I thought this item from Prof. John Greil at Texas was much worth passing along; he is still developing the syllabus, and comments and suggestions are welcome at john [dot] greil [at] law [dot] utexas [dot] edu:
Next fall semester, I’ll be teaching a new course at Texas Law—Understanding Conservative Legal Thought. It’s modeled largely off what Steve Sachs and Ernie Young did at Duke, as well as what Judge Katsas and Alida Kass are doing at George Washington. I want to give students a chance to grapple with the big legal debates happening right-of-center today, as well as teach students the skills to effectively advocate in front of today’s judges.
The course will likely be seven 2-hour sessions, with (I’m hoping) some excellent guests joining us. In addition to the content, I’m really excited about the structure, where I aim to bring some of the seminar experience I had in Notre Dame’s Great Books program (the Program of Liberal Studies) to the classroom. To that end, I plan to have students lead discussions and grade (partially) based on an oral exam.
I’d love to get feedback on the list, and I think your readership is the best place to get that feedback. [The readings largely include excerpts from the cited sources, not the entire works. -EV] I’m especially interested in pieces that work well with newcomers to the debates. The biggest problem (which is a good one to have!) is too much great stuff, and not enough time. I’m doing a one-credit course to get a feel of it, and hope to expand it the year after.
Session 1: What is a seminar?
Vincent Lloyd, A Black Professor Trapped in Anti-Racist Hell, Compact Magazine (Feb. 10, 2023) Paula Marantz Cohen, The Lost Art of Academic Conversation, The Chronicle of Higher Education (Mar. 14, 2023) Stephen E. Sachs, Institutions and Platforms, The Volokh Conspiracy (Oct. 26, 2020), https://reason.com/volokh/2020/10/26/institutions-and-platforms/
What is a Conservative?
F. A. Hayek, Why I am Not a Conservative, in The Constitution of Liberty (Ronald Hamowy ed., 2011) (1960). William Baude, FedSoc is a They, not an It, Summary, Judgment (Nov. 21, 2019), https://www.summarycommajudgment.com/blog/fedsoc-is-a-they-not-an-it.
Milton Friedman, The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, N.Y. Times (Sept. 13, 1970), https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctrine-the-social-responsibility-of-business-is-to.html. Barry Goldwater, Republican Convention Speech, 1964, Nat’l Ctr. for Pub. Pol’y Rsch. (Nov. 4, 2001) (1964), https://nationalcenter.org/ncppr/2001/11/04/barry-goldwaters-republican-convention-speech-1964/. Russell Kirk, Order, the First Need of All, in The Roots of American Order (2003). Ayn Rand, Conservatism – An Obituary, in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966). L. Brent Bozell Jr., Letter to Yourselves, Incudi Reddere (May 8, 2018) (1969), https://incudireddere.wordpress.com/2018/05/08/letter-to-yourselves/. Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow (2001). Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution (W. Alison Phillips & Catherine Beatrice Phillips eds., Cambridge Univ. Press 1912) (1790). Leo Strauss, The Crisis of Modern Natural Right: Burke, in Natural Right and History (1953). Richard M. Weaver, The Last Metaphysical Right, in Ideas have Consequences (2013). Charles A. Reich, The Greening of America in The New Yorker (1970).
Session 2: Individual Rights
Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (1991). Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989). Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (3d ed. 2007). In re Abbott, 954 f.3d 772 (5th Cir. 2020), vacated, 141 S. Ct. 1261 (2021). Adrian Vermeule, Common Good Constitutionalism: Recovering the Classical Legal Tradition (2022). William H. Pryor, Jr., Against Living Common Goodism, 23 Federalist Soc’y Rev. 25 (2022). Note, Blasphemy and the Original Meaning of the First Amendment, 135 Harv. L. Rev. 689 (2021). Jud Campbell, Natural Rights and the First Amendment, 127 Yale L.J. 246 (2017).
