Memory and Authority: The Uses of History in Constitutional Interpretation (Zoom Program)

A Discussion for Judges with Professor Jack M. Balkin

*This is a Zoom program*

From the Publisher: From one of the nation’s preeminent constitutional scholars, a sweeping rethinking of the uses of history in constitutional interpretation

Fights over history are at the heart of most important constitutional disputes in America. The Supreme Court’s current embrace of originalism is only the most recent example of how lawyers and judges try to use history to establish authority for their positions. Jack M. Balkin argues that fights over constitutional interpretation are often fights over collective memory. Lawyers and judges construct—and erase—memory to lend authority to their present-day views; they make the past speak their values so they can then claim to follow it. The seemingly opposed camps of originalism and living constitutionalism are actually mirror images of a single phenomenon: how lawyers use history to adapt an ancient constitution to a constantly changing world.

Balkin shows how lawyers and judges channel history through standard forms of legal argument that shape how they use history and even what they see in history. He explains how lawyers and judges invoke history selectively to construct authority for their claims and undermine the authority of opposing views. And he elucidates the perpetual quarrel between historians and lawyers, showing how the two can best join issue in legal disputes. This book is a sweeping rethinking of the uses of history in constitutional interpretation.

Jack M. Balkin is Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School. He is the founder and director of Yale’s Information Society Project, an interdisciplinary center that studies law and new information technologies. He also directs the Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression, and the Knight Law and Media Program at Yale. He is the author of over one hundred fifty articles and the author or editor of fifteen books. For more information, please visit: https://jackbalkin.yale.edu/

A complimentary copy of Memory and Authority will be distributed in advance to the first 50 judges who register.