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Arts & Sciences
[PAST EVENT] Cutler Lecture: Professor Kenji Yoshino, NYU School of Law
September 23, 2014
3:30pm - 5pm
Kenji Yoshino is the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law.
The eighteenth-century jurist William Blackstone observed "that above a hundred of our lawsuits arise from disputed facts, for one where the law is doubted of." The continuing importance of fact-finding is nowhere more visible than in high-stakes constitutional controversies. In this lecture, Professor Yoshino will consider the various ways in which courts come to apprehend facts about the world-including what Karl Llewellyn called the judge's "situation sense," her own research, party and amicus briefs, and factual records developed below. Using the case study of the litigation over same-sex marriage, he contends that there is ultimately no substitute (within the parameters of our adversarial system) for the fact-finding produced by the parties in litigation, and particularly through the trial. Indeed, the recent same-sex marriage trials in California and Michigan produced a degree of rigorous fact-finding that would be hard to replicate not only within, but also outside, the judicial system. In a time when many celebrate the vanishing civil trial, Professor Yoshino invites us to consider whether we are surrendering that time-honored institution too casually.
The Cutler Lecture series was established in 1927 by James Goold Cutler of Rochester, N.Y., to provide an annual lecture at William & Mary by "an outstanding authority on the Constitution of the United States." The original series of 16 lectures were held from 1928 to 1944. After a period of dormancy, the Cutler lectures were revived in 1980-81 under the auspices of the Law School, with each lecture published in the William and Mary Law Review.
The eighteenth-century jurist William Blackstone observed "that above a hundred of our lawsuits arise from disputed facts, for one where the law is doubted of." The continuing importance of fact-finding is nowhere more visible than in high-stakes constitutional controversies. In this lecture, Professor Yoshino will consider the various ways in which courts come to apprehend facts about the world-including what Karl Llewellyn called the judge's "situation sense," her own research, party and amicus briefs, and factual records developed below. Using the case study of the litigation over same-sex marriage, he contends that there is ultimately no substitute (within the parameters of our adversarial system) for the fact-finding produced by the parties in litigation, and particularly through the trial. Indeed, the recent same-sex marriage trials in California and Michigan produced a degree of rigorous fact-finding that would be hard to replicate not only within, but also outside, the judicial system. In a time when many celebrate the vanishing civil trial, Professor Yoshino invites us to consider whether we are surrendering that time-honored institution too casually.
The Cutler Lecture series was established in 1927 by James Goold Cutler of Rochester, N.Y., to provide an annual lecture at William & Mary by "an outstanding authority on the Constitution of the United States." The original series of 16 lectures were held from 1928 to 1944. After a period of dormancy, the Cutler lectures were revived in 1980-81 under the auspices of the Law School, with each lecture published in the William and Mary Law Review.
Contact
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