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VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS,
June 3, 6pm PT/9pm ET (click here)
TICKETS:
$15 Virtual Admission 
*Includes access to watch the event on video-on-demand for five days after it airs
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A provocative, brilliant analysis by recently retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer that deconstructs the textualist philosophy of the current Supreme Court’s supermajority and makes the case for a better way to interpret the Constitution.
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Stephen Breyer is a former associate justice of the Supreme Court who served there for twenty-eight years until retiring in 2022. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 
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“A rocket from a Supreme Court justice… Justice Breyer shows how the current Supreme Court’s alleged textualism and originalism are unsound. His book is a judicial arms-control agreement advocating moderation and a path to what he calls ‘workable democracy.’ You will not read a more important legal work this election year.”  — Bob Woodward, Washington Post reporter and bestselling author.
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READING THE CONSTITUTION: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism is a provocative analysis by recently retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. In it, he deconstructs the textualist philosophy of the current Supreme Court’s supermajority and makes the case for a better way to interpret the Constitution.
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Textualists claim that the right way to interpret the Constitution and statutes is to read the text carefully and examine the language as it was understood at the time the documents were written.
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Justice Breyer recalls Chief Justice John Marshall’s exhortation that the Constitution must be a workable set of principles to be interpreted by subsequent generations. Most important in interpreting law, says Breyer, is to understand the purposes of statutes as well as the consequences of deciding a case one way or another. He illustrates these principles by examining some of the most important cases in the nation’s history.
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Jessica Levinson is a professor at Loyola Law School, where her work focuses on constitutional law, the law of the political process, including election law and governance issues, and the Supreme Court. Levinson is a legal contributor for CBS News, a columnist for MSNBC, and has a weekly legal segment on NPR member station KCRW. She regularly appears as a legal and political expert on television, radio, podcasts, online outlets, and in print. Levinson is the founding director of Loyola Law School’s Public Service Institute, which is dedicated to creating the next generation of leaders in government service.  Visit here for more on her work and publications.