On March 27, 2025, the Madison Program hosted Garrett West for the
Annual Walter F. Murphy Lecture in American Constitutionalism.
Lawyers have long distinguished private and public law. The former
concerns the rights and duties of private persons and is studied in
courses like contracts and torts. The latter concerns the powers and
responsibilities of the state. Constitutional law, then, is supposed to
be public law. But it turns out that much of constitutional law is less
like public law and more like private law: it imposes relational
obligations on government officials backed by the threat of monetary
damages. What does constitutional private law tell us about
constitutional law and its relationship to politics and philosophy?
Garrett West is an Associate Professor of Law at Yale Law School. His
scholarship focuses on the uses of private law theory in public law and
on the problems of constitutional interpretation and doctrinal coherence
through constitutional change. West received a J.D. from Yale Law
School, where he served as an Articles and Essays Editor on the Yale Law
Journal, and a B.A. from Hillsdale College. After graduating from Yale,
West practiced appellate litigation in Washington, D.C., and clerked
for Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, Judge Thomas Griffith, and Justice
Samuel Alito.
Supported by the Bouton Law Lecture Fund.
