Annual Distinguished Lecture featuring Geoffrey Stone

Geoffrey Stone will deliver the fall 2023 Annual Distinguished Lecture. He will discuss the history of the Warren Court and the current performance of the Roberts Court, addressing several decisions handed down by each of the two Courts in order to identify the similarities and differences between the them and their approaches to interpreting the Constitution.

In particular, Stone will discuss the Warren Court’s decisions in such cases as Brown v. Board of Education, Engel v. Vitale, New York Times v. Sullivan, Reynolds v. Simms, and Miranda v. Arizona, and the Roberts Court’s decisions in such cases as Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, District of Columbia v. Heller, Dobbs v. Women’s Health Organization, SFFA v. University of North Carolina, and Smith v. Colorado.

About the Speaker:

After serving as a law clerk for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. during the Supreme Court’s 1972–73 Term, Stone joined the faculty of The University of Chicago Law School, from which he had received his JD in 1973 and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review. During his now fifty years on the faculty as both a teacher and scholar, Stone, the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Professor of Law, has focused primarily on issues of Constitutional Law – especially the First and Fourteenth Amendments. From 1987 to 1993, Stone served as Dean of the Law School and from 1993 to 2002 he served as Provost of the University.

During his career Stone has published more than fifteen books and almost one hundred scholarly articles on Constitutional Law. In 2002, he created and has since served as editor of Oxford University Press’s Inalienable Rights series, which has now published twenty-five books by distinguished constitutional scholars. He is also a long-standing editor of the Supreme Court Review. 

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