Feb
12
Achieving the First Step Act
Professor Shon Hopwood was instrumental behind the scenes in designing the bill. He is the author of Law Man: Memoir of a Jailhouse Lawyer.
News & Events
The Center has inaugurated its first annual Criminal Justice Series. This program features several events: Former FBI Agent Terry Hake on Operation Greylord; Professor Shon Hopwood on the First Step Act; Defense Lawyer Jerry Buting (from "Making a Murderer" series) on defending the innocent; and Professor James Duane will conclude our series by explaining why one should never talk to the police.
Recent Programming
The Center commemorated the 150th anniversary of the publication of Thomas Cooley’s Treatise on the Constitutional Limitations which Rest Upon the Legislative Power of the States of the American Union (1868) during its Fifth Annual Chase Faculty Colloquium at Georgetown Law on Saturday, December 1, 2018.
The colloquium consisted of four sessions discussing papers about substantive and interpretive issues raised by Constitutional Limitations by the following scholars:
- Joseph Postell (Colorado) on the “reasonable regulation” of liberty from the founding to the 14th Amendment
- Tara Helfman (Syracuse) on “Laissez-Faire constitutionalism”
- Greg Klass (Georgetown) on the “interpretation-construction distinction” in private law
- Larry Solum (Georgetown) on originalism and and the “interpretation-construction distinction” in public law.
Featured Events
Feb
27
A Conversation with “Making a Murderer” Defense Lawyer
Defense lawyer Jerry Buting will talk about defending the innocent drawing on his experience specializing in complex criminal cases. He is the author of Illusion of Justice: Inside Making a Murderer and America's Broken System, which will be turned into a legal development drama on ABC.
Mar
21
Don't Talk to the Police
Professor James Duane (Regent University School of Law) explains why you should never agree to answer questions from police. He is the author of You Have a Right to Remain Innocent.
Featured News
How Former Visiting Scholar Christina Mulligan Is Looking to the Past and the Future
May 4, 2017Most law students-turned-law professors don't normally get to experience the same law course twice, but Christina Mulligan is an exception. Professor Mulligan spent spring semester as a Visiting Scholar at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, during which she took a trip back down memory lane.
Visiting Scholar Explores How Labeling Text in the Constitution Impacts Interpretation
November 14, 2018Might conventional naming of clauses of the Constitution—Due Process Clause, Birthright Citizenship Clause, Free Speech Clause—condition how an individual perceives what the text is designed to do? In his forthcoming book, Framing the Constitution: The Impact of Labels on Constitutional Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 2020), the Center’s Visiting Scholar Donald Kochan applies interdisciplinary social science research to constitutional labels.
Redefining Originalism and the Law: Professor Lee Strang Gives a Sneak Peek into His Novel Theory
May 3, 2018When he first began his academic teaching career, one of Professor Lee Strang’s (Toledo College of Law) first pieces of legal scholarship was an article on the original public meaning of the word “religion” in the Constitution. But while legal scholarship on religion has not necessarily seen an uptick, originalism definitely has, and Professor Strang’s forthcoming book: Originalism’s Promise and Limits: The Law As Coordination Account of Originalism will have something to do with that. Two years ago, Professor Strang began his term as a Visiting Scholar for the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, during which he completed the initial draft.