The Annual Pike Lecture featuring Professor Jasmine E. Harris

Boston University School of Law is pleased to invite you to the Annual Pike Lecture on Wednesday, October 28th, 2026 featuring Jasmine E. Harris, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. Please note that this lecture will be offered in person, and recorded. We will share the recording on our BU Law YouTube Channel.

American law has always allowed perception to stand in for proof when it declares someone incapable. An inspector’s impression at the port, a guardian’s report, a physician’s note, an officer’s judgment on a sidewalk, each becomes a finding of incapacity, and the finding authorizes custody, control over a person’s decisions, or removal, without the charge, the jury, or the proof beyond a reasonable doubt that criminal law demands. The state has long defended that authority with a promise of care, and just as often, that authority has served as a means of governing populations the state wished to control. One of the disability rights era’s central achievements was to put proof between perception and custody. Before the state could act on what it perceived, it had to identify a specific behavior, hold a hearing, test its fear against evidence, and owe the person something in return — treatment, services, a plan — once it made its determination.

This lecture argues that federal, state, and local laws and regulations of the last three years, from encampment ordinances and expanded civil commitment to guardianship and the retreat from the legal commitment to community integration, are removing those proof requirements one at a time, expanding who can trigger state action by reporting what they see, and withdrawing the care the state offered to justify it. Building on Professor Harris’s scholarship on how the state sees disability and uses incapacity determinations as tools of governance, the lecture traces the return from proof to perception, from Massachusetts in the 1840s to the present, and asks what the law can still require before the state acts on what it perceives.

About the Speaker

Jasmine E. Harris is a law-and-inequality scholar with expertise in disability law, antidiscrimination law, and evidence. Her work addresses law’s capacity to define and advance social norms of inclusion. Her evidence scholarship explores topics such as the application of critical legal theory to evidentiary rules, principles, and doctrine.

Her recent academic articles have appeared or are forthcoming in leading law reviews and journals including the Columbia Law Review, New York University Law Review, UCLA Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Boston University Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal Forum. Harris also co-edits a preeminent evidence treatise, McCormick on Evidence, and is currently working on a co-edited book, Critical Evidence Law, the first compilation of scholarly work addressing evidence law and critical theory.

Harris also writes frequently about disability and equality law for popular audiences. She has authored essays for the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Ms. Magazine, and Tribune Wire, in addition to academic blogs such as the American Constitution Society’s Expert Forum and the Harvard Law School Petrie-Flom Center’s Bill of Health. She is regularly quoted in media outlets including the Washington Post, TIME, Forbes, CNBC, National Public Radio, PBS NewsHour, Chronicle of Higher Education, Guardian, Harper’s BAZAAR, and USA Today.

Federal and state lawmakers and legal advocates regularly seek Harris’s opinion on issues of legislative and policy reforms related to disability laws and civil litigation. Harris is a member of the inaugural Steering Committee tasked with developing a National Smithsonian Museum of Disability History and Culture. She also serves on the Board of Directors for The Arc of the United States and on the Board of Directors of Disability Rights California — two of the largest disability rights organizations in the country — serving as Chair of The Arc’s Legal Advocacy Subcommittee and as a member of Disability Rights California’s Executive Committee. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute. The United States Chief Judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals appointed Harris to serve as Co-Reporter for Third Circuit’s Committee on Model Civil Jury Instructions.

Harris is a recipient of the A. Leo Levin Award for Excellence in Teaching at Penn Carey Law and has received recognition for her teaching and mentorship of students at other universities. She is also a recipient of the Law & Society Association’s 2025 John Hope Franklin Prize, awarded for exceptional scholarship in the field of race, racism, and the law, for her article “The Political Economy of Conservatorship,” published in the UCLA Law Review.

Harris graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College with a bachelor’s degree in Latin American & Caribbean Studies. She received her J.D. from Yale Law School and clerked for the Honorable Harold Baer, Jr., United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. She has worked in both private and public interest law. Harris practiced in the areas of complex commercial litigation, securities, and government investigations as a Senior Associate with WilmerHale. She also worked as a staff attorney at Advancement Project, a national civil rights organization, where she assisted grassroots advocacy campaigns to advance racial justice in education and address the school-to-prison pipeline through legal, policy, and strategic communications efforts.

Boston University School of Law strives to be accessible, inclusive and diverse in our facilities, programming and academic offerings. Your experience in this event is important to us. If you have a disability (including but not limited to learning or attention, mental health, concussion, vision, mobility, hearing, physical or other health related), require communication access services for the deaf or hard of hearing, or believe that you require a reasonable accommodation for another reason, please contact lawevent@bu.edu to discuss your needs. Please note, that the office of Disability Services typically requires 10 business days notice for services.