Professors Roderick Hills and David Bernstein Debate the Lochner Era

Does the Constitution protect freedom of contract? Lochner v. New York is the since-overruled 1905 Supreme Court decision which held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects "liberty of contract." 

Roderick Hills

William T. Comfort, III Professor of Law at NYU Law School

debates 

David E. Bernstein

George Mason University Foundation Professor at the George Mason University School of Law and Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute

Bernstein, the author of Rehabilitating Lochner: Defending Individual Rights Against Progressive Reform, argues that Lochner was well grounded in precedent—and that modern constitutional jurisprudence owes at least as much to the limited-government ideas of Lochner proponents as to the more expansive vision of its Progressive opponents. 

Hills will defend the academic and judicial consensus that Lochner was wrongly decided. 

Time:  Tuesday, 9/17 at 4pm

Location: Vanderbilt Hall 210

Refreshments will be served.

RSVP here. 

Sponsored by The Federalist Society and The American Constitution Society

Federalist Society Welcome Lunch with Professor Richard Epstein

Thursday, September 12, 2013  |  12:00 PM - 1:45 PM

Vanderbilt Hall, Classroom 210  Link to Map

The NYU Student Chapter of the Federalist Society is hosting a welcome lunch at noon on Thursday, September 12. Come hear Professor Richard Epstein give a speech introducing FedSoc, eat delicious food, and meet the board! Professor Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU. 

He was present at the first Yale conference of the Federalist Society in 1982 and has been a regular at events around the country ever since. Section 4 1Ls also know him as their Contracts professor! A libertarian legend, Professor Epstein's full bio can be found here: http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/author/richard-a-epstein

Unprecedented: The Constitutional Challenge to Obamacare

Monday, September 9, 2013  |  4:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Vanderbilt Hall, Smart Classroom 218  See Map

Professor Josh Blackman of the South Texas College of Law will discuss his new book, Unprecedented: The Constitutional Challenge to Obamacare.  

Refreshments will be served. 

In 2012, the United States Supreme Court became the center of the political world. In a dramatic and unexpected 5–4 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts voted on narrow grounds to save the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. Unprecedented tells the inside story of how the challenge to Obamacare raced across all three branches of government, and narrowly avoided a constitutional collision between the Supreme Court and President Obama. 

On November 13, 2009, a group of Federalist Society lawyers met in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., to devise a legal challenge to the constitutionality of President Obama’s “legacy”—his healthcare reform. It seemed a very long shot, and was dismissed peremptorily by the White House, much of Congress, most legal scholars, and all of the media. Two years later the fight to overturn the Affordable Care Act became a political and legal firestorm. When, finally, the Supreme Court announced its ruling, the judgment was so surprising that two cable news channels misreported it and announced that the Act had been declared unconstitutional.

Unprecedented offers unrivaled inside access to how key decisions were made in Washington, based on interviews with over one hundred of the people who lived this journey—including the academics who began the challenge, the attorneys who litigated the case at all levels, and Obama administration attorneys who successfully defended the law. It reads like a political thriller, provides the definitive account of how the Supreme Court almost struck down President Obama’s “unprecedented” law, and explains what this decision means for the future of the Constitution, the limits on federal power, and the Supreme Court.