Professor Lovell discusses Iowa Supreme Court's role in civil right's history

Iowa: Bright Radical Star for Civil Rights

February 7, 2012, 7 p.m. Cowles Library Reading Room

Russell Lovell, professor of law at Drake Law School, will talk about the Iowa Supreme Court’s profound role in civil rights history. In 1868, the first dean of the Drake Law School, Chester Cole, authored the Iowa Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Clark v. Muscatine School Board, which held that racial segregation of the public schools was unconstitutional — 86 years before Brown v. Board of Education. The Iowa Supreme Court was again on the forefront when it became one of the first courts in the nation to rule that the ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional in the groundbreaking Varnum v. Brien.