Constitution Day was made a national holiday in 2004 to honor the day when 39 delegates signed the document at the Constitutional Convention on September 17, 1787. Created through an amendment to a spending bill, Constitution Day requires all publicly funded institutions of education and all federal agencies to provide educational programs on the history of the American Constitution.
Joseph Smith, an associate professor of political science, is working with Rich Robinson, a senior majoring in telecommunication and film, on a ‘Special Report: Constitution Day 2014’ edition of Capstone News Now, airing Wednesday from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m.
Smith said three issues will be examined during the show: the authority of Congress to regulate the effect of money in political elections, the authority of the president to use the American military against the Islamic State and free speech on campus.
The show will feature interviews with campus experts on constitutional law, a discussion of these issues by the leaders of campus political groups and interviews with students, he said.
“The Constitution is what separates The United States of America from the vast majority of the world, in that we have a set of laws that has been with us fairly consistently since our founding that bind our leaders to a social contract,” Robinson, news director for WVUA-FM, said.
Bob McCurley, a professor in the Honors College, former director of the Alabama Law Institute and draftsman for the Alabama Constitution Revision Commission, said he sees Constitution Day as a good way to bring student minds back to the privileges we have in our country.
“There’s probably less confidence in government than any time during any college student’s career, and maybe most people alive,” McCurley said. “We’ve sort of lost faith in government in the fact that ‘If you don’t agree with me and what I want, then I’m not going to agree with whatever you want’. Instead of sitting down and discussing with each other, we’ve got polarized politics. We didn’t have polarized politics to that extent [when the Constitution was drafted].”
Robinson said he loves the fact that the Constitution is a flawed document, and the men who wrote it weren’t superhuman. He said although he knows it’s not perfect, it creates a path to grow freedom.
“What makes America so special and important is in the end we can have a bad president, we can have a terrible Congress, we can have a bad governor, but our rule of law always limits what they can do,” he said.
McCurley said he thinks students should be aware the Constitution has existed since 1787 and has endured so long with few changes. There are 27 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, while the Alabama Constitution has 880 amendments.
“Students should know that the Constitution affects their lives,” Smith said. “Just in the last few years, the Supreme Court has applied the Constitution to questions like whether police can search a person’s called phone without a warrant, whether Congress can limit the influence that very wealthy people and organizations have on politics, and whether the government can use a tax to penalize people who don’t buy health insurance.”
