We have the following announcement.]
Join ConSource Executive Director Julie Silverbrook and University of Baltimore Law Professor John Bessler for a lunch time book talk on the Italian Enlightenment and Early American Constitutions and Laws. The book talk will be held on Tuesday, April 7 from 12:00 to 1:30 p.m. on the 12th Floor of 1700 K Street, NW.
During this discussion, Professor Bessler will explore the history of the Italian Enlightenment, including its most influential writers. Before the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin corresponded with Gaetano Filangieri, a young lawyer from Naples who wrote The Science of Legislation; in his own bestseller, Common Sense, Thomas Paine quoted Giacinto Dragonetti, the now little-remembered Italian author of A Treatise on Virtues and Rewards; and Thomas Jefferson copied more than two dozen passages from Cesare Beccaria's On Crimes and Punishments into his commonplace book. Professor Bessler will describe how the Italian Enlightenment influenced America's founders and early American constitutions and laws.
John Bessler is a law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. He is the author of six books, most recently The Birth of American Law: An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2014).
Please register here for Professor Bessler's book talk. Registration will close on Friday, April 3rd at 5 p.m. ET.
