On Tuesday, July 7th at 2 pm ET, the James Wilson Institute and the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy will host a webinar featuring University of Missouri Law Professor Carli Conklin. Professor Conklin will examine the Declaration's oft-quoted phrase "the pursuit of happiness" through the lens of 18th-century jurist William Blackstone. She will also consider how Blackstone's scholarship ought to inform how we think about the law today.

Professor Conklin will examine the Declaration's oft-quoted phrase "the pursuit of happiness" through the lens of 18th-century jurist William Blackstone. She will also consider how Blackstone's scholarship ought to inform how we think about the law today. In his Commentaries on the Laws of England, William Blackstone described the pursuit of happiness as a science of jurisprudence by which his students could identify, and then apply, the first principles of the Common Law in their future work in law. Separately, the American founders included the pursuit of happiness as one of only three unalienable rights specifically listed in the Declaration of Independence. Where do Blackstone and the founders agree and disagree in their understanding of the pursuit of happiness? What practical role (if any) did they suggest the concept could serve in English and early American law and legal philosophy? Be sure to attend what we expect to be a highly engaging webinar conversation! We are applying for CLE credit for this webinar in Texas and Virginia for attorneys seeking credit with the state bar in either of those states. 

Meet Professor Conklin 

Carli N. Conklin is an associate professor at University of Missouri School of Law, an associate professor of constitutional democracy and former associate director at the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, and director of the School of Law’s Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution. She earned her JD/MA and PhD in American Legal History from the University of Virginia, where she received the School of Law’s John and Madeleine Traynor prize for outstanding written work. Prof. Conklin’s research focuses on early American legal and intellectual history. Her scholarship has been published in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Legal History, the Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, Washington University Jurisprudence Review, and the University of Missouri’s Journal of Dispute Resolution. She is an invited contributor to the Oxford University Press Discussions in Dispute Resolution book series, including Volume I: The Foundational Articles (OUP 2021), and Volume II: The Coming of Age (OUP 2025). Prof. Conklin is a past recipient of the Missouri Lawyers’ Weekly Women’s Justice Award (Legal Scholar category) and the University of Missouri School of Law’s Shook, Hardy, & Bacon, LLC Excellence in Research Award. She was awarded a national CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award from the Association of College & Research Libraries for her book The Pursuit of Happiness in the Founding Era: An Intellectual History (University of Missouri Press Studies in Constitutional Democracy series, 2019). Her follow-up work, The Pursuit of Happiness Beyond the Founding, is forthcoming from the University of Missouri Press. Prof. Conklin teaches courses in lawyering, dispute resolution, and early American legal history at the School of Law and courses in early American intellectual and legal history at the University of Missouri’s Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy and Honors College. She is a past recipient of the Kappa Alpha Theta Outstanding Faculty Award (one of ten awardees chosen nationally), the School of Law Board of Advocates Faculty Achievement Award (student-selected), and has been student-selected as a University of Missouri Friars Chapter of Mortar Board Faculty Honor Tap and three-time Mizzou ’39 Faculty Mentor.

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