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Law
School’s Reuschlein Chair gives lecture
Heather E. Linde ‘04
Dr. Peter Berkowitz, the 2003 Harold Gill Reuschlein
Chair for Distinguished Visiting Professors, delivered a lecture titled
“The Lawfulness of the Election Decision in Bush v. Gore.”
The lecture took place at the Law School’s Garey Hall on Oct. 8.
The Reuschlein Chair was established to recognize the accomplishments
of the Law School’s founder and first dean, Dean Harold Gill Reuschlein.
The lecture closely followed Berkowitz’s scholarship which concentrates
on the interplay of law, ethics and politics in modern society. In his
speech, Berkowitz criticized Laurence Tribe’s Harvard Law Review
article, but used this legal authority as a lens to examine the lawfulness
of the Court’s decision. Berkowitz also suggested that there was
no one lawful way to resolve the Bush v. Gore election. Instead, he offered
three lawful paths, excluding the Justices’ path, which would have
been defensible.
“First, the Court did not, as a preliminary matter, have to grant
certiorari at all to Bush’s challenge of the Florida court’s
recount order….Having taken the case, the Court, as a second alternative,
could have engaged in some verbal acrobatics in order to avoid reaching
its merits. The vehicle for this, as we have suggested, would have been
the political question doctrine….The third alternative was the course
advanced in the dissents of Justices Souter and Breyer. Correcting the
equal protection errors in the Florida court’s order and remanding
for a constitutional recount…,” said Berkowitz.
Professor Berkowitz is the author of two books: Virtue and the Making
of Modern Liberalism and Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist. He is
also publishing two new books titled: Rediscovering Liberalism and The
Liberal Spirit in America.
Berkowitz has received many awards and fellowships including the Hoopes
Prize for excellence in teaching at Harvard, a John M. Olin Faculty Fellowship,
and an Outstanding Teacher Award from the American Political Science Association.
Peter Berkowitz is an associate professor at George Mason University Law
School and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He holds a bachelor’s
degree in English literature from Swarthmore College, an master’s
in philosophy from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a doctorate in political
science and a J.D. from Yale.
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