Scalia Forum 2019: Panel Discussion
![handle is hein.journals/gmlr26 and id is 689 raw text is:
2019]
SCALIA FORUM 2019: PANEL DISCUSSION
Panelists: Amy Coney Barrett*
DavidE. Bernsteint
Paul D. Clementt
Neomi Rao*
DavidR. Strastt
Judge Amy Coney Barrett: I could not agree more with Judge Pryor's
eloquent description of Justice Scalia's commitment to democracy. He was
an avid proponent of leaving the decision-making in the hands of the People.
And the thing I wanted to comment on briefly is the criticism that Judge Pryor
alluded to: that Justice Scalia used his commitment to originalism as a cover
for imposing his private beliefs on the Constitution and, particularly, his pri-
vate religious beliefs.
The irony is that this criticism is frequently leveled by those who are his
intellectual opponents-the living constitutionalists-who expressly wel-
come moral and value-based decisions into constitutional interpretation. And
I think he would have laughed at the irony of those who welcome such moral-
based judgments lambasting him for making moral-based judgments.
I think one reason why Justice Scalia and those who defend originalism
and their critics talk past each other is that originalism is such a fundamen-
tally different view of constitutional decision-making. Critics almost cannot
believe what he is saying is true. Because if you embrace a values-based ap-
proach to constitutional interpretation, and if you see judicial review as a
mechanism for reasoning out moral judgments, it cannot be true that Justice
Scalia was not doing the exact same thing.
* Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, appointed in November 2017.
Before joining the bench, Judge Barrett served on the faculty of Notre Dame Law School, where she
continues to teach. Judge Barrett clerked for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court from
1998 to 1999.
t University Professor and the Executive Director of the Law & Liberty Center at George Mason
University's Antonin Scalia Law School. Professor Bernstein has been a visiting professor at Georgetown
University Law Center, University of Michigan School of Law, and William & Mary Law School.
t Partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Paul Clement served as the 43rd
Solicitor General of the United States and has argued over 95 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
** Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, appointed in March 2019. Judge
Rao is a graduate of Yale College and The University Chicago Law School, and she served as a law clerk
for Justice Clarence Thomas. Prior to joining the bench, Judge Rao was the Administrator of the Office
of Information and Regulatory Affairs. She was also previously a professor at the Antonin Scalia Law
School at George Mason University, and the director and founder of the Center for the Study of the Ad-
ministrative State.
tt Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, appointed in January 2018.
Previously, Judge Stras was an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. Before then, Judge
Stras was a member of the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School from 2004 to 2010.
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Scalia Forum 2019: Panel Discussion
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