Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel, co-authors of "Before Roe v. Wade: Voices That Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court's Ruling" (2010), will participate in a panel discussion at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10, in Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall, on the Princeton University campus. The event, "Before (and After) Roe v. Wade: New Perspectives on Backlash," is sponsored by the Program in Law and Public Affairs (LAPA). Discussants include University Provost Christopher Eisgruber; Michael McCann, Crane/LAPA Fellow, University of Washington; and Gordon Silverstein, University of Connecticut School of Law. LAPA Director Kim Lane Scheppele will act as moderator. Admission is free and open to the public.
Today, many Americans blame the Supreme Court for polarizing conflict over abortion. If only the court had stayed its hand or decided Roe v. Wade on narrower grounds, they argue, the nation would have reached a political settlement and avoided backlash. Greenhouse and Siegel examine the escalation of the abortion conflict during the decade before Roe and ask what it teaches us about the logic of conflict in the decades following. Where others have deplored the abortion conflict as resulting from courts "shutting down politics," they approach the abortion conflict as an expression of politics — a conflict in which the Supreme Court was not the only or even the most important actor.
**NOTE FOR MEDIA: This event is open to the media but no video recording or photography will be permitted. For more information, contact Judi Rivkin at 609-258-8377.**
In 2009, Linda Greenhouse became the Joseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School. This followed a 40-year career at The New York Times, including 30 years covering the United States Supreme Court. At Yale, Greenhouse is a member of the faculty of the Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic and teaches other Supreme Court-related courses, including a seminar on the court during the Burger years. She has received numerous journalism awards, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1998; the Carey McWilliams Award from the American Political Science Association in 2002 for "a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics"; and the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2004. In addition to the book she wrote with Siegel, Greenhouse's recent publications include a biography of Justice Harry A. Blackmun, "Becoming Justice Blackmun" (2005). A new book, "The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction," will be published by Oxford University Press early in 2012. Greenhouse is a graduate of Radcliffe College, Harvard. In 1978, she received a Master of Studies in Law from Yale Law School.
Reva Siegel is the Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale University. Her writing draws on legal history to explore questions of law and inequality, and to analyze how courts interact with representative government and popular movements in interpreting the Constitution. Siegel is currently writing on the role of social movement conflict in guiding constitutional change, in debates over race equality, originalism and gun rights, sex discrimination, and reproductive rights. In addition to the book she wrote with Greenhouse, her publications include "The Constitution in 2020" (edited with Jack Balkin, 2009); "Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking" (with Brest, Levinson, Balkin & Amar, 2006); and "Directions in Sexual Harassment Law" (edited with Catharine A. MacKinnon, 2004). She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and serves in the American Society for Legal History, the Association for American Law Schools, and the American Constitution Society.
Christopher Eisgruber, provost of Princeton University, also serves as the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the University Center for Human Values. Eisgruber is the author of "The Next Justice: Repairing the Supreme Court Appointments Process" (2007); "Religious Freedom and the Constitution" (with Lawrence G. Sager, 2007); and "Constitutional Self- Government" (2001), as well as numerous articles in books and academic journals. Before joining the faculty in 2001, he clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and for Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme Court, then served for 11 years on the faculty of the New York University School of Law. Eisgruber earned an A.B. magna cum laude in physics from Princeton, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He holds a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School and is a member of the American Law Institute.
Michael McCann, the 2011-12 Crane/LAPA Fellow, is the Gordon Hirabayashi Professor for the Advancement of Citizenship at the University of Washington, where he founded the university's Comparative Law and Society Studies (CLASS) Center and the undergraduate Law, Societies, and Justice program. He is also a board member for the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies and the University of Washington Center for Human Rights as well as an adjunct professor in the University of Washington School of Law. McCann has published widely in scholarly journals has both authored and edited several books. Two of these books, "Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization" (1994) and "Distorting the Law: Politics, Media, and the Litigation Crisis" (with Bill Haltom, 2004) have, between them, won six major book awards from professional academic associations. McCann has served in many capacities in the Law and Society Association and is its current president (2011-2013 term).
Gordon Silverstein is a visiting professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law. His work focuses on American and comparative constitutional law, American political institutions and political thought, national security law and the separation of powers. Silverstein's most recent book, "Law's Allure: How Law Shapes, Constrains, Saves and Kills Politics" (Cambridge University Press, 2009), won the C. Herman Pritchett Award for the best book published in the field of law and courts from the law and courts section of the American Political Science Association. After graduating from Cornell University, Silverstein worked as a journalist for The Wall Street Journal in New York and Hong Kong, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Silverstein then returned to the academic world, earning a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. Silverstein spent the 2010-11 academic year at Princeton as a LAPA Fellow. He has been a faculty member at Dartmouth College, Rice University, the University of Minnesota and the University of California-Berkeley, and also served as a program director for the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C.
Visit the LAPA website for more information about the program.
