Events | Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecture: Can Originalism Be Moral?

The Heritage Foundation is honored to announce that Professor John Yoo, the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, will deliver this year's Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecture for his speech titled, “Can Originalism Be Moral?”

This annual lecture seeks to honor former Attorney General Ed Meese’s legacy of advancing an understanding and jurisprudence of originalism. When the Framers wrote the Constitution, “Their intention was to write a document not just for their times but for posterity,” Meese said in a 1985 speech to the D.C. Chapter of the Federalist Society Lawyers Division. Meese reiterated the theme of Original Intention in several speeches, warning of the danger of “seeing the Constitution as an empty vessel into which each generation may pour its passion and prejudice.” The Great Debate that he launched over three decades ago placed the idea of judicial originalism at the center of American jurisprudence and fundamentally altered the constitutional landscape of this nation.

Today, originalism is no longer a novel concept; instead, it is now widely embraced in legal circles, including academia and the judiciary. Building on the work of Ed Meese, this lecture aims to continue the conversation he started and examine new trends and themes in originalist thought today. Please join us for our third annual lecture.

Professor John Yoo: In addition to his role as the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, Professor Yoo is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Throughout his career, Professor Yoo served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks, he served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and he has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. Professor Yoo has been a visiting professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, Keio University in Japan, Trento University in Italy, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.

We look forward to welcoming Professor Yoo to share his insights on the morality of originalism.

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