Utah Valley University’s Center for Constitutional Studies (CCS) will hold its annual Constitution Day conference Sept. 17 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Clarke Building on the Orem Campus.
The morning session will be held in room 101 of the Clarke Building, and the afternoon session will be in room 510. The theme of the conference is“Parties in the USA: Does Partisanship Undermine the Constitution?”
UVU Professors Verlan and Hyrum Lewis, authors of “The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America,” will be the morning keynote speakers and will explore how a healthy two-party system contributes to the American constitutional tradition.
They will explain the idea of a left-right political spectrum, which dominates political discourse today, and distorts peoples’ understanding of the world and hampers political communities by undermining the pluralism and complexity that support the constitutional order.
Matthew Brogdon, CCS senior director, will host a panel discussion in the afternoon titled: “Direct Democracy versus the Legislature: A Discussion about Ballot Initiatives in Utah.” The panel will feature experts and civic leaders discussing the Utah Legislature’s efforts to reverse the Utah Supreme Court’s recent decision on the initiative process and the role of direct democracy in constitutional self-government.
“We live in an era of eroding trust in our laws and institutions — legislatures, courts, law enforcement, political parties, even the Constitution itself,” Brogdon said. “That is a dangerous trend. A constitutional republic relies on trust in its institutions and confidence in its laws. Without them, as Abraham Lincoln once warned, we are left with mob rule.”
“These Constitution Day discussions are an effort to lead our community in reinvigorating and restoring needed trust in the institutions We the People need to do the work of representative democracy and constitutional self-government,” he added.
