Fourteen UHart faculty recently participated in the three-day workshop on “The Politics of Language: Meaning, Interpretation and the Law,” from May 29 through May 31, with Cyril Ghosh, Lloyd B. Poltisch Chair of Law and Associate Professor of Political Science at Clarke University. The workshop was organized by Nicholas Ealy, Distinguished Teaching Humanist for 2022–24, with help from Donna Galin, office coordinator for English and Modern Languages (A&S).
This year’s participants included:
During the workshop, participants analyzed some of the core features of constitutional and statutory interpretation in the US and examined ways in which language and its interpretation, and the problems of such interpretation, inform court decisions related to issues of identity, civil rights and civil liberties. Topics of discussion included the fourteenth and second amendments, Antonin Scalia’s and Stephen Bryer’s judicial philosophies of interpretation (originalism and pragmatism), the right to privacy in Griswold v. Connecticut, the right to equal dignity in Obergefell v. Hodges, and recent cases related to statutory interpretation focusing on the meaning of words/phrases like “sex” (Bostock v. Clayton County), “otherwise,” “significant encouragement,” and, astonishingly, “and.”