![handle is hein.journals/flr89 and id is 1 raw text is: TRIBUTE
CELEBRATING THE IMPACT OF SENATOR
BIRCH BAYH: A LASTING LEGACY ON THE
CONSTITUTION AND BEYOND
FOREWORD
John D. Feerick* and John Rogan**
Nearly 200 years before Birch Bayh arrived in the U.S. Senate, James
Madison arrived at the Constitutional Convention with a sense of what was
ailing the newly united states: concern for the national interest was missing.1
The states were at odds with each other,2 and Madison believed the people
of the United States . .. were putting their own interests above the good of
the whole.3 With Madison in an influential role, the Framers designed the
U.S. Constitution to encourage elevating the nation's interests.4 In
promoting ratification, Madison submitted that the Constitution provided a
defense against conflicts of rival parties undermining the public good.5
Of course, the Constitution did not provide a government that would
perfectly guard against the perils of self-interest or many of the other
challenges the nation would encounter. The Constitution's first words
acknowledged its imperfections. It promised a more perfect Union6-a
nation that was a work in progress from its inception.7 The United States's
* Dean Emeritus, Sidney C. Norris Chair of Law in Public Service, and Founder and Senior
Counsel, Feerick Center for Social Justice, Fordham University School of Law.
** Visiting Clinical Professor, Fordham University School of Law. We are grateful to the
participants in this Tribute, everyone who worked on the in-person event, and the editors and
staff of Volume 89 of the Fordham Law Review.
1. See James T. Kloppenberg, To Promote the General Welfare: Why Madison Matters,
2019 SUP. CT. REV. 355, 361-62.
2. Michiko Kakutani, The Long Hot Summer and the More Perfect Union, N.Y. TIMES
(Apr. 20, 2007), https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/books/20book.html [https://
perma.cc/3ZZ2-5F77] ([S]tates issued their own paper money, pursued their own foreign
policies and battled one another over trade and commerce; nine states even claimed to have
their own navies.).
3. Kloppenberg, supra note 1, at 362.
4. See id. at 356.
5. See THE FEDERALIST NO. 10, at 48 (James Madison) (Ian Shapiro ed., 2009).
6. U.S. CONST. pmbl.
7. See Barack Obama, Remarks by the President at the 50th Anniversary of the Selma to
Montgomery Marches (Mar. 7, 2015), https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-
1](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/flr89&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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