UPDATE- Law school’s Public Interest Law & Policy Speakers Series continues Jan. 18

Civil rights lawyer Kenneth W. Mack leads off spring series

Civil rights law, immigration law, juvenile crime and race are topics that will be discussed during the spring lineup for the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law’s 14th annual Public Interest Law & Policy Speakers Series.

The series continues Wednesday, Jan. 18, with “Representing a Race: The Creation of A Civil Rights Lawyer” by Kenneth W. Mack, JD, PhD.

Titled “Access to Justice: The Social Responsibility of Lawyers,” the yearlong series brings to WUSTL nationally and internationally prominent experts in such areas as civil rights, racial justice, capital punishment, immigration, clinical legal education, government public service and pro bono private practice.

Karen L. Tokarz, JD, the Charles Nagel Professor of Public Interest Law & Public Service and director of the Negotiation and Dispute Resolution Program, coordinates the series in conjunction with Laura Rosenbury, JD, associate dean for research and faculty development and professor of law.

All lectures will be at noon in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom of Anheuser-Busch Hall.

The speaker series is free and open to the public. Attendance earns one MCLE credit hour. For more information, call (314) 935-8598 or visit law.wustl.edu.

The spring schedule:

Jan. 18

Mack, JD, PhD, professor of law at Harvard Law School, researches civil rights and the social construction of race and professional identity in American law.

He is the author of a number of scholarly articles and is completing a book, titled Representing the Race: Creating the Civil Rights Lawyer, 1920-1955, to be published by Harvard University Press. Prior to pursuing his doctoral studies in history, he was a law clerk for Federal District Judge Robert L. Carter of the Southern District of New York, as well as a trial and appellate litigator at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C.

During the first national elections in post-apartheid South Africa, Mack served as co-area director of election monitoring for the United States and Canada.

Mack’s lecture, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Address, is co-sponsored with the Law, Identity & Culture Initiative and the Black Law Students Association.

March 22

Kristin Henning, JD, professor of law at Georgetown University, will speak about “Overcriminalization of Normal Adolescent Development in Communities of Color and the Crisis in Indigent Juvenile.”

Henning specializes in juvenile justice, criminal law and procedure and family law. She previously served as lead attorney in the Juvenile Unit for the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. She traveled to Liberia in 2006 and 2007 to aid the country in juvenile justice reform and was awarded the 2008 Shanara Gilbert Award by the Clinical Section of the Association of American Law Schools for her commitment to social justice on behalf of children, service to the cause of clinical legal education, and an interest in international legal education.

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Clinical Education Society, the Black Law Students Association, and the American Constitution Society.

POSTPONED- March 26

Robert A. Katzmann, JD, PhD, U.S. circuit judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, will speak about “Immigrant Representation: Overcoming Barriers.”

At the time of his appointment in 1999, Katzmann was the Walsh Professor of Government, Professor of Law and Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University; a fellow of the Governmental Studies Program of the Brookings Institution; and president of the Governance Institute, a nonprofit organization concerned with the nexus between law, institutions and policy.

He is the author of Regulatory Bureaucracy: The Federal Trade Commission and Antitrust Policy (MIT Press, 1980; paperback with new afterword, 1981), Institutional Disability: The Saga of Transportation Policy for the Disabled (Brookings, 1986), co-editor of Managing Appeals in Federal Court (Federal Judicial Center, 1988), editor and contributing author of Daniel Patrick Moynihan: The Intellectual in Public Life (Johns Hopkins, 1998), and editor and contributing author of Judges and Legislators: Toward Institutional Comity (Brookings, 1988).

Katzmann completed another volume of his own essays on the subject of interbranch relations, Courts and Congress (Brookings/Governance, 1997).

His work on interbranch relations began at the invitation of the U.S. Judicial Conference Committee on the Judicial Branch, then chaired by Judge Frank M. Coffin. Katzmann also directed a project on the legal profession and public service, titled “The Law Firm and the Public Good” (Governance/Brookings 1995).

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Immigration Law Society and American Constitution Society.

April 4

Dorothy Roberts,
JD, the Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law at Northwestern
University, will speak on “Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and
Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century.”

Roberts
is a prolific scholar on issues related to race, gender and the law
and has published more than 75 articles and essays in books and
scholarly journals, including Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal and Stanford Law Review, authored two award-winning books, and co-edited five casebooks and anthologies.

Her latest book, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century,
was published in July 2011. Roberts serves as chair of the board of
directors of the Black Women’s Health Imperative and is currently
conducting research on the effects of child welfare agency involvement
in African-American neighborhoods and on race-based biotechnologies.

This
lecture is co-sponsored by the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study
of Work & Social Capital and the Law, Identity & Culture
Initiative.