Speaker Bios

Michael Les Benedict is Professor Emeritus of History at The Ohio State University, where he taught from 1970 to 2005, and visiting scholar at both the OSU Moritz College of Law and the University of Texas School of Law. He is a recognized authority on American constitutional and legal history. His The Impeachment Trial of Andrew Johnson (1973) and A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction (1975) are classic works on the era of Reconstruction among many other publications, including The Blessings of Liberty: A Concise History of the Constitution of the United States, now in its third edition, and more than 45 essays on American history and law published in books and leading history and law journals. His current project, which is to be published by Cambridge University Press, examines Salmon Chase and the constitutional politics of the Civil War era.

Robert Fitrakis is Professor of Political Science at Columbus State Community College, where in 1991 he won the Distinguished Teaching Award. He also serves as the Executive Director of the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism and has frequently reported and edited for the Columbus Free Press since the early 1990s. His muckraking reputation is bolstered by the publication of six Fitrakis Files books. From 1990 to 2000, he co-hosted the regular public access program “From the Democratic Left.” More recently, he has hosted the weekly public affairs radio program “Fight Back!” and has appeared in numerous video streams and podcasts. His varied public service has also brought him to El Salvador to monitor national elections and Mexico to investigate working conditions in maquiladoras. As the Green Party choice, Fitrakis also ran for Ohio governor in 2006 and for lieutenant governor in 2014.

Nancy Kassop is Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the State University of New York at New Paltz. She teaches courses on American government and politics, the presidency, and constitutional law. Her research includes many articles on constitutional law and the presidency, including “‘The Law’: The Clinton Impeachment: Untangling the Web of Conflicting Considerations” in Presidential Studies Quarterly (Jun. 2000). She is a scholar with the White House Transition Project, where she writes about the White House Counsel’s office. Her most recent research explores presidential war powers, the role of government lawyers, and national security law, especially during the Obama years.

Peter M. Shane is Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law at The Ohio State University, where he has taught since 2003. His time at OSU follows service as faculty at the University of Iowa College of Law and Carnegie Mellon University’s John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, and as dean at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Professor Shane has received numerous teaching and scholarship distinctions and grants, most notably a National Science Foundation grant for interdisciplinary study related to cyberspace and democracy. His scholarship in administrative law, which has focused on the separation of powers, has become internationally recognized, and he has co-authored leading casebooks on both administrative law and separation of powers law. He is the author also of Madison’s Nightmare: How Executive Power Threatens American Democracy, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2009. He is currently working on a book project entitled, “Democracy’s Chief Executive.” Ohio State named him a Distinguished University Scholar in 2011.