The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery & The Refounding of America - Noah Feldman

Mon, February 20, 2023 Dinner Program
Abraham Lincoln is justly revered for his brilliance, compassion, humor, and rededication of the United States to achieving liberty and justice for all. He led the nation into a bloody civil war to uphold the system of government established by the US Constitution-a system he regarded as the “last best hope of mankind.” But how did Lincoln understand the Constitution? In his latest book, The Broken Constitution, Noah Feldman, professor of law at Harvard University, examines how Lincoln broke the Constitution in order to remake it. Offering a riveting narrative of Lincoln’s constitutional choices and how he made them, Feldman places Lincoln in the rich context of the thinking of the time, from African American abolitionists to Lincoln’s Republican rivals and Secessionist ideologues. (Adapted from: The Broken Constitution)
Professor Feldman will deliver the Salvatori Center's Spring 2023 Lofgren Lecture in American Constitutionalism.