A small group of professors and students gathered on Friday to discuss the Constitution of the United States of America.
The discussion was mandated under a new law requiring any American school receiving federal funding to teach about the Constitution on the anniversary of its signing. The Constitution was signed Sept. 17, 1787.
The law was inserted into a federal spending bill last December by Senator Robert Byrd, D-W.V. Last week was the first observance of the new holiday, Constitution Day.
Political Science Professor Marylin Glater spoke about the constitutionality of the new holiday. She said the federal government was unlikely to enforce the law by observing the teaching sessions. "The meeting probably wasn't monitored by the government because it may be called unconstitutional," she said.
Glater said she supported educating students about the Constitution, but felt uncomfortable with the federal government mandating her curriculum. "What will be next, will they tell us what to teach too?" she asked.
Another professor in the political science department, Phillip Munoz discussed the history of the document and its writers' intent during the discussion.
The Constitution generally outlines "what the government can and can't do," Munoz said. He said it was an extension of the principles established eleven years earlier in the Declaration of Independence.
The Constitution was a controversial document, and was passed narrowly passed in some states. New York ratified the document by a 30-27 vote and Massachusetts approved it 186-167, but Connecticut overwhelmingly voted 128-40.
The problem "in forming a republic is that certain states were worried that they would be corrupted," Munoz said. Issues that worried some Northern states, Munoz said, were the relationship with the Church of England, slavery, and the differences in climate from the South.
The end of the discussion in the Rabb Room of the Lincoln-Filene Center focused more on current issues, including how a 218-year-old document should be interpreted today and how the American experience affects other countries' constitutional processes.
Professor Bruce Hitchner, the chairman of the Dayton Peace Accords Project, which helped mediate peace in the Balkans in the 1990s, addressed the likelihood that an Iraqi constitution would solve the country's internal tensions.
"They may get something, but it will be a long process to get something stable due to the country's complexity," he said.
"The Bosnian Constitution was a very American product" Hitchner said. The constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina was written by State Department Lawyer James O'Brien. As a result, many Bosnians complain that the Constitution is a foreign document, while others view it as a temporary fix to ethnic divisions.
"All Constitutions are dependent on faith," Hitchner said. They are "dependent on whether the people believe in it."
Munoz and Hitchner agreed making a constitution and getting the country's citizens to follow the constitution's norms is a difficult task. "The same problems that occurred in Bosnia happened in the American Constitution structure throughout its history" Hitchner said.
Munoz said leaders play an important role in implementing a constitution. "Great individuals were the key to success," he said. "Without characters like Washington we wouldn't have the Constitution, and without leaders like Lincoln we wouldn't have maintained the Union."
