March 10, 2026
America at 250: The Declaration of Independence and Constitutional Interpretation
Class Description
2026 is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Abraham Lincoln famously referred to the Declaration as the “apple of gold” and the Constitution as the “picture of silver.”
He drew the metaphor from Proverbs 25:11, which speaks of “apples of gold in pictures of silver.” For Lincoln, this meant that the Constitution was the structure to protect, preserve, and give form to the Declaration’s moral truth. My March 10, 2026 EmpowerU America talk will explain why Lincoln was correct, and why Clarence Thomas is correct to agree with Lincoln.
He will spend a few minutes at the end of his talk discussing his new novel, The Trafficker, which is set in Ohio.
Speaker Bio
Scott Douglas Gerber is a retired law professor. He is currently the Declaration of Independence Center Scholar at the University of Mississippi’s Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom, a Fellow at the National Association of Scholars, and a columnist for Minding the Campus. He is a longtime member of the Ohio Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has published six academic books, forty-nine articles, thirty-eight book reviews, one hundred thirty-six op-eds, and thirty-four sundry pieces. He has also published five novels including, most recently, The Trafficker. He has made approximately one hundred presentations, including at Harvard Law School, Princeton University, Stanford Law School, Columbia Law School, University of Chicago Law School, University of Virginia School of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School, Brown University, and the United States Supreme Court Historical Society. He is a five-time winner of the Fowler V. Harper Award for excellence in legal scholarship and a three-time recipient of the Daniel S. Guy Award for excellence in legal journalism. In 2022, he was awarded the inaugural Christopher Collier Prize from the Connecticut Supreme Court Historical Society. He also has received the Teaching Excellence Award and was named one of the top law professors in Ohio.