Harvard Club of Long Island

Harvard Law School Professor Michael J. Klarman, Charles Warren Professor of Legal History, will share his insights into the Supreme Court Justices' deliberations and reconstruct why Brown v. Board of Education was such a difficult case to decide.
 

In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), one of the most important decisions in the history of he United States, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional. Professor Klarman will explore the Justices' deliberations that gave rise to this pivotal decision.  He will also discuss how judges' decisions are influenced by legal, political and personal considerations and how Supreme Court decisions shape and reflect societal values.

Professor Klarman will also discuss his famous backlash thesis, showing that the Brown decision galvanized southern white opposition more strongly than it motivated civil rights protest.  

 

Professor Michael J. Klarman joined the faculty at Harvard Law School in 2008. He received his B.A. and M.A. (political theory) from the University of Pennsylvania in 1980, his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1983, and his D. Phil. in legal history from the University of Oxford (1988), where he was a Marshall Scholar. After law school, Professor Klarman clerked for the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1983–84). He joined the faculty at the University of Virginia School of Law in 1987 and served there until 2008 as the James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of History. 

Professor Klarman has also served as the Ralph S. Tyler, Jr., Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, Distinguished Visiting Lee Professor of Law at the Marshall Wythe School of Law at the College of William & Mary, Visiting Professor at Stanford Law School, and Visiting Professor at Yale Law School.  Professor Klarman has won numerous awards for his teaching and scholarship, which are primarily in the areas of Constitutional Law and Constitutional History. In 2009 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.