Randall L. Kennedy To Speak on Civil Rights Era

Professor Randall L. Kennedy, an expert in the intersection of racial conflict and legal institutions in American life, will deliver the McCorkle Lecture at the University of Virginia School of Law on March 23.

Kennedy will speak on “From Protest to Law: Triumphs and Defeats in Struggles for Racial Justice, 1950-1970” in Caplin Pavilion at 4 p.m. The event is open to the public and parking is available in D2 lots.

Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School, where he teaches courses on contracts, criminal law and the regulation of race relations.

Awarded the 1998 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for “Race, Crime, and the Law,” Kennedy writes for a wide range of scholarly and general interest publications. His other books include “For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law”; “The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency”; and “Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption.” In 2020 he appeared on the Law School podcast “Common Law” to discuss an essay from his latest book “Say It Loud! On Race, Law, History, and Culture.”

Kennedy is a member of the American Law Institute, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Association. He is a trustee emeritus of Princeton University.

He served as a law clerk for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

The McCorkle Lectureship was established in memory of Claiborne Ross McCorkle 1910, by his widow, Hazel Webb McCorkle, and his son, George M. McCorkle.