Pulitzer Prize winner Linda Greenhouse was the headliner for a lecture on Tuesday evening in Hodson Hall. Her talk, entitled “Who Owns the Constitution?” was delivered as part of the University’s ninth annual Constitutional Forum, which has been held every year since 2005 in honor of Constitution Day. The event was sponsored by the department of political science and the Office of Student Life.
Greenhouse received her Master of Studies in Law from Yale Law School where she is now the Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence and Joseph M. Goldstein Senior Fellow. She covered the Supreme Court for the New York Times from 1978 until 2007. She was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for her coverage of the Supreme Court over the years. She now writes a column every other week for the New York Times website.
Introducing Greenhouse was Hopkins Professor of Political Science Emeritus and recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association, Joel Grossman.
Both Grossman and Greenhouse joked in their introductory remarks that the event could, in fact, be viewed as unconstitutional, on the grounds that the Byrd Amendment, passed by Senator Robert Byrd, stipulates that schools receiving federal funds must celebrate Constitution Day in order to receive those funds, which arguably is unconstitutional.
“I’m all that stands between this great university and losing all its federal funds,” Greenhouse said.
Greenhouse’s talk regarded the Roberts Court as a lens through which observers can see how the Supreme Court treats the interpretation of the Constitution, especially in the modern era.
“What I plan to do is just offer some observations about how the current Supreme Court, the Roberts Court, is exercising the power that history and tradition, if not the actual words of the Constitution and the explicit words of the Framers, have bestowed. And I plan to address that question through the lens of last year’s most consequential and troubling decision, the Voting Rights Act Case, Shelby County against Holder,” Greenhouse said.
She talked about how she thought this case was an affront to the Constitution, and how it allowed us to see how Constitutional law is made and unmade. Greenhouse addressed the voting rights stipulated within the Constitution. She then analyzed the Supreme Court’s decisions with regards to the multiple cases brought before it concerning the Voting Rights Act over the years in great detail. She cited such cases as Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder as further evidence to support her argument. “The conclusion [in these cases] that the Court had quote ‘no choice’ but to block enforcement of one of the country’s most important civil rights enactments on grounds not clearly anchored in any doctrine, not only flies in the face of the judicial minimalism that today’s Supreme Court majority professes to revere, but raises profound questions about the Court’s institutional role within the system of separating powers,” Greenhouse said.
She said that constitutional litigation is a marker of social trends. She remarked that the people are in part responsible for the choices that are made by the Supreme Court.
“Maybe in that sense We The People do own the Constitution, to the extent that we can wrap our issues in its name and present it to a Supreme Court that might have five Justices willing to receive the gift, five Justices who’ve been chosen through a political process with the whole country watching,” Greenhouse said. “The Court exists in a constant dialogue with the public. It always has.”
Greenhouse also took questions from the audience after she finished delivering her prepared remarks.
After the event, Associate Dean for Campus Programs Tiffany Sanchez commented on how she thought the evening went.
“I was very pleased to meet Ms. Greenhouse, and I really enjoyed her talk, and the questions at end were really very nice. It was very nice; it looked like some members of the community were in the audience, which was great too,” Sanchez said.
