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H. Jefferson Powell to Give the Constitution Day Lecture at Washington and Lee University

The Constitution Day lecture at Washington and Lee University featuring H. Jefferson Powell, a professor of law at Duke University, will be Sept. 17, at 5 p.m. in the Moot Court Room, Lewis Hall.

The title of his talk, which is free and open to the public, is “The Constitution as Experiment: An Interim Report.”

Powell has served as a deputy assistant attorney general and as the principal deputy solicitor general in the U.S. Department of Justice, and as special counsel to the attorney general of North Carolina.

His recent books include “The President as Commander in Chief: An Essay in Constitutional Vision” (2014) and “Constitutional Conscience: the Moral Dimension of Judicial Decision” (2008). His next book “The Law in Chains: the American Attorneys General and Slavery, 1789-1871,” is under contract with Cambridge University Press. He is the author of more than 40 articles and essays and 14 book chapters.

He has been a visiting professor at Columbia, Yale, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Iowa. His scholarship includes the history and ethical implications of American constitutionalism, the powers of the executive branch and the role of the Constitution in legislative and judicial decision-making.

Powell holds a B.A. from St. David’s University College (now Trinity St. David) of the University of Wales; an A.M. and Ph.D. from Duke University; and a J.D. and M.Div. from Yale University.