2022 Jorde Symposium

Tuesday, November 15, 2022, at 4pm

Warren Room, Berkeley Law, with a reception to follow at the Donor Lobby. Please note the change of location.

The annual Thomas M. Jorde Symposium was created in 1996 to promote scholarly discourse and writing from a variety of perspectives on issues related to the legacy of former United States Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. The Brennan Center at NYU School of Law named the symposium in honor of its major benefactor, Thomas M. Jorde, a former clerk to Justice Brennan and a professor at Berkeley Law. The Jorde Symposium address and commentaries are published annually in the California Law Review.

This year’s lecture will probe the thought and activism of Frederick Douglass as both a moral influencer and political abolitionist, concentrating on his evolving views of the Constitution—from an early view that our founding charter was hopelessly complicit with slavery to his eventual embrace of an absolute antislavery interpretation.

This event is hosted in partnership with the Brennan Center for Justice and Berkeley Law. Information on past Jorde Symposia can be found on the Brennan Center’s website.

Lecturer:

  • David Blight, Sterling Professor of American History at Yale University

Commentators:

  • Annette Gordon Reed, Carol M. Loeb Professor of History at Harvard University

  • Christopher Tomlins, Elizabeth Josselyn Boalt Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley

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