Every September, the IACH hosts prominent scholars from around the country to deliver the Rufus Fears Lectures on Roger and Patti Clapp Constitution Day. Federal legislation requires institutions that receive federal funding honor September 17th, the day in 1787 the Framers of the Constitution finished their business in Philadelphia. Thanks to a gift from alumni Roger and Patti Clapp, Constitution Day at OU is named after J. Rufus Fears, a beloved Professor of Classics and Letters.
Location: Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art
Mary Eddy and Fred Jones Auditorium
Featured Speakers: Alison LaCroix and Michael Zuckert
Alison LaCroix is the Robert Newton Reid Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. She is also an Associate Member of the University of Chicago Department of History. She is a scholar of US legal history specializing in constitutional law, federalism, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century legal thought.
Professor LaCroix's latest book, The Interbellum Constitution: Union, Commerce, and Slavery in the Age of Federalisms (Yale University Press, 2024), focuses on US constitutional discourse between 1815 and 1861. In 2018, Professor LaCroix was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. She is also the author of The Ideological Origins of American Federalism (Harvard University Press, 2010). In 2021, President Biden appointed her to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Professor LaCroix holds a PhD in history from Harvard University, a JD from Yale Law School, and a BA summa cum laude in history from Yale University. She joined the University of Chicago faculty in 2006, having previously held the Samuel I. Golieb Fellowship in Legal History at New York University School of Law. Following law school, she practiced in the litigation department at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York.
Professor LaCroix has served as a member of the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History, and she is a member of the editorial advisory boards of the Journal of American Constitutional History and the American Journal of Legal History. She teaches constitutional law, legal history, federal courts, civil procedure, and law and linguistics.
Michael Zuckert is the Nancy R. Dreux Professor of Political Science. He works in the two fields of Political Theory and Constitutional Studies, in both of which he has published extensively. He has published Natural Rights and the New Republicanism, the Natural Rights Republic, Launching Liberalism, and (with Catherine Zuckert) The Truth About Leo Strauss in addition to many articles. He has also edited (with Derek Webb) The Antifederal Writings of the Melancton Smith Circle. He has a book Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy (with Catherine Zuckert) coming out in the spring from University of Chicago Press and is completing Natural rights and the New Constitutionalism, a study of American constitutionalism in theoretical context.
OU Parking Services will be offering free parking for Constitution Day guests in designated gated staff lots and will be raising the gates from 11:00am – 2:00pm for your convenience. Parking lots are circled in yellow on the map and disability parking spots are circled in green. Please allow adequate time to search for an available parking space.
OU Parking Services has confirmed guests will not be ticketed while using one of these parking space options. If you receive a ticket by accident, OU Parking Services will void it. You can call parking services at 405-325-3311, email them at parking@ou.edu, or see in person at 1332 Jenkins Ave. Norman, OK 73019-2451. You may also email Paula Richmond at pkrichmond@ou.edu and the Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage would be more than happy to take care of any parking ticket given by mistake.
