Clough Center Talk: What the Constitution Means to Us

Boston College’s Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy held its first event of the 2023-’24 academic year on a sunny Thursday afternoon in the Irish Hall in Gasson. The Center’s goal “to foster original research and thoughtful reflection on how democracy is lived in the United States and around the world” was very much at the heart of the conversation. The event was a colloquium featuring a series of brief talks by a number of speakers taken from faculty from Boston College and elsewhere, graduate students, undergraduates, and others, all came to speak on the same subject: “What the Constitution Means to Us.”

Merely entering into the Irish Hall is an imposing experience—the speaker’s podium is established for the event beneath a massive mural of St. Peter sitting on his Papal Throne, surrounded by saints just as those gathered for the colloquium are surrounded by the stolid portraits of BC’s previous Presidents. While these silent observers are bedecked in collar and cassock, all those attending the talks are dressed in a manner befitting any meeting of a DC think tank; suits and sportcoats and long dresses are all the eye can see among the sea of the RSVP’d attendees. BC dining’s catering service could be seen in the back of the room, preparing wine and setting up charcuterie boards; light yet decadent refreshments serving the dual purpose of facilitating the following reception and proving that BC dining is entirely capable of making good food when it’s in the right mood.

The colloquium begins when Professor Jonathan Laurence, the Director of the Clough Center, comes to the podium to speak on how the mission of the Center is especially important in our present time of “stalling democracies and assertive autocracies.” Before introducing the first guest speaker, Laurence gravely informs the audience that the United States is “an image of democratic decline,” especially on account of unnamed anti-Constitutional actions taken by former President Donald Trump, and a lack of respect for the Constitution evidenced by the January 6th protestors, while repeatedly reminding attendees that the “Constitution is a living document to which we are not to strictly adhere.”

Following Professor Laurence, the special guest and keynote speaker of the colloquium, BC alumna Sarah Lunnie (‘08), gave a brief address concerning her stage play, What the Constitution Means to Me. She began her discussion by expressing horror at the death of George Floyd, moved into a discourse on the relation between her artistry and social activism, and finished with the simple remark: “The Constitution is a work of greatness and blindness founded in a white supremacist patriarchy, with amendments that seek to mitigate the foundational violence of the document.” It is because of this, she implies, that if we are to rectify the fundamental and foundational injustice of the United States, we must also change its Constitution.

Lunnie’s basic conclusion is by far the most popular among the speakers who follow, each speaker in turn presenting different reasons, reaching the same result: the US Constitution ought either to be reformed or replaced entirely. Some simply limited themselves to remarking on how the Constitution may not survive on account of “the state of the Republican primary.”

Among the handful of voices not wholly in line with this weighty moral and academic consensus was that of Boston College Law student Tracy Werick who, mentioning the mission of her ancestor William Bradford in helping found the Plymouth Colony, spoke of the Constitution in a very different light. 

Admitting that the original document had its shortcomings (shortcomings which its amendments sought to repair), nevertheless her learning and experience in civil rights law led her to the impression that the Constitution was fundamentally an excellent grounding for the promotion of civil liberties and guarantees, despite having since been previously whittled down, weakened in its force, and left to slow decay by successive generations of poor judicial decisions. Her proposal, consisting neither of mere originalism nor the now-so-often-proposed replacement of the Constitution, involved bringing about the total restoration of the document—returning an emphasis to the forcefulness and power of the original with the purpose of expanding upon rather than limiting its current interpretation.

The colloquium so ended after several hours of casual reflections, academic presentations, poetry recitations, and other such speeches, transforming into a warm and pleasant reception—starring, of course, the zealously attended BC catering. The Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy is now preparing for its flagship event of the academic year, its “Colloquium on Attachment to Place in a World of Nations,” to be held on the fifth of October.