W&L to Host Constitution Day Panel on Supreme Court Cases from the 2025-26 Term The Liberating Ideas panel discussion takes place in Northen Auditorium on Sept. 16.

By Brian Laubscher
September 3, 2026

Washington and Lee University will mark its annual Constitution Day celebration with a panel of faculty members discussing several important cases from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2025-26 term. The event, which is free and open to the public, begins at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 16, in Northen Auditorium.

Lucas Morel, John K. Boardman Jr. Professor of Politics and leader of W&L’s Liberating Ideas initiative, will moderate the panel. He will be joined on stage by Mark Rush, Stanley G. and Nikki Waxberg Professor of Politics and Law and director of the Center for International Education; Nathan Dean, assistant professor of Law, Justice and Society; and Maureen Edobor ’17L, assistant professor of law.

Each panelist will open with brief remarks on specific cases and discuss whether they see the Roberts Court as fulfilling its constitutional role as an independent branch of the federal government. Morel will follow with questions of his own before opening the floor to the audience.

Rush will focus his discussion on Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, in which the court ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not give the president the authority to impose peacetime tariffs. Dean will discuss Chatrie v. United States, in which the court ruled that police acquisition of cellphone data through a geofence warrant constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. Edobor will discuss Louisiana v. Callais, in which the court ruled that the Louisiana legislature did not have to create a second majority-Black district to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Morel is in his second year directing Liberating Ideas programming, which is dedicated to promoting intellectual pluralism and inclusion by fostering independent thinking and civil discourse. A member of the W&L faculty since 1999, he serves as head of the Politics Department, is a trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society and serves on the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission. Morel holds a Bachelor of Arts in government from Claremont McKenna College as well as a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in politics from the Claremont Graduate University.

Rush has been a member of the W&L faculty since 1990 and served as head of the Politics Department from 2004 to 2010. He founded and directed the New York Internship Program and the Williams School Program in International Commerce, both from 2003 to 2010. He has served as a core faculty member in the Law, Justice and Society program since 2019 and has directed the Center for International Education since 2015. Rush holds a Bachelor of Arts in government from Harvard College and a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in political science from Johns Hopkins University.

Dean joined the W&L faculty in 2022, focusing his teaching on civil rights, social inequality and discrimination, combining perspectives from public law and political theory. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Haverford College, a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Edobor joined the W&L faculty in 2023, teaching constitutional law, election law and democratic theory. She serves as a faculty scholar with the DeLaney Center and was the inaugural Steven M. Polan Fellow in Constitutional Law and History at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law for the 2024-25 academic year. She also serves as vice chair of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Edobor holds a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of Texas at Arlington and a J.D. from the W&L School of Law.