Professor Bhagwat Lectures on Justice Kennedy at Lewis & Clark Law School
Professor Ashutosh Bhagwat presented the Anthony M. Kennedy Lecture at Lewis & Clark Law School on September 23. Professor Bhagwat spoke on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion in the Obergefell case, upholding same-sex marriage.
Professor Bhagwat's basic argument, which he summarizes in some detail for the King Hall Faculty Blog, was that the case can be understood as the logical culmination of more than 25 years of Kennedy's jurisprudence expounding liberty rights as a means to protect individual dignity. He traced these developments through a number of areas of law, including free speech, privacy, and the Establishment Clause. Ultimately, however, he argues that Justice Kennedy may have made a mistake in relying on Liberty (i.e., Due Process) rather than Equality (i.e., Equal Protection) as the basis for his opinion. An Equality-based opinion, Bhagwat said, might have been more robust, and might have accomplished more.
Professor Bhagwat, a tenured member of UC Hastings' faculty for more than a decade who joined King Hall during the summer of 2011, is an innovative, broad-ranging, and widely published constitutional law scholar.