August 25, 2015 Discussion on "Religious Freedom and the American Constitution" Will Mark Constitution Day at Library of Congress on Sept. 16

In commemoration of Constitution Day, Princeton University professor of jurisprudence Robert P. George and Supreme Court correspondent Jess Bravin of The Wall Street Journal will discuss the importance of religious liberty in America and its historical connection to the U.S. Constitution at the Library of Congress.

Presented by the Law library of Congress, the discussion will take place at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 16, in the Montpelier Room, located on the sixth floor of the Library’s James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Avenue S.E., Washington, D.C. The event is free and open to the public; tickets are not required.

Constitution Day was established by Congress in 2004 to recognize the ratification of the U.S. Constitution on Sept. 17, 1787.

George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and founder and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He is also a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. He has previously served on the President’s Council on Bioethics (2002-2009) and as a presidential appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1993-1998). He has also served on UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology.

George is author of “Conscience and Its Enemies” (2013), “The Clash of Orthodoxies” (2001), “In Defense of Natural Law” (1999) and “Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality” (1995). He is co-author of “Conjugal Union: What Marriage Is” (2014), “What is Marriage?” (2012), “Embryo: A Defense of Human Life” (2nd edition, 2011) and “Body-Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics” (2008). He is editor of several volumes, including “Great Cases in Constitutional Law” (2000), “The Autonomy of Law: Essays on Legal Positivism” (1996), “Natural Law, Liberalism, and Morality” (1996) and “Natural Law Theory: Contemporary Essays” (1992).

A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard Law School, George also holds a master’s degree in theology from Harvard University and a doctorate in philosophy of law from Oxford University. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa at Swarthmore, and received a Knox Fellowship from Harvard for graduate study in law and philosophy at Oxford. He holds honorary doctorates of law, letters, ethics, science, divinity, humane letters, civil law and juridical science.

George is also the recipient of numerous awards, including the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal, the Honorific Medal for the Defense of Human Rights of the Republic of Poland, the Bradley Prize for Intellectual and Civic Achievement, the Philip Merrill Award of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, the Sidney Hook Memorial Award of the National Association of Scholars, the Paul Bator Award of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy, a Silver Gavel Award of the American Bar Association, and the Stanley Kelley Jr. Teaching Award in Politics at Princeton.

Jess Bravin has covered the Supreme Court for The Wall Street Journal since 2005, following postings as the paper’s United Nations correspondent and editor of The Wall Street Journal/California weekly. Prior to joining the Journal, Bravin wrote for newspapers including the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Washington Post, and for magazines ranging from Harper’s Bazaar to Spy.

A graduate of Harvard College and the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Boalt Hall), Bravin has taught at the University of California Washington Center and held the 2015 John Field Simms Sr. Memorial Lectureship in Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law. He was awarded the 2006 John Jacobs Fellowship by U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and Institute of Governmental Studies. While in law school, Bravin served on the University of California Board of Regents and, later, the Berkeley Police Review Commission and the University of California Police Review Board.

Bravin is the author of “The Terror Courts” (2013), an award-winning account of military trials at Guantanamo Bay; and “Squeaky: The Life and Times of Lynette Alice Fromme” (1997). He has contributed essays to “Violence in America: An Encyclopedia” (1999), “Crimes of War 2.0” (2007) and “A Concise Introduction to Logic” (2nd edition, 1984). He was a consultant to the 2013 PBS series, “Constitution USA.”

Bravin’s work has been recognized with the Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Prize, for coverage of the International Criminal Court; the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, for coverage of the legal response to 9/11; and, with a Wall Street Journal team, the National Press Foundation’s Excellence in Online Journalism Award, for coverage of the Supreme Court’s health care case.

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