Introduction: Pamela Harris, Executive Director, Georgetown Law Supreme Court Institute
Professor David Cole, Georgetown University Law Center
Topic:
First Amendment
Cases:
U.S. v. Stevens (Free Speech challenge to federal law barring depictions of animal cruelty)
Salazar v. Buono (Establishment Clause challenge to display of cross on federal land)
Professor Julie O'Sullivan, Georgetown University Law Center
Topic:
Criminal Law
Cases:
Graham v. Florida & Sullivan v. Florida (life without parole sentences for juveniles in non-homicide cases)
Black v. United States & Weyhrauch v. United States (honest services)
Professor Howard Shelanski, Georgetown University Law Center
Topic:
Business Law
Cases:
Bilski v. Doll (scope of patentable subject matter)
Professor Chris Brummer, Georgetown University Law Center
Topic:
Securities Law
Cases:
Merck v. Reynolds (measuring statute of limitations in securities fraud cases)
Jones v. Harris Associates (reviewability of mutual fund management fees under federal law)
Professor Susan Low Bloch, Georgetown University Law Center
Changes on the Court: Departure of Justice Souter and Arrival of Justice Sotomayor
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION ON PANELISTS:
Professor Cole is an expert on constitutional law, criminal justice, and national security. He recently published The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable, a new book about the CIA interrogation program, and is the author of Justice at War: The Men and Ideas That Shaped America's War on Terror. He is the co-author of Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror, which captured the first Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize at Chicago-Kent College of Law in 2007, and Terrorism and the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security. He is the author of Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism, winner of the American Book Award in 2003, and No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System, named best nonfiction book of 1999 by the Boston Book Review and best book on a subject of national policy by the American Political Science Association. He has received numerous honors for his civil rights and civil liberties work. In addition to teaching at Georgetown Law, Cole is legal affairs correspondent for The Nation and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books.
Professor O'Sullivan joined the Georgetown Law faculty in 1994 after serving in the Office of Independent Counsel in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she worked on the "Whitewater" investigation. She was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York, where she first prosectued so-called "general crimes" - mostly drug cases - and then moved on to prosecute major white-collar crimes. As a litigation associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell, she worked on mergers and acquisitions litigation as well as white-collar criminal cases. O'Sullivan served as law clerk to Judge Levin H. Campbell of the First Circuit Court of Appeals and to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. She teaches federal white collar crime and international criminal law at the Law Center and is an expert in the areas of federal sentencing guidelines and the independent counsel statute.
Professor Shelanski joined the Georgetown Law full-time faculty after serving as a visiting professor. He is currently the deputy director for antitrust of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Economics. He comes to the Law Center from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), where he has been professor and co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology since 1997. Shelanski has twice before served in government. In 1999-2000, he was chief economist at the Federal Communications Commission, and in 1998-1999, he was a senior economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. He received a B.A. in history from Haverford College, a J.D. from Berkeley (Boalt Hall), and a Ph.D. in economics from Berkeley. After law school, Shelanski clerked for Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Judge Louis H. Pollak of the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia and Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. His areas of teaching include antitrust, telecommunications and contracts.
Professor Brummer is an expert in international financial regulation. His research focuses on globalization, financial markets and financial market regulation. He recently served as an academic Fellow for the Office of International Affairs at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Before coming to Georgetown, he served on the faculty of Vanderbilt Law School and practiced law in the New York and London offices of Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP. Brummer earned an A.B. in German literature summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis, a Ph.D. in Germanic studies from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he graduated with honors and was a member of the law review. He is fluent in French and German. He teaches international financial regulation and a globalization and systemic risk seminar at Georgetown Law.
Professor Bloch teaches constitutional law, federal courts, communications law and a seminar on the Supreme Court. She is the author of numerous articles in the areas of constitutional and administrative law and is the co-author of "Supreme Court Politics: The Institution and Its Procedures." Before joining Georgetown Law, she served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. In addition to teaching, Bloch is a member of the American Law Institute, a participant on the Twentieth Century Fund Project on the Judiciary and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. She is a member of the District of Columbia Judicial Evaluation Committee, has been a Commissioner on the Judicial Nominating Commission for the District of Columbia Courts and has worked with the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in numerous capacities.
Pamela Harris is a visiting professor at Georgetown Law and executive director of the Supreme Court Institute. Until 2009, she was a partner and then of counsel at the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers, where she was a member of the Supreme Court and appellate practice, specializing in public interest litigation. She was also a lecturer at Harvard Law School, as co-director of Harvard's Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Clinic. Before joining O'Melveny, Harris taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she specialized in constitutional criminal procedure and the law of church and state. From 1993 to 1996, she worked in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. She served as a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme Court and Judge Harry T. Edwards of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
About Georgetown University Law Center
Georgetown University Law Center is one of the world's premier law schools. It has the largest faculty in the nation and is preeminent in several areas, including constitutional, international, tax and clinical law. Drawing on its Jesuit heritage, it has a strong tradition of public service and is dedicated to the principle that law is but a means, justice is the end. With this principle in mind, Georgetown Law has built an environment that cultivates an exchange of practical ideas and the pursuit of academic excellence. It brings together an extraordinarily varied group of teachers, scholars and practitioners, as well as an outstanding student body representing more than 60 countries.
Twenty-four members of the Georgetown Law full-time faculty have served as U.S. Supreme Court law clerks. |
