Intersecting Identities: Gender, Race, and the Politics of Supreme Court Nominations Online Program
Intersecting Identities: Gender, Race, and the Politics of Supreme Court Nominations
Thursday, March 3, 2022
6:00-7:00 p.m. EST
REGISTER | NYU Law calendar listing
Please join NYU Law’s Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Network; Law Alumni of Color Association; Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law; Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging; American Constitution Society; Black Allied Law Students Association; Women of Color Collective; and Law Women for a panel discussion on the pending Supreme Court nomination and confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. The dynamic panel of experts will discuss Judge Jackson's nomination and address questions including: Why are diversity and representation so central to the current nomination conversation? How do jurists’ identities and backgrounds inform their work on the bench? What other measures of diversity on the Court should we be talking about? How have critics used gender and race to distract from conversations about potential nominees’ qualifications? And how might Judge Jackson’s confirmation shift the overall dynamics on the Court in years to come?
- Melissa Murray (Welcome Remarks), Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law; Faculty Director, Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Network, NYU Law
- Alicia Menendez (Moderator), Journalist; Anchor, American Voices with Alicia Menendez
- Debo Adegbile ’94, Partner, WilmerHale
- Aimee Allison, Founder and President, She the People
- Tiffany Gardner ’01, CEO, ReflectUS
Welcome Remarks
Melissa Murray is the Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law at NYU and the Faculty Director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Network. Professor Murray is a leading expert in family law, constitutional law, and reproductive rights and justice, whose work has been published in numerous law journals. She is an author of Cases on Reproductive Rights and Justice, the first casebook to cover the field of reproductive rights and justice, and a co-editor of Reproductive Rights and Justice Stories. She has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, and provides commentary for popular media outlets, NPR, CNN, ABC, MSNBC, PBS, and the Strict Scrutiny podcast, of which she is a co-host. Professor Murray is an honors graduate of the University of Virginia and Yale Law School, where she was notes development editor of the Yale Law Journal. Following law school, Murray clerked for Sonia Sotomayor, then of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Stefan Underhill of the US District Court for the District of Connecticut. Prior to joining the NYU faculty, Professor Murray was on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where she was the recipient of the Rutter Award for Teaching Distinction. From March 2016 to June 2017, she served as interim dean of the Berkeley Law.
Panelists
Alicia Menendez (Moderator) anchors MSNBC’s American Voices with Alicia Menendez Saturday and Sunday nights from 6 to 8 p.m. ET. She is also the author of The Likeability Trap and host of the Latina to Latina podcast. Menendez joined MSNBC in October 2019. Prior to joining the network, Menendez served as a correspondent on Amanpour & Company on PBS and formerly hosted a nightly news and pop culture show on Fusion called Alicia Menendez Tonight. Her reporting and interviews have appeared on ABC News, Bustle, FusionTV, PBS, and Vice News. Born and raised in New Jersey, Menendez has been called “Ms. Millennial” by The Washington Post, “journalism’s new gladiator” by Elle, and a “content queen” by Marie Claire. Menendez is on Twitter at @AliciaMenendez.
Debo P. Adegbile ’94 is a partner in WilmerHale’s Government and Regulatory Litigation group and Chair of the firm’s Anti-discrimination practice. He works at the intersection of law, business, government enforcement, and policy. Debo has significant experience in commercial, government-facing, appellate, and United States Supreme Court litigation, as well as in complex investigations and strategic counseling in high-stakes matters. An expert on civil rights law and policy, Debo twice defended the constitutionality of two core provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court, including in Shelby County v. Holder. Debo was part of the WilmerHale team that successfully defended Harvard University’s admissions policies against a legal challenge in SFFA v. Harvard University in federal trial and appellate courts. In connection with his pro bono practice at WilmerHale, Debo led the WilmerHale team that co-authored the first of its kind report with Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez and the Innocence Project, 426 Years: An Examination of 25 Wrongful Convictions in Brooklyn, New York; counseled on the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Report on Police Reform and Racial Justice; assisted the legal team that successfully obtained the exoneration of Muhammad Abdul Aziz, who was wrongfully convicted of the assassination of Malcom X and served 20 years in prison. Debo currently serves as a Commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, appointed by President Obama in 2016. In that capacity, he has spearheaded the Commission’s hearings and reports in the areas of voting rights, hate crimes, sexual harassment, maternal health care disparities, and FEMA’s hurricane response. Previously, he served as Senior Counsel to Senator Patrick Leahy, then-Chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and, prior to that, as the Acting President and Director of Litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. He is the Chair of the Board of Trustees and a graduate of Connecticut College; a graduate and trustee of NYU School of Law; and Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Vera Institute of Justice.
Aimee Allison is a writer, democratic innovator, and visionary champion of racial and gender justice. She is the Founder and President of She the People, the nation’s leading organization dedicated to an America redefined and inspired by women of color. Renowned for her national efforts to build inclusive, multiracial coalitions, Allison organized and moderated the nation’s first presidential forum for women of color, attended by Presidential candidates and more than 1000 women from across the country, garnering major national press. At She the People, Allison leverages media, research and analysis to show the power of the women of color electorate, increase voter engagement, and advocate for racial, economic and gender justice. In her writings in The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post, and Essence Magazine, Allison has made the definitive case that women of color are the saving graces of our American democracy. Her early experience growing up in a multiracial family and searching for belonging in mostly white communities honed her ability to build bridges with others often marginalized and dismissed. Her work is firmly grounded in finding shared history and a common vision to create new political and cultural pathways to change. Allison holds a B.A. in History and M.A in Education from Stanford University. In the early 1990’s, Allison earned a rare honorable discharge from the U.S. Army as a conscientious objector, launching 30 years of efforts to build communities and launch campaigns grounded in love, justice, and belonging. She is at work on several groundbreaking media projects highlighting the legacy and history-making impact of women of color as the vanguards for multiracial solidarity and democracy. And as she told Diablo Magazine recently, her belief in multiracial democracy [is] “my whole life’s work. … I have stepped into a very powerful legacy and will do my part to prepare the next generation.”
Tiffany Gardner ’01 is the CEO of ReflectUS, the cross-partisan coalition working across the country to increase women’s political leadership at the local, state, and federal level. She brings over a decade of extensive international experience in human rights advocacy and domestic public interest. She has worked on women’s rights, human rights and grassroots organizing throughout Africa, Southeast Asia, and the United States. She worked with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the United Nations International Law Commission and Human Rights Watch and recently was the co-founder and director of One World Exchange where she organized international solidarity coalitions of young people. Tiffany is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.