Stover Scholars celebrate Constitution Day through theatrical production
Waynesburg University’s Stover Scholars presented “Bread, Bakers and the Constitution” Monday, Sept. 17, in the Goodwin Performing Arts Center in celebration of Constitution Day.
“The play’s central characters, Founding Father James Madison, and Supreme Court Justices Rufus Peckham, John Marshall Harlan, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, engagingly dramatized the central constitutional concepts of the need to check and balance factions, the Separation of Powers, Federalism, judicial review, and the scope of economic regulation which continue to be debated in America today,” said Lawrence Stratton, Director of the Stover Center for Constitutional Leadership and Assistant Professor of Ethics and Constitutional Law.
Written by two Waynesburg University Stover Scholars, Chase Ayers and Daniel Czajkowski, “Bread, Bakers and the Constitution” portrayed the constitutional context and legal debates surrounding the landmark 1905 U.S. Supreme Court case, Lochner v. New York. This case struck down New York’s statutory limitation on baker hours. The case raises the enduring structural constitutional issues of federalism, judicial review and the extent of government regulation of the economy and commerce. Professor Edward L. Powers, associate professor of theatre at Waynesburg University, directed the play.
“I salute the Stover Scholars, both the two playwrights Chase Ayers and Daniel Czajkowski and the entire cast, for their creative work,” Stratton said
The Stover Center for Constitutional Studies and Moral Leadership is committed to creatively transforming the polis, bringing insights from the U.S. Constitution’s Founding Era and Christianity to bear in the contemporary public square