On March 23, California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu presented at The Institute of Judicial Administration of NYU School of Law’s 23rd Annual Brennan Lecture on State Courts and Social Justice. In his lecture, “State Constitutions and the Protection of Individual Rights: A Reappraisal,” Justice Liu examined the popularity of state constitutionalism.
From the IJA event page:
When a state court interprets state constitutional rights more expansively than federal constitutional rights, does the legitimacy of this practice depend on the state court’s resort to unique state sources, such as the distinctive text, purpose, or history of the state constitutional provision? Or is it legitimate for a state court to simply disagree with U.S. Supreme Court interpretations of the federal right and adopt its ‘dissenting’ view as a matter of state constitutional law, with no resort to unique state sources? Justice Liu will examine the prevalence of this latter approach among state high courts and the normative justifications for it within our federal system.
View the lecture in the below video.
Video