February 23, 2016 Library to Commemorate James Madison's Birthday with March 16 Program

The Law Library of Congress and the Library’s Manuscript Division will commemorate the 265th anniversary of the birth of James Madison on March 16 with a panel discussion on the fourth president’s early life, political and personal partnerships and his pre-eminent role at the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, March 16 in the Mumford Room, located on the sixth floor of the Library’s James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. Tickets are not required.

The program will feature three attorneys and historians whose biographies of Madison were published in 2015: Mary Sarah Bilder (“Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention,” Harvard University Press); David O. Stewart (“Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America,” Simon & Schuster); and Michael Signer (“Becoming Madison: The Extraordinary Origin of the Least Likely Founding Father,” Public Affairs).

Historian James Hutson, chief of the Library’s Manuscript Division, will discuss the James Madison Papers, 1723-1859, which are held in the Library of Congress. Hutson is the author of “To Make All Laws: The Congress of the United States, 1789-1989” (Houghton Mifflin, 1990) and “Church and State in America: The First Two Centuries” (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

The Library’s James Madison Memorial Building is the nation’s official memorial to the fourth president, in honor of his achievements as historian, political scientist and statesman. Dedicated in 1980, the building contains a statue of Madison in its memorial hall. Quotations from Madison's writings adorn the walls of the memorial hall as well as the entrance of the building.

The Law Library was established in 1832 with the mission to make its resources available to members of Congress, the Supreme Court, other branches of the U.S. government and the global legal community and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of law for future generations. With more than 5 million items in various formats, the Law Library contains the world’s largest collection of law books and other resources from all countries and provides online databases and guides to legal information worldwide through its website at loc.gov/law/.

The Library’s Manuscript Division holds more than 70 million items, including the papers of 23 U.S. presidents, from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge. For more information about the collections and holdings of the Manuscript Division, visit loc.gov/rr/mss/.

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the world’s largest library with more than 162 million items. The Library seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs, publications and exhibitions. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its website at loc.gov.