Princeton Events: A Night with Supreme Court Justice Scalia

Event to be held December 10, 2012, 4:30pm – 6:00pm, Location: Richardson Auditorium in Alexander Hall

In a series of Princeton events organized by the James Madison Program, Antonin Scalia – currently the Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court – will be delivering the annual Herbert W. Vaughan lecture on America’s Founding Principles. The lecture will draw from Justice Scalia’s latest book, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts, which was published this past summer.

Published by West and over 600 pages long, the book is a formidable treatise on legal interpretation. The book is co-written with Bryan A. Garner, editor in chief of Black’s Law Dictionary and author of Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage. Intended as a reference guide for judges and lawyers on legal interpretation, the book is also marketed for “anyone who seeks to understand how judges decide cases – or should decide cases.”

Though its product page description calls the book “groundbreaking,” the reality is that much of the book is more of a rehashing of Justice Scalia’s well-known beliefs on textualism. Texualism is a theory of statutory interpretation that believes a law or statute’s ordinary meaning should determine its interpretation. It holds that the dictionary-definition, plain meaning of the text should be relied on in interpretation, not factors like legislative intent or changing social norms. The argument of the book would be that in a law-making process that necessitates compromise and concessions on both sides, it’s absurd to think that a single, overarching legislative intent can be found behind any statute or law. Scalia and Garner would argue that any body of law, be it the constitution or a state precept, is the work of compromise between multiple parties.

Originalists like Justice Scalia believe that the realm of the judiciary should be limited to strict interpretation of the statute or constitution and that amending or repealing the law should be left to the legislature. With co-author Garner being an advocate for prescriptivism, a linguistic school of thought that argues for proper language usage, it is absolutely fitting that the two men should partner together to write this book. Both are staunch supporters of doctrines that encourage adherence to the original reading of a text and shun new usages or interpretations in either law or language. Both texualism and prescriptivism are approaches that ere on the side of caution and restraint.

Event Information

Justice Scalia will be speaking at Princeton University on December 10, 2012 from 4:30pm – 6:00pm. The event is being held in the Richardson Auditorium in Alexander Hall and is one of many public events being hosted by Princeton University. This is a ticketed event, and while all tickets have been distributed, visitors who would like to attend are encouraged to arrive on the day of the event for a separate wait line. Ticketed guests must be seated by 4:20pm or their tickets will be given to those in the wait line. Doors open at 3:45pm and the event promises to be an engaging night with one of our country’s greatest legal minds.

 

 

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