Legal Current

United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito is teaching a seminar this week at Duke University Law School, examining controversial issues like gun rights and the rights of the Guantanamo Bay detainees that have arisen in recent Supreme Court rulings.

(Photo courtesy: Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States, Photographer: Steve Petteway)

Alito is using landmark cases, including last year’s rulings that individuals have the right to own guns and that struck down the death penalty for child rape, as a way to consider broader questions on constitutional interpretation.

The week-long seminar will cover issues that include the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, the Sixth Amendment right to counsel and trial by jury, the Eighth Amendment right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment and the right of foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to petition for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. court.

Alito, who was nominated in 2005 by then-President George W. Bush, has served on the Supreme Court since early in 2006. The seminar, entitled, “Current Issues in Constitutional Interpretation,” is limited to 15 upper-year students.

“I thought back over the cases that the court has heard during my time on the court and tried to identify some cases that would be interesting in themselves and involve interesting substantive issues and some broader questions like stare decisis and how you go about interpreting the Constitution when there is not a great body of precedent on the question,” Alito said.

In an interview with the Duke Law Office of Communications, Alito said his teaching style is to ask questions, rather than to deliver lectures, that he tries to keep his personal views out of the classroom and that he does not mind if students disagree with the position he took in a particular case.

Alito previously taught law school classes when he was a federal appeals court judge based in New Jersey.

“I think sometimes in the past they’ve been a little reluctant to say, ‘Well, I think you were completely wrong’,” he said, referring to his students. “But after a little bit, if I sense that’s going on, I’ll try to highlight the arguments against the position I took.”

Many of the Supreme Court’s members teach similar courses during the recess that begins at the end of June and lasts through early October. The court’s new term begins on Oct. 5.

James Vicini
Justice and Supreme Court Correspondent
Thomson Reuters

Editor’s note: Duke Law posted a news release about Alito’s seminar.