Academics
Academics
Constitutional Law Center
About the CenterConstitutional Law Center: local presence, national stature
About the Director
Distinguished Lecture Series
Constitutional Law Symposium
Constitutional Law Resources
Opperman Lecture
The Drake Constitutional Law Center is one of only four constitutional law programs established by the U.S. Congress and funded by the federal government. The Center's mission is to foster study of the U.S. Constitution, its roots, its formation, its principles and development.
An integral part of the Center's activities is the Dwight D. Opperman Lecture series, an annual event of national importance in constitutional law. Mr. Opperman, former chairman of the West Publishing Company and a Drake Law School alumnus, endowed the lecture series in 1988 to bring the country's top jurists and legal scholars to Drake.
Ten U.S. Supreme Court Justices have delivered the Opperman Lecture: Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., Justice Stephen G. Breyer, Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Justice Lewis F. Powell and Justice Harry A. Blackmun.
Drake law students have special access to the constitutional law scholars, judges and political leaders who come to Drake to participate in the Center's activities. In addition to lectures, many distinguished guests also hold symposiums, informal gatherings and small group discussions limited to law students and faculty.
In 1999, 2002 and 2006, for example, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas taught special week-long classes for Drake students. In the 2003-2004 academic year, week long classes were taught by Prof. Akhil Amar (Yale), Prof. Mari Matsuda (Georgetown), Prof. Suzanna Sherry (Vanderbilt), and Judge Alex Kozinski (9th Cir.). Distinguished scholars who have participated in symposiums at Drake include Judge Michael McConnell (10th Circuit), Prof. Erwin Chemerinsky (USC), Prof. Michael Gerhardt (William & Mary), Prof. Nadine Strossen (NY Law School & President, ACLU) and Prof. Gerald Torres (Texas).
To learn more about The History of the Supreme Court, click here.
For more information, call the Center at 515-271-2988.
About the Director
Mark Kende is the James Madison Chair Professor of Constitutional Law and Director of the Drake Constitutional Law Center. Kende earned his B.A. cum laude with honors in Philosophy from Yale University, and his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School where he was a member of the Law Review. Prior to entering academia, he clerked for a federal judge and litigated employment, civil rights and constitutional cases at a Chicago law firm where he worked with Senator Barack Obama. He has co-taught constitutional law classes with two current U.S. Supreme Court Justices.Kende previously taught at Notre Dame Law School, the University of Montana School of Law and the University of Tennessee Law School. He was Teacher of the Year at Montana in 2002-2003. He has served as a Senior Fulbright Scholar and Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, a Fulbright Senior Specialist in the former Soviet Republic of Moldova, and as a Visiting Professor at the University of Nantes, France. He has lectured or published scholarship in Canada, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (as a rule of law consultant), France (at the University of Paris I - Sorbonne), Germany, Spain, South Africa, the United Kingdom (at Oxford University), and throughout the United States. In 2003, he served as chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Africa. In 2008, he served as chair of the Section on Constitutional Law. He also co-directs a Law & Society Research Network on Africa.
Kende’s writings have appeared in publications such as Constitutional Commentary, the South African Law Journal, the Hastings Law Journal, and the Notre Dame Law Journal. He is also the co-author of a casebook, Theater Law, and was one of the authors of Courting the Yankees, Legal Essays on the Bronx Bombers. Professor Kende's recent book, Constitutional Rights in Two Worlds, South Africa and the United States is set for publication by Cambridge University Press in Feb. 2009.
Professor Kende's full CV Faculty Profile
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Distinguished Lecture Series
The Constitutional Law Center invites the nation's leading constitutional scholars to Drake Law School to engage students and faculty in discussions about current issues. Speakers deliver a formal lecture, teach a class, and meet with students informally. The lectures will be held at 4 p.m. in Cartwright Hall room 213.
Past Lecturers
2008-2009 Lecturers:
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Juan E. Méndez, President of the International Center for Transitional Justice
Click here to listen to the lecture.
"The Dilemma of Pursuing Peace and Justice Simultaneously in an Ongoing Conflict"
A native of Lomas de Zamora, Argentina, Mr. Méndez has dedicated his legal career to the defense of human rights and has a long and distinguished record of advocacy throughout the Americas. As a result of his involvement in representing political prisoners, the Argentinean military dictatorship arrested him and subjected him to torture and administrative detention for more than a year. During this time, Amnesty International adopted him as a "Prisoner of Conscience." After his release from detention in the late 1970s, Mr. Méndez moved to the United States.
