Barrett Lecture on Constitutional Law featuring Professor Michael C. Dorf and honoring the life of Edward L. Barrett, Jr. This year's Barrett Lecture on Constitutional Law is titled "The Presidential Election and Constitutional Change." With one existing vacancy on an ideologically divided Supreme Court and several justices reaching an age when they might retire in the next few years, the 2016 presidential election will have an obvious impact on constitutional law through the appointments process. But presidential politics-and politics more broadly-affects constitutional understandings by other means, as well. These include constitutional amendments, changes in attitudes revealed and shaped by contentious politics, agenda-setting, and backlash. The unusual candidacy of Donald Trump could make one or the other of the last two mechanisms especially important this year. About the lecturer: Michael C. Dorf is the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. He has written over eighty scholarly articles and essays on constitutional law and related subjects. His latest book, co-authored with Sherry F. Colb, is Beating Hearts: Abortion and Animal Rights (Columbia University Press, 2016). A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, he served as a law clerk for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States. This year's lecture will honor the life of Edward L. Barrett, Jr., founding dean of UC Davis School of Law and renowned constitutional law scholar, for whom the lecture series is named.