Session 3: Federalism
John C. Calhoun, A Disquisition on Government, in Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun 3, 3–78 (Ross M. Lence ed., 1992) (1851). The Lincoln–Douglas Debates of 1858, Nat’l Park Serv., https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/debates.htm (click links for each debate). A. Raymond Randolph, Before Roe v. Wade: Judge Friendly’s Draft Abortion Opinion, 29 Harv. J. L. & Pub. Pol’y 1035 (2015). Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org., 142 S. Ct. 2228, 2304–10 (2022) (Kavanaugh, J., concurring). Joshua J. Craddock, Protecting Prenatal Persons: Does the Fourteenth Amendment Prohibit Abortion?, 40 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 539 (2018). Brief for Professors Mary Ann Glendon and O. Carter Snead As Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org., 142 S. Ct. 2228 (2022) (No. 19-1392).
Session 4: Originalism—Why?
Jorge Luis Borges, Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, in Ficciones (1962, Anthony Kerrigan ed.). Robert H. Bork, Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems, 47 Ind. L.J. 1 (1971). Antonin Scalia, Originalism: The Lesser Evil, 57 U. Cinn. L. Rev. 849 (1989). Lawrence B. Solum, Originalism and Constitutional Construction, 82 Fordham L. Rev. 453 (2013). Christopher R. Green, This Constitution: Constitutional Indexicals As a Basis for Textualist Semi-Originalism, 84 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1607 (2009). William Baude, Is Originalism Our Law?, 115 Col. L. Rev. 2349 (2015). Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469, 505–23 (2005) (Thomas, J., dissenting). N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022). Neomi Rao, Textualism’s Political Morality, 73 Case W. Reserve L. Rev. 191 (2022). Conor Casey & Adrian Vermeule, Judge Rao’s Unintentional Surrender: On the Augustan Settlement of Our Law, New Dig. (Aug. 23, 2023), https://thenewdigest.substack.com/p/judge-raos-unintentional-surrender.
Session 5: Textualism—How?
Dwight MacDonald, The String Untuned: A Review of the Third Edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary, New Yorker (1964). David Foster Wallace, Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars on Usage, Harper’s Mag., Apr. 2001, at 39, https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-04-0070913.pdf. Antonin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation (Amy Gutmann ed., 2018). Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts (2012). Harvard Law School, The 2015 Scalia Lecture Series: A Dialogue with Justice Elena Kagan on the Reading of Statutes, YouTube, at 08:29 (Nov. 25, 2015), https://youtu.be/dpEtszFT0TgKagan. John F. Manning, The Absurdity Doctrine, 116 Harv. L. Rev. 2387 (2003). John F. Manning, The Means of Constitutional Power, 128 Harv. L. Rev. 1 (2014). Thomas v. Reeves, 961 F.3d 800, 801 (5th Cir. 2020) (Costa, J., concurring & Willet, J., concurring in the judgment) Biden v. Nebraska, 143 S. Ct. 2355, 2376–84 (2023) (Barrett, J., concurring). Wooden v. United States, 595 U.S. 360 (2022) (Kavanaugh, J., concurring and Gorsuch, J., concurring in the judgment). Jennings v. Rodriguez, 138 S. Ct. 830 (2018). NLRB v. Cath. Bishop of Chi., 440 U.S. 490 (1979). Bostock v. Clayton Cnty., 140 S. Ct. 1731 (2020). William Baude, The 2023 Scalia Lecture: Beyond Textualism?, 46 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y (forthcoming 2023), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4464561#.
Session 6: Role of the Judiciary
Alexander Bickel, The Least Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics (1986). Antonin Scalia, The Rule of Law As a Law of Rules, 56 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1175 (1989). Jonathan F. Mitchell, The Writ-of-Erasure Fallacy, 104 Va. L. Rev. 933 (2018). Whole Women’s Health v. Jackson, 595 U.S. 30 (2021). Samuel L. Bray, Multiple Chancellors: Reforming the National Injunction, 131 Harv. L. Rev. 417 (2017). Arizona v. Biden, 40 F.4th 375, 395 (6th Cir. 2022) (Sutton, J., concurring). Gamble v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 1960, 1980–89 (2019) (Thomas, J., concurring). Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497, 535–49 (2007) (Roberts, C.J., dissenting).
Session 7: Final Thoughts
Revisit and synthesize
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