The Terror Presidency author to speak on national security checks, balances

Jack L. Goldsmith, the Henry L. Shattuck Professor at Harvard Law School, will present “National Security Checks and Balances,” as part of the Democracy Studies Speakers Series on Jan. 28.

Goldsmith is author of The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration, and more recently, Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11, about executive power and national security policies following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The talk will be held at 12:10 p.m. at the Barrister Club, 25 W. 11^th Ave., across from Drinko Hall. The event is free, but registration is required. Light refreshments will be provided. Register here.

The Democracy Studies Speakers Series is a collaboration among The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, The Mershon Center for International Securities Studies, and the departments of Political Science and History, and is designed to stimulate discussion about democracy. Organizers hope the series might lead to the development of an interdisciplinary program in democracy studies at Ohio State.

Speakers in the series focus on the intellectual foundations for understanding the norms and practices of democracy. Previous speakers included national scholars James Kloppenberg of Harvard University Department of History, who spoke on the history of American democracy; Guy-Uriel Charles of Duke University School of Law, who talked about the legal foundations of democracy; Morris P. Fiorina of Stanford University Department of Political Science and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, who discussed the erosion of representation in American politics; Nancy Rosenblum of Harvard University, who spoke about anti-politics in America; Alex Keyssar of Harvard of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, who offered sight into the Electoral College; and Melissa Schwartzberg of Columbia University, who talked about supermajority rule and democracy. Videos of these talks are available here.

Later this spring, the Democracy Studies Speakers Series welcomes the last speaker of the two-year series, Dennis Thompson of Harvard’s philosophy and government departments. Thompson will present his talk on “The Challenge of Political Compromise.”

For more information and to register for these events, visit the Democracy Studies Speakers Series webpage.