An Elon Law Review symposium to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Judiciary Act of 1869 – legislation that established nine as the number of justices to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States – is now open for registration.

“Celebrating 150 Years of Nine Justices While Wondering About the Supreme Court in Contemporary America: A Symposium to Assess Judicial Independence in 2019” has been approved for 5.0 CLE hours from the North Carolina State Bar and is no cost to attendees.

The symposium is Friday, Sept. 27, from 8:45 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Elon Law (201 N. Greene Street, Greensboro). Lunch is provided. Register here.

Presenters and panelists include:

• Akhil Reed Amar (Yale Law School)
• Alicia Bannon (Brennan Center’s Democracy Program)
• David Gergen (former presidential advisor and founding director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School)
• Melanie Kalmanson (Akerman LLP)
• Josh Kastenberg (University of New Mexico School of Law)
• Bruce Ledewitz (Duquesne University School of Law)
• Brian Leonard (B.K. Leonard Law Firm)
• Ron Nelson (University of South Alabama)
• Penny J. White (University of Tennessee College of Law)
• The Hon. James Wynn (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit)

The one-day symposium will review the history of partisan influence on the Supreme Court as well as consider contemporary challenges to the Court’s independence together with prospective effects that current changes could evoke. It is intended to cover the broad area of judicial independence utilizing both historical analysis and commentary on contemporary issues involving the judiciary, federalism, and separation of powers.

Topics will include previous attempts and modern calls for altering the number of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, concerns of national security and their effect on the judicial process, current changes the judiciary by state legislators, and developments regarding constitutional restraints in administrative law.

The program is being coordinated by Elon Law Review symposium editors Zachary Green L’19 and Kathryn Magoon L’19.

“This year’s symposium is a chance for lawyers and scholars to hear from some of the country’s leading legal minds on a topic of growing importance,” Green said. “The blend of unique perspectives ensures the event has much to offer to practicing attorneys, political scientists, and academics alike.” 

Magoon also emphasized the ways symposium guests can benefit from the program.

“We’re looking forward to offering attendees an opportunity to discuss the Supreme Court’s role in today’s political climate with their peers from across the nation,” she said. “The historical and future considerations presented at our symposium will provide many perspectives on issues that are increasingly important to our judicial system.”

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Contact Elon Law Review symposium editors Kathryn Magoon (kmagoon@elon.edu) or Zachary Green (zgreen2@elon.edu) with questions about the event.

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About Elon Law:

�þ��� School of Law in Greensboro, North Carolina, is the preeminent school for engaged and experiential learning in law. With a focus on learning by doing, it integrates traditional classroom instruction with course-connected, full-time residencies-in-practice in a logically sequenced program of transformational professional preparation. Elon Law’s groundbreaking approach is accomplished in 2.5 years, which provides distinctive value by lowering tuition and permitting graduates early entry into their legal careers.

“Leadership Resolution: A Panel of Experts on Leadership in Law and Beyond”
Moderated by Elon Law Professor Catherine Dunham
Monday, January 14
5:30-6:30 p.m. (a networking reception takes place from 6:30-7 p.m.)
�þ��� School of Law
201 N. Greene Street
Greensboro, NC 27401

Featuring:

• Dave Altman, COO of the Center for Creative Leadership
• Connie Book, President of �þ���
• Kathleen Bradley, Global Senior Advisor at the Center for Creative Leadership
• Marcus Shields, Guilford County District Court Judge, State of North Carolina

The event is sponsored by and , both initiatives of Action Greensboro. �þ��� Greensboro is a nonprofit aimed at attracting and retaining bright talent to meet the needs of Greensboro’s developing economy. SynerG is a networking group for young professionals in Greensboro.

�þ��� Greensboro’s seven colleges and universities are especially welcome.

Williams’ talk will address resistance, resilience and resolve in Prince Edward County, Virginia, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and the quest for civil rights both then and now.

The program is the latest in a series of events focused on �þ���’s 2018-2019 Common Reading selection, , who recounts how her home county closed its public schools for five years rather than intergrate following Brown v. Board.

“Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County” also serves as the Winter Term book selection for Elon Law’s Inclusive Community Book Club.

�þ���’s 2019 MLK Jr. Celebration Planning Committee partnered across campus to promote and provide opportunities for the Elon community to engage with contemporary issues involving civil rights and race. This year’s events carry the theme of “The Hammer on Civil Rights,” taken from a 1964 essay by King that called for all levels of government to revise laws and the legal system to ensure the protection of civil rights promised by the U.S. Constitution.

Tickets go on sale February 7, 2019, and are $15 each of free with an Elon ID by calling �þ���’s Center for the Arts Box Office at (336) 278-5610. 

Distinguished Leadership Lecture featuring Loretta Lynch
Thursday, February 28, 2019
6:30 p.m.
Elon Law Library (201 N. Greene Street in Greensboro)

Loretta Lynch served as the 83rd Attorney General of the United States from 2015-2017, capping a highly distinguished career over the previous three decades.

Appointed to the role by President Barack Obama in 2015, Lynch had twice previously served as the head of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, under both President Bill Clinton and Obama. Described by Obama as “the only lawyer in America who battles mobsters, drug lords and terrorists, and still has the reputation for being a charming ‘people person,” she has been instrumental in shaping the direction of the nation on a number of tough issues.

As the first African-American woman to serve in the role, Lynch improved the relationship between local law enforcement and the communities they serve, and she took bold stances on criminal justice reform. She had spent years rising through the ranks as a prosecutor, fighting terrorism, financial fraud and cybercrime — all while vigorously defending civil and human rights.

While leading the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, she became known for the high-profile civil rights conviction of two Brooklyn police officers who brutally assaulted Haitian immigrant Abner Louima. In private practice, Lynch served as a volunteer legal advisor for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established to prosecute those responsible for human rights violations in the 1994 genocide in that nation.

A native of Greensboro, North Carolina, Lynch is the daughter of a school librarian and fourth generation Baptist minister. She has shared that she was inspired at a young age by stories about her grandfather, a sharecropper in the 1930s, who helped members of his community who had no recourse under the Jim Crow system.

Commencement takes place Saturday, Dec. 15, at 11 a.m. inside �þ���’s Alumni Gym.

As North Carolina’s 50th attorney general, Stein has focused his work on protecting families from crime and consumer fraud. His priorities include combating the opioid crisis and taking on scam artists who target seniors.

“The Class of 2018 will find inspiration in a Commencement address by North Carolina’s top attorney, whose dedication to his state reflects the values we teach at Elon Law,” said Elon Law Dean Luke Bierman. “Attorney General Stein’s record of public service, and his advocacy for our most vulnerable citizens, exemplify the value of a legal education in the pursuit of justice.

“Likewise, students in the Class of 2018 never cease to amaze me with the compassion, focus, and determination they demonstrate in their studies and in the ways they apply their legal knowledge toward the betterment of their communities. They will make great attorneys in the model of our Commencement speaker.”

Prior to being elected Attorney General, Stein served as a state senator and as a senior deputy attorney general in the North Carolina Department of Justice. In the State Senate, Stein led efforts to put more violent criminals behind bars and keep innocent people out of prison by expanding the state’s DNA database, and he worked to strengthen laws against domestic abuse and to ban stalking using GPS tracking devices.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association and the AARP of North Carolina each named Stein “Legislator of the Year” during his time in the General Assembly. He also was named the 2011 Defender of Justice by the NC Justice Center, and his Republican and Democratic colleagues selected Stein as the most effective Democratic senator.

As senior deputy attorney general, Stein helped write the School Safety Act, which mandated safety plans and training for school personnel in emergency situations, and he worked to improve safety features on social media websites to protect children from sexual predators. Stein also helped run the payday lenders charging loan shark interest rates on working families out of the state.

Stein has taught high school English and economics in Zimbabwe, served as legal counsel in the United States Senate, worked with the Self-Help Credit Union to transform abandoned drug houses in Durham into affordable, single-family homes and worked on behalf of the North Carolina Minority Support Center to raise capital to invest in small businesses across North Carolina. He also has worked in private practice as an attorney representing the Monitor of the $25 billion National Mortgage Settlement to ensure that the nation’s biggest banks treat home loan customers fairly.  

Stein is a graduate of Dartmouth College and earned law and public policy degrees from Harvard University. He and his wife Anna have been married for 20 years and have three children who all attend North Carolina public schools. The Steins are members of Temple Beth Or.

About Elon Law:

�þ��� School of Law in Greensboro, North Carolina, is the preeminent school for engaged and experiential learning in law. Elon Law integrates traditional classroom instruction with highly experiential full-time residencies-in-practice in a logically sequenced program of transformational professional preparation. Elon Law’s groundbreaking approach is accomplished in 2.5 years, which provides distinctive value by lowering tuition and permitting graduates early entry into their professional careers.

For more information, visit law.elon.edu.

NOTE: Tickets distributed in September will be honored at the program. For students and faculty unable to visit Greensboro, the lecture will be streamed on main campus in Yeager Recital Hall in the Center for the Arts.

Professor Emeritus Alan M. Dershowitz is a Brooklyn native who has been called “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer,” one of its “most distinguished defenders of individual rights,” “the best-known criminal lawyer in the world” and “the top lawyer of last resort.”  

The Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School has argued hundreds of appeals in courts throughout the nation throughout his career and he continues to consult actively on both transnational and domestic criminal and civil liberty cases, devoting half of his practice to pro bono cases and causes.

He has recently been a prominent critic of the ongoing special counsel investigation of the Trump Administration and instead believes the best way to investigate Russian interference in American elections would be a nonpartisan investigative commission similar to one established after the September 11 terror attacks.

Dershowitz has published more than 1,000 articles in magazines, newspapers, journals and blogs. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Huffington Post, Gatestone, Newsmax, Jerusalem Post, Ha’aretz, and Algemeiner.  

Dershowitz is the author of 35 fiction and nonfiction works with a worldwide audience, including the New York Times #1 bestseller “Chutzpah” and several other national bestsellers. His most recent books are “Trumped Up: How Criminalization of Political Differences Endangers Democracy” published in 2017, and “The Case Against BDS: Why Singling Out Israel for Boycott Is Anti-Semitic and Anti-Peace”, published in 2018.

Dershowitz likewise has been named America’s most “public Jewish Defender” and “the Jewish state’s lead attorney in the court of public opinion.” The Yale Law School graduate joined the Harvard Law School faculty at age 25 – the youngest in the school’s history – and assumed emeritus status after 50 years of �þ��� more than 10,000 students.

He has received numerous honorary doctoral degrees and academic awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on human rights, a fellowship at The Center for the Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences and several Dean’s Awards for his books.

In 1983, the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith presented him with the William O. Douglas First Amendment Award for his “compassionate eloquent leadership and persistent advocacy in the struggle for civil and human rights.”

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