University Of Alaska Anchorage: Sept. 17: Constitution Day Chartwell Lecture

Press release from the University of Alaska Anchorage:

September 13, 2021

17th annual Constitution Day Chartwell Lecture"A Defense of Originalism" presented by John O. McGinnisFriday, 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.

This press release was produced by the University of Alaska Anchorage. The views expressed here are the author’s own.