A Supreme Fact-Check: How SCOTUS Gets U.S. History Wrong Using Flawed Toxic Originalism

Thursday, October 12 at 3 - 4pm PT

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheBrennanCenter

The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority has appealed to history to justify its recent opinions that have eviscerated reproductive freedom, gun control, and affirmative action. With its hard originalist turn, the Court has signaled that more such opinions are in store, making the past a battleground for the future of the Constitution.

But should history be the sole source of rights? And what if the history that the Court has relied on is flat-out wrong?

The Court has placed the work of professional historians in the middle of a critical national conversation. And historians have a lot to say.

Join Brennan Center for Justice as leading historians dissect how history has been used and abused in consequential recent cases and expose the flawed thinking at the core of toxic originalism.

Our guests will include legal scholars Laura Edwards, Kate Masur, and Karen Tani. Moderator Adam Serwer will lead the panel as it sets the historical record straight, sketches out alternative views for how history can help us better understand the Constitution, and highlights issues to watch when the Court reconvenes this fall.

PANEL:

Laura Edwards, Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty, Princeton University

Kate Masur, Board of Visitors Professor, Northwestern University

Karen Tani, Seaman Family University Professor, University of Pennsylvania Law School

Moderator: Adam Serwer, Staff Writer, The Atlantic

Produced in partnership with the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic