Toledo Law Professor Organizes Symposium at Harvard Law School
by Margaret Beccavin | September 26, 2022
Lee J. Strang, John W. Stoepler Professor of Law & Values at the College of Law, has organized an international symposium on “Common Good Constitutionalism” at Harvard Law School, hosted by the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy on October 29, 2022. The symposium is the first to focus on the topic of common good constitutionalism and presents the three primary perspectives on constitutional interpretation: originalism, common good originalism, and living constitutionalism. The symposium features a lineup of prolific scholars and respected jurists from the U.S., U.K., and Canada. The array of scholars includes Lawrence B. Solum, the leading originalist scholar and professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law, Cass R. Sunstein, a leading nonoriginalist scholar and professor at Harvard Law School, and Adrian Vermeule, the leading advocate of common good constitutionalism and professor at Harvard Law School, along with scholars from Duke, Boston University, Notre Dame, and many others.
The symposium will be the key scholarly source for future debates and discussions on common good constitutionalism, as fifteen scholars present their essays, which ensures a variety of viewpoints from both advocates and critics of the topic. “The symposium will evaluate common good constitutionalism from a variety of interpretive, jurisprudential, and professional perspectives,” says Strang. “The subject of common good constitutionalism has been rapidly attracting the attention of the academy, the bench, the legal profession, and law students. The idea is re-orienting long-standing debates between originalists and living constitutionalists.”
Strang has published dozens of articles in the fields of constitutional law and interpretation, property law, and religion and the First Amendment. His most recent book, “Originalism’s Promise: A Natural Law Account of the American Constitution,” provides the first natural law justification for originalism and was published by Cambridge in 2019.