- 9:30 PM

Room - Main Hall 7

Moderator: Lisa Parshall, Professor of Political Science, Daemen College, lparshal@daemen.edu

Presenters

Peter J. Galie, Professor Emeritus, Canisius College, galie@canisius.edu

Christopher Bopst, Esq., cbopst@aol.com,

Beth Kirschner, Esq., kirschner@lawfirmvirginia.com

Discussants/Commentators 

Gerald Benjamin, Distinguished Professor, SUNY New Paltz, benjamig@newpaltz.edu 

John Dinan, Professor, Wake Forest, dinanjj@wfu.edu

Jim Gardner, SUNY Distinguished Professor, UB School of Law, jgard@buffalo.edu

A presentation and roundtable discussion of "The First Tradition of Rights in America: State Constitutional Declarations of Rights, 1776-1791," by Peter J. Galie, Christopher Bopst and Beth Kirschner (forthccoming Palgrave McMillan). The authors offer a new perspective as to why various rights appeared or did not appear in the first state constitutions during the founding period. Starting with the assumption that the provisions concerning rights can only be understood in the context of a colonial understanding of community and the conditions for sustaining that community, they argue that rights functioned differently in these documents than they would after the adoption of the national Bill of Rights. Working out the implications of these propositions will allow us to uncover a new understanding of these rights, and to recover a world we have lost.