The Rule of Law: Legal Studies and the Liberal Arts
A National Endowment for the Humanities
Summer Institute for College and University Professors
June 15 - July 17, 2009 (5 weeks)
Where and how does the idea of the rule of law originate in the Western tradition? What is its history in the United States? What are its key texts, traditions, and institutions? How does it emerge in the artistic and literary imagination? Is there more than one rule of law in the American experience, and, if so, how do local "rules of law" comport with a national identity?
This five-week summer institute will explore the origins, meanings, and expressions of our national attachment to the rule of law and, more broadly, the idea of law as a discipline of the liberal arts, not only as a professional training. At its heart, the institute will help us cultivate an understanding of the rule of law at the level not only of statutes and constitutional documents, but also of sensibility and imagination.
The University of New England’s Biddeford campus on the coast of Maine provides us with an inspiring, restorative setting for intellectual collaboration and renewal.
Photo Credits: Jared Bell, woodcut, 1834, "Justice and History", Thomas Crawford, 1863
