A debate between Prof. Michael McConnell and Dr. Roger Pilon

Conservative and libertarian legal theorists share much in common. Both often use original meaning as their source of constitutional interpretation. Both tend to view the federal government’s powers as limited. But one major point of disagreement is whether the Constitution protects those rights which are not specifically listed.

In the wake of Prof. McConnell’s keynote B. Kenneth Simon lecture at the Cato Institute and Dr. Pilon’s response, the two will discuss whether and how the constitution protects unenumerated rights, including particular clauses onto which one can textually hook a search for rights not clearly enumerated.

Dr. Pilon is the director of the Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute and has, in addition to serving in government as a lawyer, been a philosopher of libertarian rights theory. Prof. McConnell was a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and is now co-director of the Constitutional Law Center at SLS.

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