysburg address in style and substance that lincoln for the first time in our countrys history combined the declaration of independence with the u. S. Constitution and we view those documents today as governing us but they were not only bound in this country but used throughout the world. There is so much that is rich and interesting in this book we wont spend as much time in the 19th century as we would like. It may seem talking about the presidency, my task to remind us a little bit about 19th century and other time to some extent has forgotten what we might think had relatively uneventful presidencies when it came to constitution and law. My part is to say that is not the case. I wont talk about lesserknown president s like harrison and taylor. I will talk about franklin pierce, a president who often may be rated among the worst in American History which is distinction none of them appearance for. Pierce serve four years had an interesting and one might say tragic presidency. This is the chapter paul talked about and wrote and an expert in this field but among the things that make the pierce presidency interesting is the fact the only presidency in American History where over the course of four years there was not a single change in the cabinet. You might think pierce was a weak president but he did some things that were not so weak and i talk about that in a second because pierce began his presidency in a remarkably tragic way. The worst possible tragedy that could befall somebody. On the way to washington his train derailed, he literally sees his son killed before him. If you wonder if it affected him, he talks about it in the second or third sentence. It destroyed his life and sent pierce to church. He refused to do business over the weekend except once. There was contingent sent to him in congress involving Stephen Douglas and one of the people pierce paid close attention to and took advice from all the time, secretary of war, jefferson davis. They came to him with a bill, what they wanted to do was change the way slavery was regulated in the territories in kansas, nebraska, and davis asked him to write it out by hand and make sure it was what he wanted. Pierce did that reluctantly but he did it. The law changed the way it was dealt with, the territories, it became a function of popular sovereignty. The territory, decided according to what the majority in different realms wanted. In kansas it didnt work out 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. The others coming into kansas wanted to oppose slavery and it was a challenge for pierce to figure out which side to be on. There was never a doubt. Pierce came down strongly on the side of slavery. Not just trying to fit more than one but sending using a lot of force for the federal government. All the powers he had available were used to shove slavery down the throat of the people of kansas and was met with violence, used force to settle that violence and this became a hallmark of his presidency. Popular sovereignty and at the same time ended the his presidency in a tragic way because it showed the impossibility of trying to solve the problem of slavery through the democratic process. The president so clearly was on the side of one. One way it ends, one of the governments decides they dislike pierce so much that when they go toward lawrence, kansas, a name for every president except for one. No pierce street. It is named after henry clay. The one way clay tried to align the presidency. That takes us to the 19th century. There is much to be said about other president s in that period. One of the chapters you wrote on president kennedy in the modern era what is happening to the presidency. Absolutely. I mentioned i had a soft spot for Abraham Lincoln but in the period of time when i was 6 or 7, my parents took us to hartsville they were very bipartisan and knowing i would grow up to be a presidency scholar. When i was 4, my mother took us to see john f. Kennedy who was campaigning one month before the election in our hometown of louisville. Dont you remember we got there early and stood in front of the podium, i was for, i remember the balloons and confetti but cant quite remember what the president said. A couple years later, former president eisenhower came to town and they took us to the airport to see him as well. They got us interested in the topic to be sure so kennedy is a lifelong interest and passion of mine. One of the reasons mother packed