On the Docket 2007: The New Supreme Court
About the Event
The Division for Public Education has presented a free program on the Supreme Court at every ABA Annual Meeting for the past ten years. This year’s theme, “On the Docket: The New Supreme Court,” reflects the fact that Justice Kennedy has now positioned himself as the lone swing vote on a 5-4 Court. The panel will look back at the major trends of the 2006 Term and ahead to the cases awaiting argument in the October 2007 Term. CLE credit is available to attorneys who attend this free program.
Moderator
David Savage
David Savage is a legal reporter for the Los Angeles Times and has covered the Supreme Court in the paper's Washington bureau for more than 20 years. He also writes a regular column on the court for the ABA Journal.
He is the author of the revised edition of the two-volume "Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is published by the CQ Press in Washington. It is a 1,292 page reference work that covers the history, decisions and personalities of the high court.
He is also the author of "Turning Right: the Making of the Rehnquist Court," which was published by John Wiley in 1992 and received the ABA's Silver Gavel Award the next year. He has also written chapters for several recent university press books, including "A Year in the Life of the Supreme Court," published by the Duke University Press in 2004 where he profiled Justice Anthony Kennedy and focused on his landmark gay-rights opinion in Lawrence v. Texas. An uncoming book by the University of Michigan Press describes great oral arguments in the court's history and profiles the current U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement.
He grew up in the Pittsburgh area, received an undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master's degree from Northwestern University.
Panelists
Robert H. “Bo” Abrams
Robert H. Abrams is Professor of Law at Florida A & M University, College of Law. Previously he served on the law faculty at Wayne State University for 27 years during which time he also taught frequently at the University of Michigan Law School and the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources & Environment. He is an expert in both Water Law and Environmental Law. He is co-author of two textbooks, Legal Control of Water Resources (with Joseph Sax, Barton Thompson, Jr., and John Leshy, 4th ed. 2006) and Environmental Law and Process: A Coursebook on Nature, Law, and Society (with Zygmunt Plater, William Goldfarb, Robert Graham, Lisa Heinzerling, & David Wirth, 3rd ed. 2004). Professor Abrams was Chair of the ABA Water Resources Committee in 1992-93 and is again serving as a Vice Chair of that committee. He also serves as a contributing editor of the Eastern Water Law & Policy Reporter. Professor Abrams is a life member of the American Law Institute. He also was inducted into the August Order of Water Buffaloes. Professor Abrams attended both Stanford Law School and the University of Michigan Law School, earning his J.D. from the latter in 1973.
Vikram Amar
Professor Amar joined the Hastings College of the Law faculty in 1998 after teaching at the University of California at Davis School of Law since 1993. He has also taught as a Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law each year since 1995. In 1997 he taught at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law.
He received a bachelor's degree in history from the University of California at Berkeley and his J.D. from Yale, where he served as an articles Editor for the Yale Law Journal. Upon graduating from law school in 1988, Professor Amar clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and then for Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court. After that he spent a few years at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, devoting half of his time to federal white-collar criminal defense and the other half to complex civil litigation.
Professor Amar writes, teaches and consults in the public law fields, especially constitutional law, civil procedure, and remedies. He also authors a bi-weekly column on constitutional matters for findlaw.com (the most frequently visited website devoted to legal issues) and is a regular contributor to the ABA’s Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases. He is a frequent commentator on local and national radio and TV, and has written dozens of op-ed pieces for newspapers and magazines.
John Hennigan
John Hennigan is a professor of law at St. John’s University School of Law in New York City. Prior to joining the law faculty, Professor Hennigan practiced for several years in a major New York City law firm, where he specialized in business litigation. He is a member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and the American Bar Association, where he serves as a contributing editor of Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases, a publication of the ABA Division for Public Education. His scholarly interests have included, among other areas, appellate jurisdiction and the legislative process in bankruptcy. He teaches Creditors' Rights, Commercial Transactions, Secured Transactions, and Civil Procedure.
Pamela S. Karlan
A productive scholar and award-winning teacher, Pamela Karlan is also the founding director of the Stanford Law School’s extraordinarily successful Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, where students litigate live cases before the Court. One of the nation’s leading experts on voting and the political process, she has served as a commissioner on the California Fair Political Practices Commission and an assistant counsel and cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Professor Karlan is the coauthor of three leading casebooks on constitutional law and related subjects, as well as more than four dozen scholarly articles. She is a widely recognized commentator on legal issues and is frequently featured on programs such as the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1998, she was a professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law and served as a law clerk to Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Abraham D. Sofaer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Sponsor: ABA Standing Committee on Public Education
Co-Sponsors: ABA Journal, Criminal Justice Section, Young Lawyers Division, Judicial Division,
Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, Section of Environment, Energy and Resources
