Sept. 17: Constitution Day Chartwell Lecture

17th annual Constitution Day Chartwell Lecture
"A Defense of Originalism" presented by John O. McGinnis
Friday, Sept. 17, 7:30-9 p.m.
Join us over Zoom. Meeting ID: 880 6516 5257. Passcode: Chartwell.
If you are a student, staff member or faculty, you are welcome to join us in person in CPISB 120.

John O. McGinnis is George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law at Northwestern University. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, he also has an MA degree from Balliol College, Oxford, in philosophy and theology. Professor McGinnis clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. From 1987 to 1991, he served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice. He is author of Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Government Through Technology (Princeton, 2013) and Originalism and the Good Constitution (Harvard, 2013, with M. Rappaport).

Professor McGinnis will discuss the central contemporary conflict in constitutional interpretation. On one side is originalism, in which the Constitution is to be interpreted according to the meaning at the time of enactment. On the other side is living constitutionalism, in which the Constitution is to be updated to reflect what is thought necessary for contemporary society. He will argue that interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning is more likely to produce good results than living constitutionalism.

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Part of UAA Democracy & Civic Action Week.

September Archive