Law & Society Annual Meeting – Panel on The New Formalism

Posted by Jeff Lipshaw

I thought, particularly after taking the MPRE without too noticeable an increase in my heart rate, I was beyond getting too nervous about professional challenges any more.  But this one may test my aerobic condition.

Larry Solum (Illinois) has organized an otherwise luminous round table for Saturday afternoon (2:30 pm), July 28, at the Law & Society Association’s annual meeting at Humboldt University in Berlin, and somehow  got confused and included me on it.  The subject is “The New Formalism,” and in addition to Larry, the participants will be Dennis Patterson (Rutgers-Camden), Randy Barnett (Georgetown), and Mariah Zeisberg (Michigan – Political Science, left).  Here’s the abstract of the planned discussion:

Formalist modalities of legal reasoning haverecently come to the fore in a variety of contexts. In the theory ofconstitutional interpretation, the so-called “new originalism” or“original meaning originalism” has gained new prominence andtranscended association with conservative judicial politics. In thetheory of statutory interpretation, plain meaning or textualistapproaches, once considered outre, are increasing dominant in bothjudicial practice and scholarly debates. Even in the realm ofcommon-law judicial decision making, instrumentalist approaches arechallenged by advocates of “strong stare decisis”. This roundtable willdiscuss the “new formalism,” from the a variety of perspectives,including jurisprudence, political theory, and the philosophy oflanguage.

I will be making my first official appearance with “Suffolk Law School” on my badge.  If my voice does not quaver too much, I will offer some thoughts on formalism and neo-formalism in contract law.