David O' Brien Presents: "Judges on Judging: Views from the Bench"

PROGRAMMING NOTE: The scheduled public program with David O'Brien, "Judges on Judging" has been canceled until further notice.
 

As the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act reminded us, the Courts have a continued impact on the laws and policies that shape our lives. From Roe v. Wade to Brown v. Board of Education, the Courts have been instrumental in not only responding to popular sentiment of the nation, but also proactively taking a leadership role in directing the course of our nation.
   
David O’Brien, Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, will discuss off-the-bench commentaries of judges and justices on the changing nature of judging and the federal courts; in a time where media is unavoidable and the nation is hyper-polarized in political partisanship, many scholars question the nonpartisanship of the decisions handed down by the Courts. Prof. O’Brien will discuss the rival theories of constitutional interpretation, and the federal-state court relations regarding today’s most pressing legal and policy issues.

David M. O’Brien is the Leone Reaves and George W. Spicer Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. He has been a Judicial Fellow and Research Associate at the Supreme Court of the U.S., and held Fulbright Teaching and Research Awards at Oxford University, England, the University of Bologna, Italy, and in Japan, as well as was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York, and a Visiting Professor at Institut d’Etudes Politique Universite Lumiere-Lyon 2. He was a commissioner on the U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Exchange and the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics (9th ed., 2011), which received the ABA’s Silver Gavel Award; a two-volume casebook, Constitutional Law and Politics (8th ed., 2011); an annual Supreme Court Watch; Animal Sacrifice & Religious Freedom: The Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah (2004), and To Dream of Dreams: Religious Freedom and Constitutional Politics in Postwar Japan (1996). In addition, he has edited several books, including Judges on Judging: View from the Bench (4th ed., 2013).

Please join us for Prof. David O’Brien’s talk, “Judges on Judging: Views from the Bench,” in Rockefeller 003 at 4:30 pm, February 25, 2013. A book signing will follow the public program.