Political Theory Project

Political Theory Project Visiting Professor Steven G. Calabresi, the George C. Dix Professor of Constitutional Law at Northwestern University, will be teaching an introductory Constitutional Law course to undergraduates at Brown this fall. Calabresi, co-founder of the Federalist Society, now serves as the Chairman of the Society’s Board of Directors. He served in the Reagan and first Bush Administrations from 1985 to 1990 and advised Attorney General Edwin Meese III, and he wrote speeches for former Vice President Dan Quayle. Calabresi joined the faculty of Northwestern in 1990 and has since published more than 70 articles and comments in law reviews, as well as books with Yale University Press and Foundation Press.

His Constitutional Law course will focus on introducing undergraduate students to the federalism and separation of powers provisions of the structural Constitution. This course grows out of the basic Constitutional Law I course that is required of all first year law students. The course emphasizes the history underlying the Constitution over the last 220 years, and also the political science issues that are raised by the federalism and separation of powers provisions of the U.S. Constitution. The law school materials have been modified to make them more accessible to undergraduates and others interested in a liberal arts approach to the Constitution. The course will be taught using a new Constitutional Law casebook of which he is a co-author. The book contains more excerpts from the Federalist Papers and other similar essays than does any other casebook on the market.