SCOTUS Year-in-Review: The New Majority Asserts Itself (Zoom Program)

*This is a Zoom program*

This program will include a discussion and analysis of some of the most significant decisions by the United States Supreme Court during its last term including the cases dealing with abortion, gun rights, the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses of the First Amendment, the requirement that administrative agencies like the EPA must demonstrate clear legislative authority before adopting certain kinds of regulations and the Miranda doctrine. It will also consider how those decisions may affect litigation the state courts such as Massachusetts. The panelists include two distinguished academics with divergent views about how SCOTUS should approach the task of constitutional interpretation and the soundness of the reasoning in the opinions of the majority and the dissenters.

Professor James Fleming teaches constitutional law at Boston University School of Law. He is the author of numerous books and articles on constitutional law and theory. His most recent book is titled Constructing Basic Liberties: A Defense of Substantive Due Process (Univ. Chicago Press 2022). Professor Ilan Wurman teaches Administrative Law and Constitutional Law at the Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law at Arizona State University. He writes primarily on the Fourteenth Amendment, administrative law, separation of powers, and constitutionalism. He is the author of A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism (Cambridge 2017), and The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment (Cambridge 2020).
The moderator for this program is Supreme Judicial Court Justice Scott Kafker, Flaschner’s President and Dean. Justice Kafker, who previously taught state constitutional law at Boston College Law School for many years, is the author of “State Constitutional Law Declares Its Independence: Double Protecting Rights During a Time of Constitutional Upheaval” which was published this year in volume 46 issue 2 of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly.