Professor Pamela Karlan delivers the Bill Smith Memorial Lecture

 This week I had the honor of giving the welcome and introduction at the annual Bill Smith Memorial Lecture. Bill, who was my wife Virginia’s cousin by marriage, passed away in 2001. I remember being at his graduation party. He died of a health disability that had hampered him for years.

LGBTQ people comprise a significant portion of our student population. Far more people are “out” today than when Bill Smith attended law school. It is because of advocates like him that people can lead more open lives. Bill was president of the Lambda group, and won the Martin Luther King Jr. Service Award. He advocated successfully for the school to have a Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and the Law course.

Our distinguished speaker this year was Pamela Karlan, the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law and co-director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School. She has argued nine cases before the Court. On leave from Stanford, Professor Karlan is serving as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. She spoke here solely in her personal capacity.

Professor Karlan’s primary scholarship involves constitutional litigation, with many articles, three casebooks, and book on constitutional interpretation. A few years back, she delivered a legendary McClatchy Lecture on the First Amendment. Professor Karlan served as clerk for Justice Harry Blackmun and as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division in the Obama administration. She also was an assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

"Reflections on the History of Litigating LGBTQ Cases at the Supreme Court" was Professor Karlan's topic. Thank you to her, and thank you to Cali Crum '22, Cameron Rodriguez '22, Natalie Hughes '22, Professor Courtney Joslin, and the Lambda Law Students Association for organizing this important event.