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The Nation That Never Was
September 15 @ 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm EDT
The Baton Foundation will host a lecture about the enduring myth of the so-called American story. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Book
There’s a common story we tell about America: that our fundamental values as a country were stated in the Declaration of Independence, fought for in the Revolution, and made law in the Constitution. In The Nation that Never Was (The University of Chicago Press, 2022), Kermit Roosevelt III, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law, argues that, with the country increasingly divided, this story isn’t working for us anymore—what’s more, it’s not even true. Roosevelt presents an eye-opening reinterpretation of the American story, in which our fundamental values, particularly equality, are not part of the vision of the Founders and suggests that there is a different and more useful way to understand our history.
About the Author
Kermit Roosevelt is the David Berger Professor for the Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. He is the author of numerous law review articles and several books. Before joining the Penn faculty, he clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter. In 2021, he was selected by President Biden to serve on the Presidential Commission on Supreme Court Reform. He is also the author of two novels, Allegiance and In the Shadow of the Law. Professor Roosevelt is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School.