Chilean Constituent Process: Reasons for two unsuccessful constitution’s replacement attempts
@ SLS: Room 280B Crown Quadrangle, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesOn December 17, 55% of Chilean voters rejected a second constitutional proposal drafted by a majority right-wing council. A previous text, written by a mainly left-wing convention, was dismissed by 62% of voters in the September 2022 plebiscite. Prof. Jorge Barrera-Rojas served as a Chief Counsel of the majority in the last attempt, and he […]
Courting Censorship
@ SLS: Room 290 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesThis talk will draw lessons from Murthy v. Missouri and other current censorship cases. It asks whether Supreme Court doctrine has invited censorship? Not deliberately, of course. Still, it must be asked whether current doctrine has courted censorship—in the same way one might speak of it courting disaster. The lecture will begin at 5:00pm. Dinner […]
Race, Originalism, and Affirmative Action
@ SLS: Room 290 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesWatch the event Join SLS Professor Michael McConnell and UVA Professor Kim Forde-Mazrui in conversation, moderated by SLS Professor Ralph Richard Banks, as they consider the role of history and the original meaning of the Constitution in deciding contested questions of constitutional interpretation with respect to race. Speakers will examine claims about how history does […]
Judicial Review in Times of Emergency: From the Founding through the COVID-19 Pandemic
@ SLS: Room 290 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesWatch the evvent Whether deferring to President Lincoln’s blockade at the start of the Civil War, a state’s suspension of creditors’ remedies during the Great Depression, or President’s Roosevelt’s evacuation and mass incarceration of Japanese Americans in the West during World War II, the Supreme Court has regularly permitted the political branches wide discretion to […]
In Defense of Strict Scrutiny
@ SLS: Room 290 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesTHIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED. Is strict scrutiny consistent with originalism? And can strict scrutiny be implemented without involving judicial balancing? Professor Stephanie Barclay will argue yes on both fronts, offering a different conceptual framework for thinking about the protection of constitutional rights in a democracy.
The Second Amendment After Bruen
@ SLS: Room 290 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesWatch the event In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court upended generations of firearm control laws in the case New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen. After Bruen, gun laws […]
Natural Rights at the Founding
@ SLS: Room 290 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesWatch the event Although no longer a part of our constitutional discourse, natural rights were central to American rights jurisprudence for well over a century. This talk will explore how the Founders thought about natural rights – where natural rights came from, what role they played in the constitutional design, and who got to define […]
Lunch with Stephen Bright, Longtime Director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, on “The Fear of Too Much Justice”
@ SLS: Room 190 Crown Quadrangle 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesWatch the Event Join Stephen Bright, longtime director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, in Atlanta, Georgia, as he discusses his work in the areas of capital punishment, indigent criminal legal defense, racial discrimination in the criminal legal system, conditions and practices in prisons and jails, judicial independence, and his new book (with co-author […]
Constitutionalism without a Constitution: the Israeli Case
@ SLS: Room 190 Crown Quadrangle 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesWatch the event Like Britain and New Zealand, Israel lacks a fully codified constitution. For 75 years it has relied on informal norms, a series of Basic Laws, and a strong legal culture to provide the country with “constitutionalism without a constitution”. But has political polarization exhausted Israel's ability to accommodate differences within its existing […]
Does Section 3 Trump the Voters?
@ SLS: Room 180 Crown Quadrangle 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesWatch the event In a forthcoming article, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen seek to "set[] forth the full sweep and force of Section Three" of the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids holding office by former office holders who then participate in insurrection or rebellion. Their reading finds that Section Three "disqualifies former President Donald Trump, and […]
Who Am I to Judge?: Judicial Craft versus Constitutional Theory
@ SLS: Room 190 Crown Quadrangle 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesWatch the event Senators at recent confirmation hearings have asked nominees about their commitments to originalism and their judicial philosophies. This lecture, based on a forthcoming book, argues that we should shift our focus. Retrospectively examining “great” Supreme Court justices and “strong” (and “weak”) Supreme Courts, I suggest that we should be looking for justices […]
Supreme Court Roundup and Preview
@ SLS: Room 290 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesWatch the event Join Easha Anand, co-director of Stanford Law School’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, Michael Mongan ('06), California Solicitor General, and Erin Murphy, partner at Clement & Murphy, to review the most important Supreme Court cases of the past year and look ahead to the year to come. This event is being recorded and […]
George Washington’s Jewish Letters and the Creation of a Constitutional Republic
