Speaker: Justice Christopher McDonald
America’s founding charter was not designed to produce consensus. It was designed to make disagreement governable. This address by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Christopher McDonald explores the Constitution’s deliberate architecture of tension, the judiciary’s growing centrality to the resolution of those tensions, and the ongoing dialogue between state and federal courts that embodies the Founders’ vision of productive institutional competition.
Justice McDonald was born in Bangkok, Thailand and raised in Des Moines. He graduated from Des Moines Lincoln High School, and he earned his undergraduate degree from Grand View University. Justice McDonald earned his law degree, with highest distinction, from the University of Iowa College of Law in 2001. At the College of Law, he received the John F. Murray award given to the class valedictorian and was elected to the Order of the Coif academic honor society.
After graduating from law school, Justice McDonald served as a law clerk to the Honorable David R. Hansen, United States Court of Appeals from the Eighth Circuit. Justice McDonald worked in private practice at Faegre & Benson and Belin McCormick and then as National Litigation Counsel for an international life and annuity company. In 2012, he was appointed to serve as a judge of the District Court, Fifth Judicial District of Iowa. In 2013, he was appointed to the Iowa Court of Appeals. In 2019, he was appointed to the Supreme Court.
This lecture recording can be found on the Available Recordings page approximately two business days after the event and will remain accessible for three weeks.
Co-Sponsors: Center for Cyclone Civics and Committee on Lectures (funded by Student Government)