John Mikhail, the Carroll Professor of Jurisprudence at Georgetown University Law Center, held a talk on anti-slavery and the Constitution in Williams Hall room 383 on Sept. 17 as part of Ithaca College’s annual Constitution Day series. In the lead–up to the 2026 American Semiquincentennial, this talk was meant to tackle what was the defining conflict of nation-building after independence: the legal status of slavery. The day consisted of a Q&A led by students at noon in Klingenstein Lounge and then the official talk at 4 p.m. in Williams Hall.
Mikhail structured his talk as a response to the radical proposition of formerly enslaved abolitionist writer and leader Frederick Douglass, who argued in his famous Fourth of July speech that the Constitution was written around abolishing slavery and that the institution of slavery was itself anti-constitutional. Mikhail is a multidisciplinary scholar, having studied cognitive science and moral psychology under linguist Noam Chomsky, before pursuing law and philosophy. He has been teaching at Georgetown since 2004.
Staff writer Mila Ventura Rodriguez spoke with Mikhail about his experience in answering students’ questions on constitutional law during his visit to IC.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Mila Ventura Rodriguez: Because you’ve had a pretty varied background, do you think that there’s a particular importance of constitutional law compared to other subjects that you might be able to teach?
John Mikhail: Well, constitutional law is in the news all the time. That is certainly something that makes it stay interesting and fresh and keeps one on one’s toes. For example, I taught torts for many years. Tort law is one of the standard first year courses in law schools, and it’s basically the law of injury, personal injury, law, industrial accidents, negligence and so forth. And although it’s an important subject as well, it’s just much less frequently part of public discourse, and so you can’t get into elevator conversations with people, or do what I did today. I don’t think the attention of the group would have been as focused on tort law as it would be on constitutional law. So obviously, everybody in the country cares in some manner about constitutional law because it’s the law that governs those who govern us. It’s the law that governs the basic structure of our government. And so everyone has a really important interest in being on top of how the Constitution is interpreted and how it works.
MVR: Are there better ways to teach about the Constitution?
JM: I think multiple viewpoints are a better way to teach than a single viewpoint. In general, I can’t think of a context where getting your information about something as complicated as the Constitution and as important as the Constitution from only one source is a good idea. That’s part of what having an open, vibrant democracy involves, which is, you have competing viewpoints, and you have disagreements, a back and forth of opinion, and no one, certainly no one in authority, gets to declare what the orthodox view is.
MVR: We had a Q&A today with a classroom of students who are not exclusively interested in practicing law. Did you have any expectations when you entered?
JM: I actually meant the conversation today to be very accessible to everyone and to really go where everyone’s questions took the conversation. I didn’t come in with a lot of preconceived notions, but I felt like it was a nice conversation. The variety of the questions made for a rich and diverse set of conversations.
MVR: Were there any questions or themes that kept coming up that surprised you during the Q&A?
JM: I was struck by the questions asked about education and education policy, and I think that’s very laudable, that this group of students seemed kind of interested in being self-critical and self-aware about what they’re going through as students, and thinking about education from different vantage points.
MVR: You mentioned that you get a lot of questions about Donald Trump. My question is, what do people typically ask you?
JM: They want to know where I think we are. Are we in a bruises and nicks and cuts phase? Are we in a broken bones phase? Are we in a patient-dying-on-the-table phase? Or how intensely bad is this? That kind of thing, that’s often a kind of question that I get asked, and I don’t think there’s an easy answer, because I think it varies. I think it’s clear that a lot of norms are being destroyed right now, and it’s a little bit less clear about whether, although it’s sometimes the case, things are being done in a flagrantly illegal, unconstitutional way by the Trump administration. The truth is that in many areas in which the Trump administration is acting, he’s doing so pursuant to statutes that have been already passed, that delegate to the president those authorities. And that’s one thing that I think sometimes people have a hard time getting their head around.
MVR: You have emphasized again and again the importance of understanding multiple stories, multiple perspectives and honoring the nuance of the situation. Why do you think it is so hard when it comes to talking, especially about the Constitution and constitutional law, to maintain that kind of nuance?
JM: Colleges and universities, I actually think, are one frequent exception to that; these are special spaces where we gather and we prioritize dialogue, education, learning from one another, living with differences, changing your mind. These are terrifically important things … that’s one of the reasons why universities are so precious.