@ Stanford: Paul Brest Hall 555 Salvatierra Walk, Stanford, CA, United StatesView the event As president of the Constitutional Convention, and as president of the nascent United States, Washington received several letters from members of the tiny American Jewish community. These fascinating letters tells us a great deal about the way in which Jews saw the promise of the Constitution; and the astounding way in which […]
Affirmative Action: SLS Faculty Analyze the Supreme Court’s Ruling
OnlineWatch the event Join Stanford Law School faculty for a panel discussion about the Supreme Court’s highly anticipated decision in a pair of cases about affirmative action, Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions v. Presidents & Fellows of Harvard College. They will assess what the opinion means […]
Text and (What Kind of) History?: CLC Spring Conference
@ Stanford: Paul Brest Hall 555 Salvatierra Walk, Stanford, CA, United StatesConstitutional Law Center Spring Conference 2023 Text and history were front and center in many controversial and consequential Supreme Court opinions last term, and will be pivotal in the Roberts Court’s evolving jurisprudence. This emphasis reinvigorates and reshapes fundamental questions that have dominated methodological and substantive debates about constitutional interpretation over the past half century. […]
Our Common Purpose: A Strategy for Renovating American Democracy in the 21st Century: A Constitutional Conversation with Prof. Danielle Allen
@ SLS: Room 180 Crown Quadrangle 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesWatch the event
What Does Originalism Have To Do With Civil Procedure? A Constitutional Conversation with Mila Sohoni
@ SLS: Room 180 Crown Quadrangle 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesWatch the event Constitutional Conversation with Mila Sohoni On a daily basis, lawyers and judges consult and apply the rules of subject matter jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction. These doctrines—the workhorses of civil procedural law—ostensibly spring from the Constitution’s text, but their substance owes more to considerations of fairness, efficiency, and sound policy than it does to original meaning. Indeed, […]
TikTok Bans & The First Amendment: A Constitutional Conversation with Evelyn Douek
@ SLS: Room 180 Crown Quadrangle 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesWatch the event Last week, Montana became the first state to pass a bill banning the social media app TikTok, but this is just the latest law in a rapidly escalating trend of measures against the Chinese-owned platform. Only belatedly has there been much conversation about the First Amendment challenges such laws will face—which, unsurprisingly, […]
Ensuring Free and Fair Elections: A Comparative View of the Mexican Experience
@ SLS: Room 180 Crown Quadrangle 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesListen to the Event Constitutional conversation with Pamela San Martín. Mexico has one of the most sophisticated sets of electoral procedures. With stringent rules around the use of money and expedited accountability mechanisms, control over TV and radio propaganda, a national electoral census, and a system of randomly selected citizens who staff polling stations and […]
The Original Ratifiers’ Theory of Officer Accountability
@ SLS: Room 180 Crown Quadrangle 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesAS OF 2/24/23 THE EVENT IS CANCELLED. ---- Constitutional Conversation with Professor Jennifer Mascott 4:45 pm – 5:00 pm | Dinner served 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm | Lecture * This event will be recorded and made available on the Stanford Constitutional Law YouTube Channel a few days after the event. The understanding of the individuals […]
Publius Symposium with Alison LaCroix: The Interbellum Constitution: Union, Commerce, and Slavery in the Age of Federalisms
@ SLS: Room 180 Crown Quadrangle 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United States5:30 pm - 6:00 pm | Dinner 6:00 pm - 7:15 pm | Lecture * This event will be recorded and made available on the Stanford Constitutional Law YouTube Channel a few days after the event. What was the nature of the American union during the nation’s adolescence, after the Founding and before the Civil […]
Religious Liberty in a Polarized Age
@ SLS: Russo Commons - Student Law Lounge 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesConstitutional Conversation with Thomas Berg Religious liberty, a basic constitutional value, is now among the key issues on which many Americans are polarized politically and culturally. As Thomas Berg will argue, many conservatives have supported government discrimination and penalties against Muslims, and on the other side, many progressives have dismissed even strong religious-liberty claims by […]
How To Choose A Theory of Constitutional Interpretation
@ Stanford: Paul Brest Hall 555 Salvatierra Walk, Stanford, CA, United StatesView the event In moral and political philosophy, some people emphasize the importance of searching for “reflective equilibrium,” in which (broadly speaking) general principles align with convictions about particular cases, and vice-versa. There is a close analogue in constitutional law; the search for reflective equilibrium plays a central role. Some theories of constitutional interpretation seem […]
Silencing of the Lambs: How Administrative Suppression of Speech and Information and Other Deprivations of Civil Liberties Helped to Create the Leviathan
@ SLS: Room 190 Crown Quadrangle 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United StatesThe last several years have been an exciting time to litigate constraints on administrative power. Long-neglected doctrines such as non-delegation (Gundy 2018), appointments (Lucia 2018), federal jurisdiction to hear challenges to administrative judging (Cochran and Axon 2022 term) and the Supreme Court’s recent insistence that major questions must be decided by Congress, not administrative agencies […]
Supreme Court Roundup and Preview
@ SLS: Room 190 Crown Quadrangle 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA, United States5:00 pm – 6:00 pm | Lecture 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm | Reception in Crocker