The lead counsel for Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 election litigation and the director of the Southern Center for Human Rights are part of the fall lineup for the School of Law’s eighth 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.
This popular series provides a forum for the School of Law and the wider University community to engage in a discussion of the legal, social and ethical issues that bear upon access to justice.
Coordinating the series are Karen L. Tokarz, J.D., professor of law and director of clinical education and alternative dispute resolution programs, and Peter J. Wiedenbeck, J.D., associate dean of faculty and the Joseph H. Zumbalen Professor of the Law of Property.
All of the fall presentations will be held in Anheuser-Busch Hall and are free and open to the public. They are:
• 11 a.m. Sept. 14 — Marc Galanter, the John and Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law and South Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and the LSE Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, will present “Fewer Trials, More Law, More Jokes.”
Galanter is author of a number of highly regarded studies about litigation, dispute resolution, lawyers, and legal culture, such as “Why the ‘Haves’ Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change,” and “The Vanishing Trial: An Examination of Trials and Related Matters in State and Federal Courts.” He also is the co-author of the book, Tournament of Lawyers: The Transformation of the Big Law Firm, which attempts to explain the growth and transformation of large law firms in the U.S. This lecture is co-sponsored by the School of Law Alternative Dispute Resolution Program.
• 4 p.m. Nov. 2 — Stephen B. Bright, a nationally recognized expert on criminal law and capital punishment, will speak about “Crime, Prison and the Death Penalty: The Influence of Race and Poverty.” Bright is a member of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons and is the director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia, a public interest legal project that provides representation to prisoners in challenges to cruel and unusual conditions of confinement and to persons facing the death penalty.
Bright is a former staff attorney for the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund, and a former trial attorney for the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C. He has served as a visiting lecturer and clinical teacher at several law schools, including Yale, Harvard, Georgetown, and Emory. His address is co-sponsored by the Assembly Series and the Student Union and is in conjunction with the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons hearings at the School of Law Nov. 1-2.
• 12 p.m. Nov. 10 — Martha Chamallas, the Robert J. Lynn Chair in Law at The Ohio State University, will discuss “Civil Rights and Civil Litigation.”
Chamallas is a leading scholar in torts law, employment law, and legal issues affecting women. She is the author of several articles, including “Civil Rights in Ordinary Tort Cases: Race, Gender and the Calculation of Economic Loss” and “The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund: Rethinking the Damages Element in Injury Law,” and the treatise, Introduction to Feminist Legal Theory. This lecture is co-sponsored by the School of Law Women’s Law Caucus.
• 4 p.m. Nov. 15 — David Boies, lead counsel for Vice President Al Gore during the 2000 election litigation, will present “Judicial Independence and the Rule of Law.” Special trial counsel for the U. S. Department of Justice in the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit, Boies is former Chief Counsel and Staff Director for the U.S. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee and the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
Boies is the chairman of the law firm Boies, Schiller, and Flexner LLP, and author of Courting Justice and Public Control of Business. Boies will serve as the annual School of Law Tyrrell Williams Lecturer.
The Public Interest Law Speakers Series will continue in the spring with 10 lectures.
For more information, call 935-4958.