Michael Les Benedict will present "The People Themselves: The Constitutional Responsiblity of the American People" on February 11

Feb. 2, 2004 -- Michael Les Benedict will present "The People Themselves: The Constitutional Responsibility of the American People" at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, February 11 in Graham Chapel. The chapel is located just north of Mallinckrodt Center (6445 Forsyth Blvd.) on the Washington University campus. Assembly Series lectures are free and open to the public.

Benedict, a professor of history at the Moritz School of Law at Ohio State University, is an authority on Anglo-American constitutional and legal history, the history of civil rights and liberties, and the federal system. In addition to more than 40 published essays in American history and law journals he has written several books. Two of his monographs, Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson and A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, are often required reading for students of the Civil War and Reconstruction. He also wrote The Blessings of Liberty, a widely used text and a companion book Sources in American Constitutional History.

In collaboration with Vivien M. Hart of the University of Sussex, England, Benedict is developing a conference and a reader on comparative constitutionalism. He is also working on a series of essays on the great Civil War era politicians and Supreme Court Justice Salmon P. Chase. Additionally, he is completing a study of the politics and law of Reconstruction from 1869-1880. Benedict has received a grant from the Ohio State Bar Foundation to prepare a two-volume work on the history of Ohio law.

Benedict is a fellow of the Society of American Historians, parliamentarian of the American Historical Association and President of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

For more information, call (314) 935-4620 or visit the Assembly Series web page (http://wupa.wustl.edu/assembly).