BUCKLAND — The second lecture in the Charlemont Forum’s 2026 speaker series will focus on a concept that scholars refer to “constitutional rot.”
Austin Sarat, who just finished his 51st year as a professor at Amherst College, is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science. He will lead the talk on Thursday, June 4, at 7 p.m. in the Mohawk Trail Regional School library. A YouTube link for the lecture is also available at youtube.com/watch?v=RKNJ5Zsv3Ic.
Sarat argues that, while more people may seem to be focused on their misgivings with the current presidential administration, including executive overreach and infringement upon Americans’ personal rights, citizens “have been suffering for a long time from constitutional rot.”
“It’s long past time that we address this,” Sarat continued.
According to a paper written for the Maryland Law Review, constitutional rot can be defined as “a process of decay in the features of our system of government that maintain it as a healthy democratic republic.”
Constitutional rot can occur if those in positions of power in the government become beholden to small groups who provide financial backing, moving from a democratic republic to a more oligarchical system. When this happens, citizens may lose faith in the government as they believe they are not being heard by those in power, and instead may turn to demagogues who make promises of safety, security and prosperity if the people were to elect them to power. This often includes creating public division and providing scapegoats instead of solutions.
The lecture will examine how constitutional rot has grown and festered over time, with Sarat saying he wants to address how the United States went from “a shining city upon a hill,” as the late President Ronald Reagan once called it, to the “situation … [that] the United States finds itself in now.”
Sarat is the founder of Amherst College’s Department of Law, Jurisprudence and Social
Thought. Founded more than 30 years ago, the department focuses on teaching law, not to those who seek it as a profession, but “as a subject for citizens,” Sarat said.
The Charlemont Forum program is intended to be an extension of Sarat’s work at Amherst College, as he said this lecture is oriented toward asking everyday American citizens to examine the problems the country is currently facing, and to acknowledge that these aren’t new problems; they’re just at the forefront now.
His own expertise is in American law and politics, in which he earned a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin in 1973, and eventually his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1988. In addition, he is a member of The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities, of which he is a former president. This organization has existed since 1997, and is a interdisciplinary academic society dedicated to fostering humanities-oriented legal scholarship and teaching that seeks to “bring together scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, career stages and geographical regions,” according to its website.
Sarat is the second speaker announced in this year’s Charlemont Forum speaker series. These lectures and presentations have been taking place since 2010.
