On May 18, at NYU Law’s 2023 Convocation, Sherrilyn Ifill ’87, president and director-counsel emeritus of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), will address the graduating JD class. Marta Cartabia, former Italian Minister of Justice, will be the keynote speaker at the ceremony for LLMs and other graduate degrees.
Ifill, an NYU Law trustee, served as LDF’s president and director-counsel from 2013 to 2022, providing a strong voice and leadership in support of racial justice and equity. She began her career as a fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, and joined the staff of the LDF as an assistant counsel in 1988, where she litigated voting rights cases for five years. In 1993, Ifill joined the faculty at University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore, teaching civil procedure and constitutional law for more than two decades. During this time, she pioneered a series of law clinics, including one of the earliest in the country focused on challenging legal barriers to the reentry of formerly incarcerated persons.
In addition to academic articles in leading law journals, Ifill has published numerous op-eds and commentaries in leading news outlets. Her 2008 book, On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century, laid the foundation for contemporary conversations about lynching and reconciliation. Ifill was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the world in 2021. Since 2022, she has been a senior fellow at the Ford Foundation.
Judge Cartabia, a former fellow at NYU Law, is an Italian jurist and academic who served as the Italian Republic’s Minister of Justice under Prime Minister Mario Draghi from February 2021 to October 2022. She is president emeritus of the Italian Constitutional Court, where she served from 2011 to 2020 as the first woman to lead Italy’s highest court in matters of constitutional law, and she is full professor of constitutional law at Bocconi University in Milan.
Cartabia has served as an expert for the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights in Vienna. She sits on the scientific and editorial boards of a number of law journals, including the advisory board of the International Journal of Constitutional Law. In 2021, Cartabia was made Knight Grand Cross in the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, the highest honor conferred by the nation for extraordinary leadership in civilian and military service.
Posted March 30, 2023