Reva Siegel to Deliver Annual Tucker Lecture at W&L Law

By Peter Jetton
March 23, 2022

Reva Siegel, Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale Law School, will deliver this year’s Tucker Lecture at Washington and Lee University School of Law on Tuesday, March 29 at 4:00 pm. The lecture will be hosted in a Zoom webinar format, and registration is required.

Professor Siegel’s lecture is titled “Equal Protection and Abortion in Dobbs.”  During her talk, Prof. Siegel will discuss an amicus brief she authored with constitutional law scholars Serena Mayeri and Melissa Murray in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that will determine whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.

Professor Siegel’s writing draws on legal history to explore questions of law and inequality and to analyze how courts interact with representative government and popular movements in interpreting the Constitution. She is the author of numerous articles including “Why Restrict Abortion? Expanding the Frame on June Medical” in the Supreme Court Review, “Answering the Lochner Objection: Substantive Due Process and the Role of Courts in a Democracy” in the NYU Law Review, and “When Guns Threaten the Public Sphere: A New Account of Public Safety Regulation Under Heller” in the Northwestern Law Review. Her books include “Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking,” “Reproductive Rights and Justice Stories,” and “Before Roe v. Wade: Voices That Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court’s Ruling.”

Professor Siegel is a member of the American Philosophical Society, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an honorary fellow of the American Society for Legal History. She serves on the board of Advisors and the Board of Academic Advisors of the American Constitution Society and on the General Council of the International Society of Public Law.

The Tucker Lecture at Washington and Lee School of Law was first established by the W&L Board of Trustees in 1949 to mark the bicentennial of the University and the centennial of the Law School. It was named after John Randolph Tucker, hired in 1870 as the second faculty member in the Law School and named the first dean of the Washington and Law University School of Law in 1893.