Did you know September 17 is Constitution Day? No? Don’t feel bad; you’re not alone.
Even Baltimore City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clark learned about it from colleagues at city hall.
“Once I heard about it I was interested and I wanted to lift up the occasion so that more people know about it,” says Clark who sponsored a resolution passed by the city council recognizing “Constitution and Citizenship Day.” It urges all Baltimoreans - especially young people - to use the day to reflect on the basic rights and responsibilities of citizenship and the high ideals in the constitution that unites us as Americans.
Funny thing is, the holiday itself just might be unconstitutional, says Garrett Epps, law professor at the University of Baltimore and author of a couple of books on the constitution. He says the holiday requires all kinds of institutions to engage in certain kinds of speech on a certain day, which violates tenets of the nation’s founding document.
Constitution Day stems from an amendment tacked on to a huge, 2004 spending bill by the late West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, who famously carried a copy of the constitution in his pocket. It requires schools, colleges and universities that receive federal dollars teach lessons on the constitution on September 17, the date it was signed in 1787. Byrd was frustrated with what he called a huge ignorance on the part of many Americans about history.
Epps says he doesn’t believe “you can create respect for the constitution by requiring people to do things or say things.”
Regardless, schools, colleges and universities across the country will be teaching something on the constitution September 17.
Amy Rosenkrans, director of the Baltimore City School’s Office of Humanities, says they provide “a resource sheet for all of our teachers in all of our schools with different possible activities and resources that they can use in their classes.”
In addition, several city high schools will hold voter registration drives with help from the Maryland Justice Project as part of that organization’s “Democracy 16.0” campaign. They plan to register students who are 16 now but will be 18 and eligible to vote in time for the 2014 general election.
And former U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes will speak at the University of Baltimore’s celebration of Constitution Day. The university says Sarbanes will discuss the state of the nation’s founding document in addition to other topics.