“This year's program reflects the Center's commitment to engaging journalists with the great constitutional issues of the day,” said Joseph M. Torsella, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center.  “As a new president begins his term, few issues are more timely or central to the concerns of ‘We the People’ than the issue of executive power.”

Named in honor of the late, award-winning news anchor and friend of the National Constitution Center, the Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution allows professional journalists from print, broadcast, and online media organizations, as well as a select group of collegiate journalists from across the country, to examine the constitutional dimension in the news today and acquire a deeper understanding of the Constitution and its important role in the lives of all Americans. Kayce Freed Jennings, wife of Peter Jennings, serves on the board of the project and veteran journalist Todd Brewster, who worked closely with Jennings and co-authored two books with him, is the program director.

In addition to providing a letter of recommendation, applicants are asked to respond to several questions relating to their work and discuss their expectations for the conference.  Interested journalists can visit   http://www.constitutioncenter.org/jennings/participate/fellowship_application.html for more information and to apply.

Akhil Amar is Southmayd Professor of Law at Yale Law School.  He clerked for Stephen Breyer when he was a judge on the 1st Circuit Court, U.S. Court of Appeals.  Amar is the author of several books, including The Constitution and Criminal Procedure: First Principles (Yale Univ. Press, 1997), The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (Yale Univ. Press, 1998), and most recently, America’s Constitution: A Biography (Random House, 2005). Amar returns for his second year as a member of the Peter Jennings Project faculty.

Guido Calabresi is a U.S. Court of Appeals Judge for the Second Circuit.  He is a former dean of Yale Law School and was also a clerk for Justice Hugo Black of the United States Supreme Court. Judge Calabresi is also a member of the Peter Jennings Project board of distinguished advisors.

Erwin Chemerinsky is the founding dean of the new School of Law at the University of California, Irvine. He was formerly Alston & Bird Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Duke Law School and, before that, spent 21 years on the faculty of the University of Southern California Law School. He has practiced law as a trial attorney in the United States Department of Justice and at Dobrovir, Oakes & Gebhardt in Washington, D.C.  In April 2005, Chemerinsky was named one of “the top 20 legal thinkers in America” by Legal Affairs.

Susan Estrich is Robert Kingsley Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of South Carolina Law School.  Estrich is an expert in law and politics, criminal law, and gender discrimination.  She clerked for John Paul Stevens, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.   Estrich also served as special assistant to Senator Edward Kennedy and staff counsel and special assistant to the chief counsel for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. In 1988, she was campaign manager for Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. Estrich also returns for her second year on the Peter Jennings Project faculty. 

Sherrilyn Ifill, Professor of Law at the University of Maryland School of Law, is nationally recognized as an advocate in the areas of civil rights, voting rights, judicial diversity and judicial decision-making.  Ifill also served as an Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Ifill is returning for her second year as a member of the Peter Jennings Project faculty.

Ken Starr is Duane and Kelly Roberts Dean and Professor of Law at Pepperdine University School of Law.  He is a former Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, Solicitor General of the United States, and during the 1990s served as Independent Counsel on the Whitewater matter.  Starr clerked for the Honorable David W. Dyer of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, and for Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren E. Burger.  He is a former partner at Kirkland & Ellis and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

David Westin is resident of ABC News.  Before joining ABC, Westin was a partner at the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering.  He served as a law clerk to the Honorable Justice Lewis F. Powell of the Supreme Court of the United States and to The Honorable J. Edward Lumbard of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Westin returns for his second year as a member of the Peter Jennings Project faculty.

John Yoo is a professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley.  He clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court.  Yoo was also general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from 1995-96.  From 2001 to 2003, he served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice. Yoo returns for his second year as a member of the Peter Jennings Project faculty.

The Peter Jennings Project is funded by a generous grant from the Annenberg Foundation.  USA TODAY is the 2009 media partner.   

The National Constitution Center, located at 525 Arch St. on Philadelphia’s Independence Mall, is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing public understanding of the U.S. Constitution and the ideas and values it represents.  The Center serves as a museum, an education center, and a forum for debate on constitutional issues.  The museum dramatically tells the story of the Constitution from Revolutionary times to the present through more than 100 interactive, multimedia exhibits, film, photographs, text, sculpture and artifacts, and features a powerful, award-winning theatrical performance, “Freedom Rising”.  The Center also houses the Annenberg Center for Education and Outreach, which serves as the hub for national constitutional education.  Also, as a nonpartisan forum for constitutional discourse, the Center presents – without endorsement – programs that contain diverse viewpoints on a broad range of issues.  For more information, call 215.409.6700 or visit www.constitutioncenter.org.