Dr. Ray Raymond to present Constitution Day lecture

Dr. Ray Raymond, associate professor of government and history at SUNY Ulster, will discuss “Should We Rethink Presidential War Powers?” when he presents Salve Regina’s annual Constitution Day lecture at 10 a.m. Friday, Sept. 16 in the Ochre Court state dining room.

Writing in 1943, Justice Robert Jackson dissented from the Supreme Court’s majority when it upheld the constitutionality of President Roosevelt’s executive order interning more than 100,00 Japanese-Americans in wartime. His argument was that the court’s judicial order had legitimized a military order triggered by a temporary wartime emergency, which could happen again. Jackson concluded that the principle the court had established “lies around like a loaded weapon … ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.” Today, 15 years after 9/11, the presidency once again enjoys sweeping war powers. Is it time to rethink them?

Raymond is the director of the Institute for Constitutional Studies at SUNY Ulster. He was the 2009 Thomas Hawkins Johnson Visiting Professor at the U.S. Military Academy and is a fellow of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City and the Royal Society of Arts in London. Raymond is a 20-year veteran of the U.K. diplomatic corps, a former senior adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair and a member of the Order of the British Empire.

Constitution Day became a national observance in 2004, when Congress passed a bill designating Sept. 17 as the day for citizens to commemorate the signing of the U.S. Constitution and learn more about the nation’s founding document.