ACS Launches Webcast Series on What the Constitution Means and How to Interpret It

by Nicole Flatow

In response to escalating political rhetoric by some conservatives about the U.S. Constitution, some of the country’s most esteemed scholars are “setting the record straight” during Constitution Week.

Yesterday, ACS released an Issue Brief by constitutional law professors Geoffrey Stone and Bill Marshall, rejecting the “conservative constitutional narrative” as “deeply unprincipled and patently wrong.”

And tomorrow, ACS will kick off a series of short and accessible webcasts about constitutional understanding and interpretation featuring Stone, Marshall and a number of other preeminent scholars. Each 30-minute session will mirror a chapter in the book first published by ACS, Keeping Faith with the Constitution, by Pamela Karlan, Goodwin Liu and Christopher H. Schroeder.

Karlan, a constitutional law professor at Stanford University and co-director of the law school’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, will lead the first discussion tomorrow, on the Constitution’s structure, history, and the fundamental values it contains. Other webcasts in the nine-part series will focus on equality, democracy, criminal justice and liberty.

Both lawyers/law students and non-lawyers are encouraged to participate and interact with questions, tweets and Facebook comments. Prof. Karlan will speak for the first 15 minutes, and take questions for the second 15 minutes. If you are on Twitter, please join ACS both during and after tomorrow’s session at the hashtag #ACSclass.

The first webcast is tomorrow at 3 p.m. eastern time. To see the full schedule and accompanying readings, visit the web page for “What the Constitution Means and How to Interpret It.” And read the ACS Issue Brief, The Framers’ Constitution: Toward a Theory of Principled Constitutionalism, here.