FEATURED FACULTY: John S. Baker, Jr.To understand the genius of the American form of government, one must understand the great debates that shaped the writing of the U.S. Constitution. Few people have a greater understanding of the Federalist Papers and the founding documents of the United States than legal scholar John S. Baker, Jr., who joined the faculty of The Fund for American Studies in 2007.When The Fund launched its inaugural Legal Studies Institute last summer, it brought on Dr. Baker, along with Dr. Roger Pilon, to team-teach a course on the historical underpinnings of the Constitution. Many law schools do not require a course on Constitutional Law, and those that do often follow a curriculum that ignores the founding documents and instead focuses on opinions written by Supreme Court justices; TFAS gets to the core of these principles that helped shape our American government. In addition to teaching for The Fund’s Legal Studies Institute, Baker will do double duty next summer by traveling to Hong Kong to teach the American government component of our Asia Institute on Political Economy. Outside of his teaching and scholarly work, Baker regularly argues in federal court, including oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court. He also regularly writes for general audiences about constitutional issues. Recently he wrote about the opportunity to change the culture of corruption in Louisiana with the election of Bobby Jindal to the governorship. Baker argues that real reform will come only with changes to the state constitution, not from “fig leaf” ethics reforms that are being pushed by good government groups. In an article he co-wrote with Eliott Stonecipher in The Times (Shreveport, LA) Baker wrote, “As James Madison explained in the Federalist Papers, democratic government necessarily puts legislators in a conflict-of-interest position. Any attempt to purge legislatures of ‘special interests’ would be inconsistent with popular government, however. So, as Madison explained, the only solution consistent with liberty is to structure institutional power so as to control the bad effects of special interests.” Baker is the Dale E. Bennett Professor of Law at Louisiana State University Law Center, where he has taught Constitutional Law since 1975. He is also a visiting professor of Law at Georgetown University, and he teaches a number of short-courses on separation of powers with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Before joining LSU, Baker was an assistant district attorney in New Orleans. While a professor, he has been a consultant to the Justice Department, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, the Office of Planning in the White House, USIA (now part of the State Department) and USAID.
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