U.S. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Bellwood Lecture To Be Telecast Live in Boise Sept. 18
Wednesday, September 10 2003
Sept. 10, 2003^BOISE – Treasure Valley residents, the law and justice community and students may watch a live telecast in Boise of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg delivering the University of Idaho law school's Bellwood Lecture, 5 p.m. (MT) Thursday, Sept. 18.^Public viewing will be at UI Boise, 800 Park Blvd. Suite 200, in Classroom A-1.^"Looking Beyond Our Borders: The Value of a Comparative Perspective in Constitutional Adjudication" will explore relationships between America’s “living constitution” and legal systems of other countries. Justice Ginsburg will discuss the global dimensions of American court decisions involving constitutional rights, and how international perspectives can enrich the analysis of such issues.^“Justice Ginsburg is one of the most important lawyers and jurists of our time and has created a lasting legacy of decisions and scholarship in support of equal justice under law,” said UI Law Dean Don Burnett. ^Allen Derr, a Boise attorney who argued Reed v. Reed in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971, will introduce the Bellwood speaker. Justice Ginsburg assisted in this landmark case from Idaho that found gender-based discrimination violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. As a practicing attorney, she litigated and won a number of other key cases solidifying a constitutional principle against gender-based discrimination.^Justice Ginsburg joined the highest court in the land as associate Supreme Court justice in 1993, following service as a judge of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia from 1980 to 1993. Her legal career began with a U.S. District Court clerkship in New York after she received her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University. She attended Harvard Law School and earned a law degree from Columbia Law School. She later served as associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure, eventually becoming a professor of law at Rutgers University. She then returned to Columbia Law School, where she became the first woman to hold a tenured professorship.^During her career in legal education, Justice Ginsburg became known for her work to promote gender equality and civil rights. She co-founded the Women's Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, served as the American Civil Liberties Union general counsel and participated on its national board of directors. In 1999, Justice Ginsburg received the American Bar Association's Thurgood Marshall Award for her significant contributions to the advancement of gender equality and civil rights.^The annual Bellwood lecture draws hundreds of students, attorneys, judges, human rights activists and community members from the region. It has featured such speakers as Brian Stevenson, executive director of Alabama’s Equal Justice Initiative; former Attorney General Janet Reno; Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Antonin Scalia; and Pulitzer-prize winning historian David Halberstam.^Sponsored by UI’s College of Law, the lecture brings prominent leaders in the justice system to Idaho to discuss current issues of justice and law. It is named after the late Sherman J. Bellwood, an Idaho District Court judge of 20 years, an Idaho native and a 1939 UI graduate who practiced law until 1981. He funded this largest endowed lectureship at UI.^Judge Bellwood earned his doctoral law degree from the University of Michigan in 1941, served five years in the military and practiced private law for 15 years. He was president of the Idaho State Bar and was the Idaho delegate to the American Bar Association for a number of years.^CONTACTS: Law Dean Don Burnett, dburnett@uidaho.edu, (208) 885-4977, LeAnn Phillips, Bellwood project manager, leann@uidaho.edu, (509) 758-6990; Lee Dillion, director of law programs at UI Boise, (208) 364-4013, dillion@uidaho.edu; or Nancy Hilliard, University Communications, (208) 885-6567, hilliard@uidaho.edu^^Editor’s note: Upon request, a copy of Justice Ginsburg’s remarks may be obtained after the speech. Her photo and biography also are available at www.law.uidaho.edu/Bellwood/Ginsburg.asp^-30-^NH-9/10/03-LAW^
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