John McGinnis, "Originalism and the Good Constitution"

John McGinnis is the George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law at the Northwestern University School of Law. Professor McGinnis is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, he clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. From 1987 to 1991, Professor McGinnis was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. In 1997, Professor McGinnis won the Paul M. Bator Award, awarded annually by the Federalist Society to an outstanding legal scholar under forty. In his new book, Originalism and the Good Constitution, he argues that the supermajorities that ratified the Constitution and its subsequent Amendments give the Constitution's text special meaning that deserves to be interpreted according to the time it was enacted.

This talk was recorded on January 9, 2014, and sponsored by the Federalist Society.