David Gray Adler is President of The Alturas Institute, a non-profit organization that promotes civic education and civil dialogue. He is the author of more than 100 scholarly articles in the leading journals in his field, and six books, focusing primarily on the Constitution and presidential power, including his forthcoming book, “The War Power in the Age of Terrorism: Debating: Debating Presidential Power,” which will be published in December by Palgrave MacMillan.
Adler’s scholarly writings have been quoted by the U.S. Supreme Court, lower federal courts, the White House Counsel, the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Attorney General, and both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, on a variety of subjects, including the war power, impeachment and treaty termination, and by historians, legal scholars and political scientists.
Adler has lectured nationally and internationally on the Constitution, presidential power and foreign affairs, and he has delivered more than 500 public lectures throughout Idaho. He frequently writes op-ed pieces for Idaho newspapers.
He formerly held the James McClure Professorship at the University of Idaho, where he was Director of the James and Louise McClure Center for Public Policy, and held appointment on the faculty of the College of Law and taught courses on the Constitution and the Supreme Court. He also served as the Cecil D. Andrus Professor at Boise State University, where he was Director of the Andrus Center for Public Policy. Previously, he was a member of the faculty in the Department of Political
Science at Idaho State University, where he served as Director of the Center for Constitutional Studies. He continues to teach courses for the University of Idaho College of Law.
A recipient of teaching, writing and civic awards, Adler has been interviewed by reporters with the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, NBC, the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Times, Newsweek, National Review, NPR and the BBC, among other others. He earned a B.A. at Michigan State University and a Ph.D. at the University of Utah. In 2010, he received the Distinguished Humanities Award from the Idaho Humanities Council.
Adler is currently writing a book on Reed v. Reed, the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision which, for the first time, struck down a statute on grounds of gender discrimination in violation of the 14th Amendment. As it happened, the statute in question was an Idaho law. The case is the subject of tonight’s talk, “Reed v. Reed: Striking Down Gender Discrimination in Idaho and Across America.”
