The Robert B. Silvers Lecture: Justice Stephen Breyer

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The New York Public Library
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Celeste Bartos Forum
476 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10018

The 2024 Robert B. Silvers Lecture

Justice Stephen Breyer: Choosing Pragmatism Over Textualism

In the last several years the Supreme Court has decided some of the most significant cases in the nation’s history, on subjects ranging from voting rights to firearms to abortion. In Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism, Stephen Breyer’s first book since he stepped down from the Supreme Court in 2022, he deconstructs the textualist philosophy of the current Court’s supermajority and argues for a better way to interpret the Constitution.

This year’s Robert B. Silvers Lecture will be given by Breyer on Tuesday, March 26, at the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. Adapting ideas from his book, he examines some of the Court’s most important cases, demonstrating that they were wrongly decided and have led to harmful results. Appointed by Bill Clinton, Breyer served as an associate justice for twenty-eight years, during which he wrote 214 opinions and 192 dissents. Reading the Constitution will be published on March 26.

Registration to attend the event or to watch the livestream is now open. Tickets are free, but registration is required.

The Robert B. Silvers Lecture is an annual series created by Max Palevsky in recognition of the work of Robert B. Silvers, who was a co-founding editor of The New York Review of Books.