Are Some Legal Positions Indefensible?

Please join the Milwaukee Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society at the Milwaukee Club on June 7, 2023, at 12:00 p.m. for an event featuring John O. McGinnis, George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.

Our republic depends on the core notion of being a “government not of men, but of laws.” But the content of law often cannot be ascertained without contestation. How is our legal culture doing in promoting the legitimate contestations of law’s contents? Professor McGinnis will consider this question, paying particular attention to the influence of the legal academy.

John O. McGinnis is the George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He also has an MA degree from Balliol College, Oxford, in philosophy and theology. Professor McGinnis clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. From 1987 to 1991, he was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. He is the author of Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Government Through Technology (Princeton 2013) and Originalism and the Good Constitution (Harvard 2013) (with M. Rappaport). He is a past winner of the Paul Bator award given by the Federalist Society to an outstanding academic under 40. He has been listed by the United States on the roster of panelists who may be called upon to decide World Trade Organization Disputes.

Lunch will be served.

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As always, the Federalist Society takes no position on particular legal or public policy issues; all expressions of opinion are those of the speaker.