Join us on Monday, September 18 from 12-1 pm (CST) to recognize Constitution Day with NIU Law Professor Lorianne Updike Toler as she presents, “Un-fathering the Constitution: De-Throning Madison and Why it Matters for Presidential Powers.”
Attend in person in Swen Parson Hall Room 188 or register via Zoom.
Since his eulogy in 1836, James Madison has been acclaimed the “Father” of the Constitution. However, Madison’s constitutional parentage sounds more in lore than in logic. Based on fresh research and new analytics of the Constitutional Convention, Madison is revealed as just one of a cast of characters who brought about the Convention, the Virginia Plan, and the ultimate Constitution. Immediately after the Convention, Madison considered himself and the Constitution a failure, and disclaimed any unique role in its framing. His influence grew post-Convention in publishing the Federalist Papers in what became a best-selling book and drafting the Bill of Rights but was more modest for the unamended Constitution. He does not a father make. Un-fathering Madison has large ramifications for constitutional law and politics, especially the President’s power over administrative agencies and removing officers, where reliance on Madison’s vision of the Constitution is foundational.
Registration
Attend in person – Swen Parson 188 or register via Zoom.
Professor Lorianne Updike Toler specializes in constitutional law, comparative constitutional law, and legal history. Previous to joining the faculty at Northern Illinois University in 2022, Updike Toler was a Teaching Fellow at New England Law School in 2021-2022, the Olin Searle Fellow at Yale Law School ‘s Information Society Project 2020-2021, and a Visiting Fellow there in 2018-2020. She also taught as an Adjunct Professor at New England Law in 2019 and at Brigham Young University in 2004-05.
In addition to academic pursuits, Professor Updike Toler served as the Founding President and Executive Director of ConSource, or the Constitutional Sources Project from 2005-2009, where she founded the first free online library of the U.S. Constitution’s historical sources. She was also President of Libertas Constitutional Consulting from 2010-2018, where she worked on the Libyan constitutional process and helped to found the Quill Project at Pembroke College, University of Oxford, which has now onboarded ConSource.
Professor Updike Toler holds a master’s in history from The University of Oxford and graduated magna cum laude from both the J. Reuben Clark Law School and Brigham Young University’s School of Communications.
Professor Updike Toler has published in The University of Chicago Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, the William and Mary Bill of Rights Review, the Cambridge Journal of Public and International Law, is a contributor to Foreign Policy, and has a forthcoming article in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law.
