Lecture Series

Minnesota Law has a long history of welcoming global, state, and local leaders to speak to the Law School community and the public. Many of these events have been video recorded and are available for viewing (see links below).

Robert A. Stein Lecture

Professor Robert A. Stein ’61, dean of the Law School for 15 years and former executive director and chief operating officer of the American Bar Association, generously endowed this lecture series to enrich the Law School community by inviting leaders of the bench and bar and of the governments of the U.S. and other nations to deliver an annual lecture on a topic of national or international interest.

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+Past Stein Lectures

John Dewey Lecture in the Philosophy of Law

This lecture honors John Dewey, American philosopher, educator, and scholar. A proponent of legal realism, Dewey’s philosophy of pragmatism related his conception of a moral life to a variety of contemporary social, economic, and political issues. Dewey lived from 1859 to 1952 and spent one year as a professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota. The John Dewey Lecture in the Philosophy of Law is funded by a grant from the John Dewey Foundation and is sponsored by the University of Minnesota Law School to provide a forum for significant scholarly contributions to the development of jurisprudence.

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+Past John Dewey Lectures

2015 Moshe Halbertal, Gruss Professor, NYU Law School; Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, Hebrew University; Professor of Law, IDC. Protecting Civilians: Moral Challenges of Asymmetric Warfare
2013 Tyler Cowen, Holbert L. Harris Professor of Economics, George Mason University. Is America Coming Out of its Great Stagnation?
2012 Justice Richard Goldstone, served as a Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. The Current State of International Criminal Justice
2009 Antony Duff, Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Stirling, Scotland. In Search of a Theory of Criminal Law?
2009 John M. Finnis, Professor of Law & Legal Philosophy, University of Oxford. Does Free Exercise of Religion Deserve Constitutional Mention?
2008 Angela P. Harris, University of California School of Law, Berkeley. The 'L' Word: Love in the Restorative Justice Movement and in Legal Theory
2006 George P. Fletcher, Professor, Columbia University School of Law. The Law of War and Its Pathologies
2005 Joseph Raz, Professor of the Philosophy of Law, Balliol College at Oxford University and a Professor of Law at Columbia University. The Problem of Authority
2005 John Ferejohn, Carolyn S. G. Munro Professor of Political Science, Stanford University. Democratic Constitutionalism
2003 Cass R. Sunstein, Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence, University of Chicago Law School. Moral Heuristics. How Simple Moral Rules Produce Big Moral Blunders
2003 Robin West, Professor of Law, Georgetown Law Center. The External Morality of Law
2000 Robert C. Post, Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley. Supreme Court Decision-making in the 1920s
2000 Professor Neil MacCormick, Centre for Law and Society, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Institution and Reason in Law
1999 Professor Jack M. Balkin, Yale Law School. Is Law Good to Think With?
1997 Ronald Dworkin
1996 Jules L. Coleman
1995 Martha Nussbaum
1994 Frank I. Michelman
1993 Margaret Jane Radin
1992 Anthony Kronman
1991 Barbara Aronstein Black
1987 Kenneth S. Lynn
1986 The Honorable John T. Noonan, Jr.
1984 Daniel J. Boorstin
1981 Harry W. Jones

Horatio Ellsworth Kellar Distinguished Visitor Lecture

The late Curtis B. Kellar ’40, established the Horatio Ellsworth Kellar Distinguished Visitors Program in memory of his father in 1996. This interdisciplinary lecture series at the Law School connects emerging issues in the law with other disciplines. Mr. Curtis Kellar served on the Board of Directors of the Law Alumni Association and the Board of Visitors of the Law School, retiring in 1981 as an Associate General Counsel of Mobil Oil Corp.

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+Past Kellar Lectures

2018 Michael Posner, Director of NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights and Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Human Rights Milestones: Progress, Challenges, and the Way Forward
2017 Ari Melber, MSNBC’s chief legal correspondent and host of The Beat. First Amendment Freedom in the Trump Era
2016 Glenn Altschuler, Dean, School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions; Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies; Weiss Presidential Fellow, Cornell University. Justice Amidst a Media Frenzy: The McMartin Pre-School Sex Abuse Case
2013 Jonathan Haidt, Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership, NYU-Stern School of Business. Moral Psychology and the Law: How Institutions Drive Reasoning, Judgement, and the Search for Evidence
2011 Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland. Law as an Instrument of Change
2010 Nicola Lacey, Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory, London School of Economics and Political Science. Could He Forgive Her? Gender, Agency, and Criminality in 19th Century Law and Literature
2009 Nadine Strossen, Professor, New York Law School. Current Challenges to Free Speech
2007 Linda Greenhouse, Supreme Court Correspondent, The New York Times. What Would Justice Powell Do? The "Alien Children" Case and the Meaning of Equal Protection
2007 Reed Hundt, Principal, Charles Ross Partners, LLC, A private investor and advisory service. In China's Shadow: The Crisis of American Entrepreneurship
2006 Scott Turow, Author. It's Only Words: Thoughts of a Lawyer & Novelist
2004 W. Richard West, Jr., Director, National Museum of the American Indian; Native America in the 21st Century. Out of the Mists and Beyond Myth
2004 Stephen L. Carter, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Yale Law School. The Star Wars Effect: Just War Theory in Popular Film
2002 Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Professor of Communications and Walter H. Annenberg Dean of the Annenberg School for Communications, University of Pennsylvania. The Demise of Fact in Political Debate
2001 Dr. David L. Goodstein, Vice Provost and Professor of Physics & Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology. What is Science?
2001 Lawrence Lessig, Professor, Stanford University Law School. Innovation and the Net
1999 Mr. I. Michael Heyman, Secretary, Smithsonian Institute and Former Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley. Culture and Process: A Lawyer's View of the Smithsonian
1998 David Halberstam