For 15 years, he worked with Human Rights Watch, concentrating his efforts on human rights issues in the western hemisphere. In 1994, he became general counsel of Human Rights Watch, with worldwide duties in support of the organization's mission, including responsibility for the organization's litigation and standard-setting activities. From 1996 to 1999, Mr. Méndez was the executive director of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights in Costa Rica, and between October 1999 and May 2004 he was professor of Law and director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Between 2000 and 2003 he was a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States, and served as president in 2002. In July 2004, Mr. Méndez was appointed the United Nations special adviser on the prevention of genocide, a post that was complementary to his full-time position as the president of the ICTJ. Mr. Méndez served as special adviser until March 31, 2007.
Mr. Méndez is a member of the boards of directors of the Center for Justice and International Law, Global Rights, and the Open Society Justice initiative. He is on the board of advisors of the Social Science Research Council's Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum, and the advisory council of the American Bar Association Center for Human Rights. He has taught International Human Rights Law at Georgetown Law School and at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and he teaches regularly at the Oxford Masters Program in International Human Rights Law in the United Kingdom. He is the recipient of several human rights awards, the most recent being the inaugural Monsignor Oscar A. Romero Award for Leadership in Service to Human Rights, presented by the University of Dayton in April 2000, and the Jeanne and Joseph Sullivan Award of the Heartland Alliance in May 2003. Mr. Méndez is a member of the bar of Mar del Plata and Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the District of Columbia, US. He earned a JD from Stella Maris University in Argentina and a certificate from the American University, Washington College of Law.
This biography was made available by the ICTJ.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Professor Orin Kerr, George Washington University Law School
Click here to listen to the lecture.
"The New World of Digital Evidence Collection"
Professor Kerr is a co-author of the leading casebook in criminal procedure with co-authors Yale Kamisar, Wayne LaFave, Jerold Israel, and Nancy King, now in its 12th Edition. He is also a co-author of the leading treatise in criminal procedure and the author of a law school casebook on computer crime law. In 2006, Kerr was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
Before joining the faculty, Professor Kerr was an Honors Program trial attorney in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Department of Justice as well as a special assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. He also is a former law clerk for Judge Leonard I. Garth of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the United States Supreme Court.
Before attending law school, Kerr earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in mechanical engineering. Kerr posts regularly at the popular weblog “The Volokh Conspiracy,” available at http://volokh.com.
This biography was made available by The George Washington University Law School.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Professor Phoebe Haddon, Temple Law School
Click here to listen to the lecture.
"Can the U.S. Supreme Court's Keyes Desegregation Decision Unlock Opportunities to Rethink Brown in the 21st Century"
Phoebe A. Haddon graduated from Smith College with Honors in 1972. Before attending Law School at Duquesne University School of Law, she worked for two years as a Field Examiner with the National Labor Relations Board in Cincinnati, Ohio and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was Editor-in-Chief of the Duquesne Law Review and graduated cum laude. After graduating law school, Professor Haddon clerked for the Honorable Joseph F. Weis, Jr., United Sates Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit from 1977-79. She then practiced law at the law firm of Wilmer Cutler & Pickering in Washington, D.C., until she joined the Temple law faculty in Fall 1981. She received her LL.M. at Yale Law School in 1985 and, while on leave from Temple, served as Deputy Executive Director of the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Philadelphia and President of the Low-Income Housing Development Subsidiary and the Philadelphia Development Mortgage Assistance Corporation (1987-89). She was appointed the Charles Klein Professor of Law and Government at Temple, serving from 1996-98.
Active in many professional and academic organizations related to education, Professor Haddon recently served as a trustee of the Law School Admissions Council and is currently a member of the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. She is Vice-Chair of Smith College's Board of Trustees and has served on the Board of Governors of the Society of American Law Teachers (1984-89; 1990-present) ex-officio and was SALT's Co-President from 1998-2000. She was elected to the Executive Committee (1996-98) and to the Professional Development Committee (1990-93) of the Association of American Law Schools and was appointed a member of the AALS Resource Corps, which is a cadre of law professors trained to facilitate law school retreats. A member of the American Law Institute, Professor Haddon server for many years on the ALI-ABA Committee on Continuing Professional Education, chairing its subcommittee on Diversity in CLE.
