Gary S. Lawson is an American lawyer whose focus is in

administrative law Administrative law is the division of law that governs the activities of government agency, executive branch agencies of Forms of government, government. Administrative law concerns executive branch rule making (executive branch rules are gener ...

constitutional law Constitutional law is a body of law which defines the role, powers, and structure of different entities within a State (polity), state, namely, the executive (government), executive, the parliament or legislature, and the judiciary; as well as th ...

, legal history, and

jurisprudence Jurisprudence, or legal theory, is the theoretical study of the propriety of law. Scholars of jurisprudence seek to explain the nature of law in its most general form and they also seek to achieve a deeper understanding of legal reasoning a ...

. He was a

law clerk A law clerk or a judicial clerk is a person, generally someone who provides direct counsel and assistance to a lawyer or judge by researching issues and drafting legal opinions for cases before the court. Judicial clerks often play significant ...

for Judge

Antonin Scalia Antonin Gregory Scalia (; March 11, 1936 – February 13, 2016) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectu ...

of the

United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (in case citations, D.C. Cir.) is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. It has the smallest geographical jurisdiction of any of the U.S. federal appellate cou ...

from 1985–86 and clerked for Scalia again during his 1986-87 term on the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

. He is currently the Philip S. Beck Professor of Law at

Boston University School of Law Boston University School of Law (Boston Law or BU Law) is the law school of Boston University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top law schools in the United States and considered an eli ...

. He previously taught at the

Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law is the law school of Northwestern University, a Private university, private research university. It is located on the university's Chicago campus. Northwestern Law has been ranked among the top 14, ...

. He is the secretary of the board of directors of the Federalist Society. With

Steven G. Calabresi Steven Gow Calabresi (born 1958) is an American legal scholar and the Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. He is the co-chairman of the Federalist Society. He is the nephew of Guido C ...

, he has argued that the

Mueller Probe The Mueller special counsel investigation was an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, links between associates of Donald Trump and Russian officials, and possible obstruction of justice by Trump and his ...

was "unlawful." Lawson has been cited a number of times in majority opinions, concurrences and dissents written by the United States Supreme Court.

Contributions to legal theory

Lawson is a notable scholar of and proponent for the constitutional doctrine of Originalism.

"On Reading Recipes—And Constitutions"

In 1997, Lawson wrote a law journal article on the doctrine of Originalism, "On Reading Recipes—And Constitutions", in which he argued that interpreting old text means trying understand how those words would have been understood at the time they were written and illustrated his point by imagining someone trying to cook fried chicken using a very old recipe, the instructions for which contained vagueness due to the dated nature of the recipe. Lawson suggests that someone in that situation would do some research to attempt to understand what the author of the recipe meant, and that this is the essence of the practice of Originalism. In an episode of '' 5-4'' on Originalism, Peter Shamshiri was critical of Lawson's essay, saying, "Can awsonreally not conceptualize the differences between a document that dictates the nature of political relations across a country and a recipe?...There are also degrees to which I think this analogy proves the opposite point: When you have a fried chicken recipe, what's your goal in making it? Is it to replicate the original fried chicken, or is it to make the best fried chicken you can? Both of those are valid goals, but that's a threshold question that you need to answer that this analogy skips right over."

Selected works

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Bibliography

References

Living people Claremont McKenna College alumni Yale Law School alumni Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law faculty Boston University School of Law faculty 20th-century American lawyers 21st-century American lawyers 1958 births {{US-law-bio-stub