Every year, the University of San Diego Originalism Center holds an Originalism Works-in-Progress Conference in February.  Happily, the conference has come to be one of the significant events in academic originalism, with leading originalist and nonoriginalist academics attending.  At these events, I often feel like I am witnessing “state of the art” originalism.

Here is the list of papers and commentators for this year’s conference, which will be held February 19-20, 2016 at the University of San Diego Law School.  Anyone interested in attending should contact the Center.

1. Will Baude (Chicago) and Stephen Sachs (Duke), The Law of Interpretation

(Paper to be given by Sachs)

Commentator: Randy Barnett (Georgetown)

2. Jamal Greene (Columbia), Originalism, Constitutional Rules, and the Separation of Powers

Commentator: Michael McConnell (Stanford)

3. Kurt Lash (Illinois), The Amendment, the Act, and the Article: Reconstructing the Historical Relationship Between the Fourteenth Amendment, the 1866 Civil Rights Act and the Comity Clause of Article IV

Commentator: John Harrison (Virginia)

4. John McGinnis (Northwestern) and Michael Rappaport (San Diego), Defending Original Methods

(Paper to be given by McGinnis)

Commentator: Chris Green (Mississippi)

5. Jeffrey Pojanowski (Notre Dame) and Kevin Walsh (Richmond), Enduring Originalism

Commentator: Mitch Berman (Penn)

6. Larry Solum (Georgetown), The Constraint Principle

Commentator: Dick Fallon (Harvard)

7. John Stinneford (Florida), The Original Meaning of Cruel

Donald Dripps (San Diego)

The papers selected for this year’s conference tend to be a bit more focused on legal theory than in previous years, with papers on Originalist Positivism, Original Methods, and Original Public Meaning. But there are also important papers on the original meaning of particular clauses by Lash and Stinneford.  As always, the paper authors and commentators include some critics of originalism, such as Mitch Berman, Dick Fallon, Jamal Greene,  and Don Dripps.