Lawyers and judges play an important role in a democratic republic like the United States.
In Democracy in America, Tocqueville praised the character of America’s lawyers as indispensable to protecting the U.S. Constitution, because their taste for formality would help preserve it against popular passions. Similarly, in Federalist 78 Alexander Hamilton defends judicial review by arguing that judges will be bound down by “strict rules and precedents.”
Does the U.S. Constitution presuppose a legal profession of this sort? Have lawyers’ understanding of their job, and more broadly of their role in society, changed significantly? If lawyers’ interests have become different in the modern regulatory state than in the early republic, can the rule of law, and specifically judicial review, function in the long run as Tocqueville and Hamilton hoped?
Featuring:

Prof. Jamal Greene, Dwight Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
Prof. Tara Grove, Vinson & Elkins Chair in Law, University of Texas at Austin School of Law
Mr. Ashley Keller, Partner, Keller Lenkner LLC
Prof. John McGinnis, George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law, Northwestern University, Pritzker School of Law
Moderator: Hon. Patrick J. Bumatay, Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit