On the evening of Tuesday, May 7, Steve Vladeck and Jonathan Mitchell will have a public discussion on the role of the courts. If you’re familiar with the two of them, the value of the event needs no explanation. If you aren’t, they’re big players in American law right now:

— Mitchell is a former Solicitor General of Texas and past faculty member at the UT Law School. He now runs his own law practice. In the recent case about Donald Trump’s right to appear on the ballot in Colorado, Mitchell represented Trump in the Supreme Court and won; he argues cases at the Court regularly. He’s a leading advocate for textualist interpretation of the Constitution and probably the most influential conservative legal advocate of our time. You can read more about him in this New Yorker profile.

— Vladeck is a faculty member at the UT Law School (though he’s leaving for Georgetown soon). He’s the author of The Shadow Docket, an NYT-bestselling book about how the Supreme Court handles emergency petitions and other matters without published opinions. He’s a prominent commentator on (and critic of) the Court and the Fifth Circuit (the federal appellate court for Texas). He’s the author of a widely-read Substack publication, One First, that provides weekly analysis of the Court’s doings. He appears regularly on CNN and other media outlets.

In short, these are two brilliant students of the federal courts who agree on very little. This will be a rare chance to hear them go back and forth about important legal topics of the day.

Sponsored by the Atheneum

Co-sponsored by the Civitas Institute and Annette Strauss Center for Civic Life