Recovering Truth - Saving the Constitution — lecture and discussion w/Jamal Greene | Sep. 22, 2022

Recovering Truth - Saving the Constitution — lecture and discussion with Jamal Greene | Sep. 22, 2022

Rights are a sacred part of American identity. They also are the source of some of our greatest divisions. Why? And what can we do about it?

You have the right to remain silent—and the right to free speech. The right to worship, and to doubt. The right to be free from discrimination, and to hate. The right to life, and the right to own a gun. Rights are a sacred part of American identity. Yet they also are the source of some of our greatest divisions. Why? And what can we do about it?

Jamal Greene, author of “How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession with Rights is Tearing America Apart,” describes a system in which the concept of “a right” now means getting a judge to let us do whatever that right supposedly protects. But what happens if two rights conflict, or more than two rights are involved?

Greene argues that courts today are not equipped for this, with the result that the law has too often been reduced to a zero-sum game of winners and losers rather than a framework for mediating among competing claims. Too many Americans think that religion has become either too intertwined with these processes, or not enough.

What is to be done? In this talk, Greene will present a different approach, one that he says the Founders would approve. And further, will be on that more in line with the Founders’ vision than what passes for “originalism” today. In advancing this approach, Green argues that the courts can pave a way to overcome polarization, revive our politics, and bridge our differences rather than exacerbate them.

About the Speaker
Jamal Greene (JD, Yale University) is professor of law at Columbia University where he teaches courses on comparative constitutional law, the law of the political process, First Amendment, and federal courts. An expert in constitutional law, his scholarship focuses on the structure of legal and constitutional argument. He has published in-depth pieces about the Supreme Court, constitutional rights adjudication, and the constitutional theory of originalism, including “Rights as Trumps?” (Harvard Law Review, 2018), “Rule Originalism” (Columbia Law Review, 2016), and “The Anticanon” (Harvard Law Review, 2011).

Greene is a sought-after media commentator on the Supreme Court and on constitutional law. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, Slate, New York Daily News, and The Los Angeles Times. His recent piece, “Federalism worsens divisions over abortion in America,” appeared in The Economist.

Prior to joining Columbia Law in 2008, Greene was the Alexander Fellow at New York University School of Law. He served as a law clerk to Judge Guido Calabresi on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and for Justice John Paul Stevens on the U.S. Supreme Court.

He is a member of the American Law Institute, sits on the Board of Academic Advisors of the American Constitution Society, and serves as co-chair of the Oversight Board, an independent body set up to review content moderation decisions on Facebook and Instagram.

This lecture is supported, in part, by the project Recovering Truth: Religion, Journalism and Democracy in a Post-Truth Era, funded by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.