The 11th annual John Gedid Lecture, delivered by Professor Sophia Z. Lee, provided insight around the relatively new area of administrative constitutionalism. Lee is Professor of Law and History and Deputy Dean at the University of Pennsylvania.
Lee is a legal historian whose scholarship joins constitutionalism and administrative law. Her lecture focused on administrative constitutionalism and the role of administrative agencies in shaping constitutional law.
Lee coined the term administrative constitutionalism as she was researching her book, The Workplace Constitution from the New Deal to the New Right, when she began to see a pattern of agencies adopting equal employment policies based on agency interpretation of the constitution and judicial doctrine.
“I coined this term to try and understand what these agencies were doing, so we could begin to talk about the research systematically and give it a history,” Lee said.
In her overview of the history of administrative constitutionalism, Lee explained the shift in how agencies and courts interpreted the constitution and applied the meanings to government policy over time. She added that it is difficult to fully understand the history of the constitution unless you understand the history of administrative constitutionalism.
The Gedid Lecture is presented by the Law and Government Institute at Widener Law Commonwealth. The director of the institute is Commonwealth Professor of Law and Government Jill Family.
