The former U.S. Solicitor General, the founder of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Lesbian & Gay Rights Project and the president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition are part of the spring lineup for the School of Law’s seventh annual Public Interest Law Speakers Series.
Titled “Access to Justice: The Social Responsibility of Lawyers,” the series brings to the University outstanding academics and practitioners in areas such as international human rights, the economics of poverty, civil liberties, racial justice, capital punishment, clinical legal education, and government and private public service.
The goals of the series are to highlight the professional responsibilities of law students and lawyers to provide access to justice; to provide a forum for the law school and the wider University community to engage in a discussion of the legal, social and ethical issues that bear upon access to justice; and to promote scholarship in this area.
Coordinating the series are Karen L. Tokarz, J.D., professor of law and director of clinical education and alternative dispute resolution programs; Peter J. Wiedenbeck, J.D., associate dean of faculty and the Joseph H. Zumbalen Professor of the Law of Property; and Susan F. Appleton, J.D., the Lemma Barkeloo and Phoebe Couzins Professor of Law.
The series kicked off Jan. 19 with a lecture by Susan R. Jones on “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Legacy: An Economic Justice Imperative.” Jones, professor of clinical law and supervising attorney for the small business clinic at George Washington University, was the Black Law Students Association Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Speaker.
The remaining presentations will be held in Anheuser-Busch Hall and are free and open to the public. They are:
11 a.m. Jan. 26 — Nan D. Hunter, founder of the ACLU’s Lesbian & Gay Rights and HIV/AIDS projects, will discuss “Marriage or Multiple Options? The Changing Law of Personal Relationships.”
Hunter, professor of law and co-director of the Center for Law and Policy at Brooklyn Law School, is a former deputy general counsel at the United States Department of Health and Human Services and author of Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture.
4 p.m. Feb. 8 — Theodore Olson will present “A Conversation with Former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson.” Olson, former Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel under President Ronald Reagan, successfully represented candidates George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore cases involving the 2000 presidential election.
Olson will serve as the annual Tyrrell Williams Lecturer. William H. Webster, former director of the FBI and CIA and graduate of the Washington University School of Law, will introduce the lecture.
3 p.m. Feb. 16 — Frances M. Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, will speak about “Law, Politics, and Social Justice: Breast Cancer Advocacy and Public Policy.”
Visco is a three-time appointee to the President’s Cancer Panel and the recipient of the American Association for Cancer Research’s Public Service Award. Her lecture is organized in conjunction with “Inside Out Loud: Visualizing Women’s Health in Contemporary Art,” an exhibition at the University’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.
11 a.m. March 16 — Marjorie M. Shultz, professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, will discuss “New Wine and Old Wineskins: The Continuing Challenges Posed by Reproductive Technology.”
Shultz is a former member of First Advisory Committee at the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Women’s Health and co-author of Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society. Her lecture is organized in conjunction with “Inside Out Loud: Visualizing Women’s Health in Contemporary Art,” an exhibition at the University’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.
11 a.m. March 23 — Randall L. Kennedy, professor of law at Harvard University, will focus on “African Americans and the Problem of Patriotism.”
Kennedy, Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Washington University, is the author of Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption; Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word; and Race, Crime, and the Law. He is the recipient of the 1998 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.
9 a.m. April 1 — William P. Quigley, the Janet Mary Riley Distinguished Professor of Law and director of the Loyola Law Clinic and Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University, New Orleans, will discuss “Ending Poverty as We Know It: Guaranteeing a Right to a Job at a Living Wage.”
Quigley is the former senior attorney of the New Orleans Legal Assistance Corporation and the recipient of the Society of American Law Teachers’ 2004 Teaching Award. His lecture, co-sponsored by the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, is the keynote address for the law school’s Clinical Education Program and Center for Interdisciplinary Studies Conference, “Poverty, Wealth, and the Working Poor: Interdisciplinary and Clinical Perspectives.”
For more information, call 935-4958.