MLK Convocation in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In 2016, the University of Minnesota Law School and the Law School's Diversity and Belonging Committee launched our Annual MLK Convocation in an effort to bring all members of the Law School community together to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy and reflect on the continued relevance of his work in our legal community.

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+Past MLK Convocations

2020 Shared Stakes Across Neighborly Divides featuring Retired Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan C. Page '78
2019 Conscious Justice in a Fake News Era: A Reflection on MLK's 1968 Sermon, "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution" featuring Laura Coates '05
2018 Facing North: Implicit Bias in Minnesota Courts featuring the Honorable Pamela G. Alexander '77 and Professor Francis X. Shen
2017 Where Do We Go From Here? featuring the Honorable Michael Davis '72 and the Honorable Nicole Starr '03
2016 Echoes of Birmingham featuring the Honorable Alan Page '78, Dr. Tracie Keesee, and the Honorable Mark Kappelhoff

William B. Lockhart Lecture

This lecture honors William B. Lockhart, dean of the University of Minnesota Law School from 1956-72. Instrumental in enriching the Law School curriculum and attracting highly qualified faculty and students, Dean Lockhart shared his gifts of teaching excellence and scholarly leadership with students and faculty. After 28 years as a professor at the Law School (1946-74), Dean Lockhart taught on the faculty of the University of California, Hastings College of Law (1974-94). He died in December 1995.

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+Past Lockhart Lectures

2014 Judge Jed S. Rakoff, U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York. Are Federal Regulators a Law Unto Themselves?
2013 A. Douglas Melamed, Senior Vice President & General Counsel, Intel Corporation. Lawyers as Conflict Engineers
2011 Dame Hazel Genn, Dean of Laws, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies and co-director of the University College London Judicial Institute. England's Lessons on Judicial Selection
2010 Andrew Ashworth, Vinerian Professor of English Law, University of Oxford. Crimes of Possession: The Liberal Criminal Lawyer at the Edge
2009 Judge Guido Calabresi, US Circuit Court. Equality in the American Constitution?
2009 Aharon Barak, Former President of the Supreme Court of Israel. Human Rights in Time of Terror: A Judicial Point of View
2008 Heather K. Gerken, Yale Law School. Getting from Here to There in Election Reform
2006 Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment, Yale Law School. The National Surveillance State
2005 William Eskridge, Jr., John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence, Yale Law School. Lessons from Thirty-Five Years of the Same-Sex Marriage Debate
2004 Mary Anne Case, Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School. Marriage Licenses
2003 Pamela S. Karlan, Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interst Law, Stanford Law School. Pricking the Lines: The Due Process Clause, Punitive Damages, and Criminal Punishment
2002 Pamela Samuelson, Professor, University of California Law School, Berkeley. Constitutional Dimensions of Intellectual Property
2001 Elizabeth Warren, Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law, Harvard University Law School. On Their Own: Women, Divorce and Bankruptcy
2001 Professor Thomas C. Grey, Nelson Bowman Sweitzer and Marie B Sweitzer Professor of Law, Stanford University Law School. The New Formalism
1999 Deborah L. Rhode. The Professional Responsibilities of Professionals
1999 Professor Herbert Hovenkamp, University of Iowa College of Law. Knowledge About Welfare
1998 Carol Marguerite Rose
1997 The Honorable Ellen A. Peters
1996 Mark V. Tushnet
1995 Martha L. Minnow
1994 Douglas Laycock
1993 Kathleen M. Sullivan
1992 The Honorable Guido Calabresi
1991 The Honorable A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr.
1990 The Honorable Shirley S. Abrahamson
1989 Lea Brilmayer
1988 The Honorable Robert E. Keeton
1987 The Honorable Patricia M. Wald
1986 Kenneth Culp Davis
1984 Arthur R. Miller
1983 The Honorable Carl McGowan
1982 Jesse H. Choper
1981 William B. Lockhart
1980 Edward C. Halbach, Jr.
1979 Joseph L. Rauth, Jr.
1978 Frank Michelman
1977 Charles Frankel
1976 Louis Henkin