David C. Baum Memorial Lecture on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights
"A Republic, If We Can Build It"
Presented by Jamal Greene
Dwight Professor of Law
Columbia Law School
The Constitution of 1787, written and amended under conditions of mass political exclusion, presents a profound but largely unacknowledged challenge to republican governance. Multiple generations of Americans have been able to meet that challenge by enshrining their values and commitments into our higher law, not through adherence to the written Constitution, but by creating a new, unwritten one. Only by building on the work of these unheralded constitutional drafters can we create the republic the Founders' Constitution promised but could not deliver.
About the Speaker
Jamal Greene is the Dwight Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where he teaches courses in constitutional law, the law of the political process, and comparative constitutional law. He is the author of How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession With Rights Is Tearing America Apart, as well as numerous scholarly articles and book chapters on constitutional law and theory. From January 2023 to December 2024, he served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel. He served as a law clerk to the Hon. Guido Calabresi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and to the Hon. John Paul Stevens on the U.S. Supreme Court. He earned his J.D. from Yale Law School and his A.B. from Harvard College.
About the David C. Baum Memorial Lecture Series
The family and friends of David C. Baum endowed the David C. Baum Memorial Lecture on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights not only in his memory, but at his request.
Deep concern for the dignity and rights of all people was central to Professor Baum’s character and activities. After receiving his undergraduate and legal education at Harvard University, Professor Baum served as law clerk for Justice Walter V. Schaefer of the Illinois Supreme Court, 1959-60. He then practiced law with the Chicago firm of Ross, McGowan, Hardies and O’Keefe until he joined the faculty of the University of Illinois College of Law in 1963.
Professor Baum was an inspiration to his student and colleagues, not only because of the excellence of his teaching, scholarship, and public service, but because of his remarkable human qualities. Conscientious and judicious, blending passion for justice with dispassionate objectivity, he inspired the highest level of discourse and endeavor in all who had the privilege of knowing and working with him.
It is hoped that the David C. Baum Memorial Lecture on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights will constitute a fitting memorial to a man whose unrelenting intellectual vigor and moral commitment made his presence in the world of law invaluable.
