Protecting civil liberties during wartime will be the topic of this year’s Nolan Fowler Constitution Day Celebration.

Set for 7 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 19, in Derryberry Auditorium, the event’s featured speaker will be Mark A. Graber, a professor of law at the University of Maryland, College Park, and one of the nation’s leading scholars of constitutional law.

Mark Graber

All educational institutions receiving federal funds are required each year in September to host a celebration commemorating the Sept. 17, 1787, signing of the U.S. Constitution.

Fowler, a retired professor and longtime instructor of constitutional law in our History Department, provided a $150,000 endowment to establish the Constitution Day Celebration at TTU.

“His generous gift allows TTU to attract distinguished scholars from across the country to campus, and our first Constitution Day Celebration last year was a tremendous success,” says Kent Dollar, assistant professor of History and chairperson of this year’s event planning committee.

An estimated 900 students, faculty and community members attended last year’s inaugural event.

In addition to speaking at this year’s celebration, Graber has written extensively about various constitutional law topics, such as abortion, free speech and slavery.

His books include Transforming Free Speech: The Ambiguous Legacy of Civil Libertarianism (University of California Press), Rethinking Abortion: Equal Choice, the Constitution and Reproductive Politics (Princeton University Press) and Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil (Cambridge University Press).

Graber has also authored numerous articles about constitutional law topics, including “Naked Land Transfers and American Constitutional Development,” published in the Vanderbilt Law Review, and “Resolving Political Questions into Judicial Questions: Tocqueville’s Aphorism Revisited,” published by Constitutional Commentary.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College, master’s and doctoral degrees from Yale University and a juris doctorate from Columbia University Law School.