Dartmouth Events

For supporters of legal equality for LGBT persons, recent years have seen a string of victories in the courts, culminating in the Supreme Court’s decisions requiring marriage equality.  But for supporters of political equality for persons of color, these same years have seen legal retreats, most notably in the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision striking down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.  In this lecture, Prof. Karlan discusses these developments, identifies some potential explanations, and then offers some suggestions about moving forward on issues of social justice.

Pamela S. Karlan is the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law and co-director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School.  Her primary scholarly interests involve constitutional litigation, particularly with respect to voting rights and antidiscrimination law. She has published dozens of scholarly articles. She is also the co-author of three leading casebooks and a monograph on constitutional interpretation: Keeping Faith with the Constitution.

Karlan received her B.A., M.A., and J.D. from Yale.  After clerking for Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, she practiced law at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. During 2014 and 2015, she served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, where she received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service for work in implementing the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor and the John Marshall Award for Providing Legal Advice for work in guiding the department to its new position regarding Title VII and gender identity. Karlan is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, and the American Law Institute.

Co-sponsored with the Dartmouth Lawyers Association and Dartmouth Legal Studies Faculty Group