U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia delivered the keynote address at a symposium on “Originalism and the Jury” held at The Ohio State University on November 17, co-sponsored by the College of Law and The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.  Professor Suja A. Thomas, the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Faculty Scholar, co-organized the symposium and participated in a panel discussion on “Seventh Amendment Civil Jury Trial.”  Dean Bruce P. Smith, a historian of Anglo-American criminal procedure, moderated the opening panel on “The Framers & The Jury.”  

The symposium explored the historical understanding of trial by jury in the Framers’ Era, the implications of that history for the Sixth and Seventh Amendment right to trial by jury, and the ways that advocates have employed legal-historical arguments regarding trial by jury before the Supreme Court.  Other participants included, among others, Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit), Judge Nancy Gertner (U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts), Michael Dreeben (Deputy Solicitor General of the United States), Jeffrey L. Fisher (Stanford Law School), William Nelson (New York University Law School), Stephanos Bibas (University of Pennsylvania Law School), James Oldham (Georgetown University Law Center), Orin Kerr (George Washington University Law School), Carter Phillips (Sidley Austin LLP), and Gene Schaerr (Winston & Strawn LLP).     

Photographs from the symposium can be viewed here...