Tucker Lecturer Bryan Stevenson to Discuss Politics, Punishment and Reconciliation
Bryan Stevenson, executive director and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and a professor of law at New York University, will deliver this year’s Tucker Lecture at Washington and Lee University School of Law on Monday, Jan. 30, 2012.
The title of Stevenson’s lecture is “Politics, Punishment and Reconciliation.” The lecture is scheduled to begin at 12:00 p.m. in the Millhiser Moot Court Room, Sydney Lewis Hall on the campus of W&L. The talk is open to the public at no charge.
Stevenson graduated from Harvard University, earning both a J.D. from the School of Law and a Masters in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government. He has been involved with the representation of capital defendants and death row prisoners since 1985 when he was a staff attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta.
Since 1989, he has been Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a private, nonprofit law organization he founded that focuses on social justice and human rights in the context of criminal justice reform in the United States. EJI litigates on behalf of condemned prisoners, juvenile offenders, people wrongly convicted or charged, poor people denied effective representation and others whose trials are marked by racial bias or prosecutorial misconduct.
Stevenson has won national acclaim for his work challenging bias against the poor and people of color in the criminal justice system. His honors and awards include the MacArthur Fellowship Award Prize, the Reebok Human Rights Award, and the ACLU National Medal of Liberty, and the John Minor Public Service and Professionalism Award. In addition, Stevenson received the Olaf Palme Prize in Stockholm, Sweden for international human rights, the Gruber Foundation International Justice Prize, the Award for Courageous Advocacy from the American College of Trial Lawyers, and the Lawyer for the People Award from the National Lawyers Guild. In 2011, Mr. Stevenson was awarded the National Legal Aid & Defender Association Lifetime Achievement Award.
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 teacher in legal education and named the first dean of the Washington and Law University School of Law in 1893.
News Contact:
Peter Jetton
School of Law Director of Communications
pjetton@wlu.edu
(540) 458-8782
