“Reconstructing the Reconstruction Amendments,” a daylong symposium on February 2, served as both an occasion to honor the scholarship of Peggy Cooper Davis, John S. R. Shad Professor of Lawyering and Ethics, and an opportunity to examine what some consider the undermining of the Reconstruction Amendments by the US Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts. The event, organized by the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center, was co-sponsored by the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law and the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging.
Davis’s book Neglected Stories: The Constitution and Family Values, published in 1997, broke new ground in its assertion that the Reconstruction Amendments, adopted after the Civil War to protect the freedoms of formerly enslaved people, were intended to apply directly to rights associated with family autonomy.
“Today’s symposium is fundamentally about the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we ignore, and the stories that we reframe to fit into our own narratives,” said Professor Kimberly Mutcherson of Rutgers Law School–Camden, a visiting fellow-in-residence at the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center and the symposium’s organizer, in her introductory remarks. “It is about how the process of ending slavery and rebuilding a post-Civil War America is a history that has been through its own periods of transformation and reconciliation by historians of the era. It is about how learning about and taking seriously the neglected stories of enslaved people is necessary to a fulsome understanding of the Reconstruction Amendments.”
The symposium comprised two panels and a fireside chat between Melissa Murray, Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law and faculty director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center, and Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Murray and Wiley explored topics such as the distinction between civil rights and human rights and why they should be pursued in concert, the fierce battles between the two major US political parties over Supreme Court appointments, how to motivate voters, and the connections between political activism and legal advocacy.
During the first panel of the day, Davis explained how her three years as a judge in New York State Family Court had inspired Neglected Stories. “I realized, sitting there as a judge…that things that we know form the building blocks for the law that we develop as we hear cases and interpret principles and expand them or contract them in light of the facts,” she said.
“When I began to think about the neglect of Reconstruction history,” Davis continued, “[I realized] that…we’ve had a second Founding. And that second Founding was based on stories not of coming from the Old World to the New World and forging on a frontier, but on the overthrow of slavery. And if our reconstructed nation was something growing out of the overthrow of slavery, what did that mean? It meant that the things that people had been subjected to in slavery must never happen again. And that gives you a blueprint.”
Watch videos of the panels and keynote discussion:
Opening remarks
- Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center
- Kimberly Mutcherson, professor of law at Rutgers Law School–Camden; visiting fellow-in-residence at the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center
- Tamara Matheson-Holmgren ’24, Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center Fellow
Panel 1: The Roberts Court and the Reconstruction Amendments: How Did We Get Here?
- Peggy Cooper Davis, John S. R. Shad Professor of Lawyering and Ethics and director of the Experiential Learning Lab at NYU Law
- Aderson Francois ’91, Anne Fleming Research Professor, professor of law, and director of the Institute for Public Representation Civil Rights Law Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center
- Serena Mayeri, Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
- Moderator: Kimberly Mutcherson, professor of law at Rutgers Law School–Camden; visiting fellow-in-residence at the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center
Fireside chat
- Melissa Murray, Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law and faculty director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU Law
- Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Panel 2: Reconstructing the Reconstruction Amendments: A Path Forward
- Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University
- Melissa Murray, Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law
- Dorothy Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
- Moderator: Kimberly Mutcherson, professor of law at Rutgers Law School–Camden; visiting fellow-in-residence at the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center
Posted February 15, 2024