In the cover photo are Prof. Stanley Fish; Dean Melanie Leslie; Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer; Brenda Hale, President of the U.K. Supreme Court; Susanne Baer, Justice of the Constitutional Court of Germany; András Sajó, former Vice President of the European Court of Human Rights; Prof. Deborah Pearlstein; and Prof. Michel Rosenfeld.
2000 – The Floersheimer Center is founded through a generous donation by Dr. Stephen Floersheimer. Cardozo Professor Richard Weisberg becomes founding director and welcomes Stanford Professor Gerald Gunther as the Center’s first visiting scholar.
2000 – Cardozo Law hosts Justices from European courts and the U.S. Supreme Court including Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and Stephen Breyer. Recording here.
2002 – The Center hosts an April conference, Fundamentalisms, Equalities, and the Challenge to Tolerance in a Post-9/11 Environment. Proceedings from this conference appear in Vol. 24, no. 4 of the Cardozo Law Review.
Dr. Floersheimer and Yeshiva University President Dr. Norman Lamm
2003 – The Center hosts a May conference on Emergency Powers and Constitutions. Proceedings from this conference are published in Vol. 2, no. 2 of I•CON, the International Journal for Constitutional Law, where Co-Director Michel Rosenfeld is the founding Editor-in-Chief.
2004 – The Center hosts a March conference, Weapons of Mass Destruction, National Security, and A Free Press, revisiting the litigation over The Progressive’s plans to publish instructions for making a hydrogen bomb in 1979. Presenters include James Schlesinger, former U.S. Secretary of Defense and U.S. Secretary of Energy; the author of the article, Howard Morland; Dean David Rudenstine; the attorneys who worked on the case; and New York Times journalist Anthony Lewis.
2004-2005 – The Center inaugurates its Floersheimer Student Fellows program, selecting two law students to support Floersheimer Center activities and research in the 2004-2005 academic year.
James R. Schlesinger and Anthony Lewis at Floersheimer Center conference
2005 – The Center hosts Amartya Sen, Professor and Nobel laureate in economics for a public lecture on Human Rights and the Limits of the Law.
2006 – The Center begins funding summer Public Interest Stipends for Cardozo Law students.
2006 – The Center hosts the first of many book talks with authors writing on timely questions relevant to constitutional law. For its inaugural talk, the Center hosts Professor Kenji Yoshino, one of the nation's leading scholars on constitutional and antidiscrimination law, for a discussion of his work, Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights.
Nobel Prize Winner Amartya Sen discusses limits of law
2007 – In May, the Center sponsors The Internationalization of Constitutional Law and the Constitutionalization of International Law, with French and American law professors and judges including Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court and Hon. Guy Canivet of the French Conseil Constitutionnel. A hallmark of the Center’s conferences has been its insistence on considering constitutional norms in comparative perspective.
2008 – With Center support, Cardozo students travel to Ohio in November 2008 to aid non-partisan election protection efforts. Cardozo students continue to provide support for election protection efforts each election cycle. More information is available on our Cardozo Votes site.
2010 – The Center hosts an April conference, Acknowledging Race in a “Post-Racial” Era, addressing the paradoxical situation where undeniable progress and undeniable disparities coexist in American society and the role of racism has shifted. The keynote address was given by Theodore M. Shaw, former President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Justice Stephen Breyer (left), US Supreme Court, and Justice Guy Canivet, French Constitutional Council
2011 – The Center hosts an April symposium commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Pentagon Papers and examining national security and secrecy in the WikiLeaks era. Recordings can be found here (Part I), here (Part II), and here (Part III).
2011 – The Center co-sponsors a conference, Innovative Approaches to Immigrant Representation, with Cardozo's Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic. Panelists include Justice John Paul Stevens and Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
2011 – The Center inaugurates its annual Supreme Court Term Preview, where a panel of Cardozo faculty preview the upcoming term’s notable cases and potential dynamics each October. Check out a recording of the 2021 Supreme Court Term Preview here.
From left, the Hon. Robert A. Katzmann, US Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit; Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens; Dean Matthew Diller; and Prof. Peter Markowitz, director of the Immigration Justice Clinic
2012 – The Center supports the Cardozo Israeli Supreme Court Project, which translates key court decisions into English.
2013 – The Centers hosts a symposium, Zero Dark Thirty: Law, Film, and the Hunt for Bin Laden. This event featured a screening of Zero Dark Thirty, a one-on-one interview with John Rizzo, former CIA General Counsel, and a panel discussion with Co-Director Deborah Pearlstein, an expert on human rights law; Ann Hornaday, film critic for the Washington Post; and Glenn Carle, a former CIA interrogator. Recording available here.
2016 – The Center Goes Social – Find us on Twitter!
Follow us on Twitter for more updates!
2018 – In conjunction with the Cardozo Law Review, the Center hosts a symposium on the 50th Anniversary of the Fair Housing Act, which serves as an opportunity to reflect on the origins of the Fair Housing Act, discuss the intersections between housing and other areas of civil society, and engage in forward thinking about the future of the Act. Julian Castro, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary under President Barack Obama, delivers the keynote address.
2019 – On March 31 & April 1, 2019, the Center hosts A Passion for Civil Liberties: Honoring the Legacy of Norman Dorsen, a roundtable of the International Association for Constitutional Law (IACL) honoring IACL and I•CON cofounder, former ACLU President and NYU Law Professor Norman Dorsen. The first panel, Judicial Perspectives on Civil Liberties Adjudication featured justices Susanne Baer, Justice of the Constitutional Court of Germany; Stephen Breyer, Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; Brenda Hale, President of the U.K. Supreme Court; and András Sajó, former Vice President of the European Court of Human Rights.
Prof. Michelle Adams at the Fair Housing Act symposium
2020 – Floersheimer Center programming goes virtual in March 2020! We have since hosted dozens of virtual events. You can find recordings of our events on Cardozo Law’s Youtube channel and in the Cardozo Library’s LARC Repository.
2021 – On Sept. 10, 2021, the Center hosts a discussion on how the U.S. response to 9/11 changed the law and lawyering around national security. Panelists include Jeh Johnson, fmr. Sec. of Homeland Security and fmr. Gen. Counsel, Dept. of Defense; Elisa Massimino, fmr. Exec. Director and CEO, Human Rights First; Alberto Mora, fmr. Navy Gen. Counsel under G. W. Bush; Ben Powell, fmr. Gen. Counsel to Director of National Intelligence after 9/11; and moderator Deborah Pearlstein. Recording available here.
Prof. Michael Pollack at a Floersheimer Center online event
About the Floersheimer Center
Established in 2000 through a gift from Dr. Stephen Floersheimer, the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy supports research by scholars and policymakers, hosts speakers and conferences, issues publications and provides financial support for visiting scholars as well as student projects. Topics of particular concern include civil liberties in an age of terrorism, the structures of democratic government and the relationship between church and state.
