The University of Toledo Institute of Constitutional Thought and Leadership will host its first two events this month, including a conversation with two leading legal scholars about former president Donald Trump’s eligibility to again hold public office.
That conversation, which features Mark Graber, a law professor at the University of Maryland, and Kurt Lash, a law professor at the University of Richmond, will take place at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 24.
The following week, the institute will co-host a discussion about the Ohio constitution with Ohio Supreme Court Justices Melody Stewart and Patrick DeWine. The event, presented in partnership with the UToledo College of Law, begins at noon Tuesday, Jan. 30.
Both presentations will be held in the McQuade Law Auditorium and are free and open to the public. Free parking will be available in Area 12 and 12S for the Jan. 24 event. For the Jan. 30 event, reserved parking will be available in Area 12W.
“These events exemplify the institution’s mission, which is to bring together a variety of viewpoints for a civil conversation and civil debate,” said Lee Strang, the John W. Stoepler Professor of Law and Values in the UToledo College of Law and the institute’s director. “These are important issues of law and policy. They’re also issues that Americans are deeply interested in, especially regarding whether Donald Trump is eligible for public office.”
Trump’s eligibility to run for president has been challenged in nearly three dozen states under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
Courts have dismissed or rejected several of those challenges, though two states — Maine and Colorado — have decided he is ineligible to be on the ballot. Those decisions are being appealed.
Graber and Lash are recognized among the country’s leading Constitutional law experts and have both written high-profile pieces on opposite ends of the question of Trump’s eligibility for office.
Graber, who last year wrote a book about the 14th Amendment, has argued that Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection deems him ineligible for office. Lash, whose scholarship has explored the Reconstruction Amendments, recently published an essay in the New York Times arguing the amendment does not disqualify Trump.
The institute’s second event on Jan. 30 will focus broadly on the Ohio constitution and differing opinions on how it’s interpreted within the courts. DeWine, a Republican, joined the court in 2017. Stewart, a Democrat, was seated in 2019.
The UToledo Institute of Constitutional Thought and Leadership was created and funded by the Ohio Legislature in 2023 to help develop future leaders and to provide a space for diverse voices to discuss and debate key questions about American society, history and politics, both past and present.
“Many of us as Americans have lost the ability to reflect thoughtfully and engage those with whom we disagree without resorting to name-calling,” Strang said. “Through this institute we want to model respectful engagement that recognizes our different viewpoints and encourages Americans to explore these differences in a civil, productive manner.”
Additional upcoming programming from the institute includes a Feb. 7 lecture on religious liberty, a March 14 lunchtime seminar on judicial review in Ohio and an April 9 discussion of higher education after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision.
