[James W. Fox, Jr., Stetson University College of Law, chairman of the Association of American Law School’s Section on Legal History, announces two sessions at this year’s annual meeting of the AALS. Both take place on Saturday, January 3, 2015.]
Co-Sponsored Program, Liberty-Equality: Gender, Sexuality, and Reproduction—Griswold v. Connecticut Then and Now, 8:30 a.m. – 10:15 a.m.
Presented by the Section on Constitutional Law and co-sponsored by the Sections on Women in Legal Education and Legal History, this program marks the 50th anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut, the ground-breaking Supreme Court decision recognizing a right to privacy that protected individuals in making decisions about the use of contraceptives from the reach of state criminal law, but spoke implicitly to the constitutional underpinnings of an individual’s rights or interests in intimacy, marriage, procreation, sexuality, and sexual conduct. Panelists will place the case in historical context, and explore the development of the Griswold doctrine, as well as its implications for current constitutional controversies over access to reproductive health care, marriage, sexuality and sexual conduct.
Cary C. Franklin, The University of Texas School of Law
Melissa E. Murray, University of California, Berkeley School of Law
Doug NeJaime, University of California, Irvine School of Law
Neil S. Siegel, Duke University School of Law
Co-Moderator: M. Isabel Medina, Loyola University New Orleans College of Law
Co-Moderator Speaker: Reva B. Siegel, Yale Law School
Joint Program: Engendering Equality: A Conversation with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and New Voices in Legal History, 1:30 – 3:15 p.m.
This Section on Legal History and Women in Legal Education Joint Program, co-sponsored by the Section on Constitutional Law, explores the history of women’s equality and the legacy of Justice Ginsburg. The first portion of the program will, through a conversation between Justice Ginsburg and Wendy Williams, consider the ideas and strategies shaping Justice Ginsburg’s efforts as an advocate, an academic, and a Justice to achieve equal citizenship for women. The second portion of the program will present a panel of new voices in Women’s Legal History who study the complex and often contradictory ways in which social, political, and legal actors have appealed to gender and equality in movements of the past, and suggest how such studies might engender/inform equality’s future.
The Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court of the United States
Wendy W. Williams, Georgetown University Law Center
Co-Moderator: Reva B. Siegel, Yale Law School
Deborah Dinner, Washington University in St. Louis School of Law
Lynda Dodd, City College of New York, Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership
Mary Ziegler, Florida State University College of Law
Co-Moderator: Tracy A. Thomas, University of Akron, C. Blake McDowell Law Center