Locally, she sits on a number of boards, among them, the Board of The Philadelphia Education Fund, the Samuel S. Fels Fund, and Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts. She was a member of the Philadelphia Bar Association Committee on Racial and Gender Bias (2003-06) and currently serves on the Philadelphia Bar Association's Committee to Promote Fairness in the Philadelphia Legal System. She has been a trustee of Women's Way and the Women's Law Project as well as the Public Interest Law Center and Friends Select School. She was a member of the Gender Commission of the Third Circuit Task Force on Equal Treatment in the Courts and a member of the Race Subcommittee of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania's Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System. She continues to work on bias and diversity related issues in the Philadelphia Bar Association and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Pennsylvania Bar Institute.
In July 2002, Professor Haddon was named one of fifty of the most influential minority attorneys in Pennsylvania by the Legal Intelligencer. She attended HERS (Summer Institute for Women in Higher Education) at Bryn Mawr College in 2001 and was selected to participate in the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching seminar in Legal Education in 2000.
This biography was made available by Temple University Beasley School of Law.
Constitutional Law Symposium
A prominent array of constitutional scholars, civil libertarians, policy analysts, lawyers, and judges gather annually at the Center for a symposium on a timely constitutional issue. The proceedings are published in the Drake Law Review.
The 2009 Constitutional Law Symposium titled "Global Perspectives on Religion, the State, and Constitutionalism" will be held on Saturday, April 4, 2009 from 8:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. at Drake Law School. Speakers include Professors Abdullah An'Nain from Emory Law, Rick Garnett from Notre Dame Law, Frank Ravitch from Michigan State Law, Laura Jenkins from the University of Cincinnati, Tom Farr from the Georgetown School of Foreign Science, and Jeremy Gunn, Director of the ACLU Religion and Law Project in D.C. Three hours of Iowa and four hours of federal CLE credit has been approved for this event.
The 2008 Constitutional Law Symposium titled "The Forgotten Constitutional Amendments" was held on Saturday, April 5, 2008 from 8:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. at Drake Law School. Speakers included: Randy Barnett (Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory, Georgetown Law School), Daniel Farber (Sho Sato Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley), Kurt Lash (Professor of Law and W. Joseph Ford Fellow, Loyola Law School Los Angeles), Michael Kent Curtis (Judge Donald L. Smith Professor in Constitutional and Public Law, Wake Forest Law School), Rebecca Zietlow (Charles W. Fornoff Professor of Law and Public Values, University of Toledo Law School), David Bogen (Professor Law Emeritus, University of Maryland Law School). C.L.E. credit was approved.
The 2007 Constitutional Law Symposium was titled “The ‘Undemocratic’ American Constitution.” It was held on April 7, 2007 from 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. at Drake Law School. Speakers included Sanford V. Levinson (W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law and Professor of Government, The University of Texas School of Law), Heather Gerken (Professor of Law, Yale Law School), Neal Devins (Goodrich Professor of Law, Professor of Government, and Director of the Institute of Bill of Rights Law, William and Mary School of Law), Donald Horowitz, the James B. Duke Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke Law School, and Saikrishna B. Prakash (Herzog Research Professor of Law, University of San Diego Law School). C.L.E. credit has been applied for.
The Drake Constitutional Law Center's Annual Symposium for 2005-2006 was titled "The Role of Courts in Social Change" It was held on April 8, 2006 at the law school. Speakers included Mark Tushnet (Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center), Jane Schacter (Edwin A. Heafey Jr. Visiting Professor of Law at Stanford Law School), John Eastman (Professor of Law, Chapman University School of Law and Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence at the Claremont Institute), Gerald Torres (Bryant Smith Chair in Law at the University of Texas Law School), Gerald Rosenberg ( Associate Professor of Political Science and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago).
The 2005 symposium focused on the War on Terror and its impact concerning issues of constitutionality. The 2003 symposium analyzed U.S. Supreme Court cases challenging affirmative action in admissions at both the undergraduate and law school levels. The 2002 symposium examined the nominating and confirming process of Supreme Court justices. The 2001 symposium explored the interface between the Constitution and the Internet. In recent years, Drake has been honored to host distinguished panelists such as Akhil Amar, Stephen Carter, Erwin Chemerinsky, Lawrence Lessig and Nadine Strossen.
Summer Institute in Constitutional Law
