On September 22, 2022 the James Madison Program hosted the Antonin
Scalia Constitution Day Lecture at Princeton University with Sherif
Girgis '08, titled, "The Supreme Court's Traditionalist Turn."
Today’s Supreme Court professes a commitment to originalism—the idea
that the Constitution’s meaning is fixed at ratification and binds
judges today. But in interpreting the Constitution, the Court often
looks to the post-ratification practices of other actors: Presidents,
Congresses, or states. The Court has held, for example, that certain
practices of the political branches must be constitutional because they
represent longstanding traditions—or that certain rights are (or aren’t)
protected by the Constitution because they have (or haven’t)
traditionally enjoyed protection under state law. This tradition-based
method of interpretation has driven many recent high-profile cases, on
guns, abortion, religion, speech, and more. But it turns out to be hard
to square with originalism. And it has surprising logical implications
that may give an originalist Court pause, and its critics fodder.
Sherif Girgis joined Notre Dame Law School in 2021. His work in
constitutional theory and legal philosophy has appeared in the New York
University Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the University of
Pennsylvania Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the American Journal of
Jurisprudence, the Cambridge Companion to Philosophy of Law, The Wall
Street Journal, and The New York Times. He coauthored What Is Marriage?,
cited in a Supreme Court dissent, and Debating Religious Liberty and
Discrimination, released by Oxford University Press.
Now completing his Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton, Girgis earned his
J.D. at Yale Law School and clerked for Justice Samuel Alito. Girgis
earned a master’s degree (B.Phil.) from the University of Oxford as a
Rhodes Scholar and a bachelor’s from Princeton, Phi Beta Kappa and summa
cum laude.
This event was supported by the Bouton Law Lecture Fund and co-sponsored
by the Jack Miller Center and Princeton's University Center for Human
Values.
The James Madison Program: jmp.princeton.edu