Join Siegal Lifelong Learning at Case Western Reserve University for an in-person lecture, “The Evolving Ohio Constitution: From Statehood to the 21st Century,” Thursday, April 21, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Landmark Centre Building, Suite 100.
Steven Steinglass, dean emeritus and professor emeritus at Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, will give a historical review of the Ohio Constitution, focusing on the legal, political, social and economic forces that influenced it.
Adopted in 1802 and replaced in 1851, the Ohio Constitution has played an important role in the state’s history. The story will begin with the Northwest Ordinance (1787), which set Ohio on its path to statehood as the nation’s 17th state. It will examine the adoption of the 1802 Constitution and the movement—influenced by “Jacksonian Democracy”—toward Ohio’s current constitution, the 1851 Constitution. It will also cover the Progressive Era, which resulted in Ohio’s most important “modern” constitutional event, the 1912 Ohio Constitutional Convention. Finally, the lecture will review the use of the constitutional initiative, efforts at commission-based constitutional reform, and the emergence of the New Judicial Federalism.
The event is free and open to the university community.