Is Originalism a Methodology in Legal Research?
Session One: Lawrence Solum
William L. Matheson and Robert M. Morgenthau Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Virginia, School of Law
Originalist Methodology
Date: Feb 24th at 12:00 PM (E.T.)
Professor Solum will discuss "Public Meaning Originalism" as a theory of constitutional interpretation. His remarks will include an introduction to originalism as a constitutional theory and proceed to discuss the foundations of the originalist approach to public meaning in the philosophy of language and theoretical linguistics. Finally, he will outline an approach to the reconstruction of the communicative content of a constitutional text that includes historical linguistics, study of the constitutional record, and immersion in the history of the drafting, framing, and ratification. He will offer some brief remarks on the application of originalist methodology to statutory interpretation and comparative constitutionalism.
Lawrence B. Solum is an internationally recognized legal theorist who works in constitutional theory, procedure and the philosophy of law. Solum contributes to debates in constitutional theory and normative legal theory. He is especially interested in the intersection of law with the philosophy of language and with moral and political philosophy. His series of articles on constitutional originalism have shaped contemporary thinking about the great debate between originalism and constitutional theory. Solum’s original theory of the fundamental nature and purpose of law, “Virtue Jurisprudence,” has been debated and discussed in Asia, Europe and North America. He also works on problems of law and technology, including internet governance, copyright policy and patent law. His pathbreaking article, “Legal Personhood for Artificial Intelligences,” published in the early 1990s, is widely acknowledged as far ahead of its time.
Solum received his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and received his B.A. with highest departmental honors in philosophy from the University of California at Los Angeles. While at Harvard, he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation, he worked for the law firm of Cravath, Swaine, and Moore in New York, and then clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Prior to joining the UVA Law faculty in 2020, he was a member of the faculty at the Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Illinois, the University of San Diego and Loyola Marymount University, and visited at Boston University and the University of Southern California. He regularly teaches Civil Procedure and Constitutional Law. His other teaching includes seminars in constitutional theory and the philosophy of law as well as courses in conflict of laws, federal courts, intellectual property, and internet law and governance.
Solum’s books include “Constitutional Theory Arguments and Perspectives,” “Constitutional Originalism,” “法理词典 (The Legal Theory Lexicon),” “Virtue Jurisprudence,” “Moore’s Federal Practice” and “Destruction of Evidence.” He has published more than 80 articles in law reviews and philosophy journals.
He is also the editor of Legal Theory Blog, an influential blog that focuses on developments in contemporary normative and positive legal theory.
Solum has spoken to the dozens of law faculties, including those at Arizona State University, Boston University, Columbia University, Fordham University, and Notre Dame, among others. He has also participated in conferences, symposia and programs sponsored by Cardozo Law School, Chicago-Kent Law School DePaul Law School and Harvard Law School, among others.
Session Two: Dean Erwin Chemerinsky
Dean
Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law
University of California at Berkeley
Worse than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism
Date: March 3rd at 11:00 AM (E.T.)
Erwin Chemerinsky became the 13th Dean of Berkeley Law on July 1, 2017, when he joined the faculty as the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law.
Prior to assuming this position, from 2008-2017, he was the founding Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law, and Raymond Pryke Professor of First Amendment Law, at University of California, Irvine School of Law. Before that he was the Alston and Bird Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke University from 2004-2008, and from 1983-2004 was a professor at the University of Southern California Law School, including as the Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics, and Political Science. From 1980-1983, he was an assistant professor at DePaul College of Law.
He is the author of sixteen books, including leading casebooks and treatises about constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction. His most recent books are Worse than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism (2022) and Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights (2021).
He also is the author of more than 200 law review articles. He is a contributing writer for the Opinion section of the Los Angeles Times, and writes regular columns for the Sacramento Bee, the ABA Journal and the Daily Journal, and frequent op-eds in newspapers across the country. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the United States Supreme Court.
In 2016, he was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017, National Jurist magazine again named Dean Chemerinsky as the most influential person in legal education in the United States. In 2022, he is the President of the Association of American Law Schools.
