The Amicus Curiae Lecture Series, sponsored by the Simon Perry Center for Constitutional Democracy at Marshall University, will welcome its final lecturer of the fall on Thursday, Nov. 20.
Samuel Issacharoff,professor of constitutional law at New York University Law School and one of the country’s foremost experts in the area of voting rights, will deliver a lecture titled “Ballot Bedlam.”
“Amid the debates about voter fraud and voter suppression, about race and politics, about abuse and integrity, lie some deeper questions about how the U.S. has structured its democracy,” Issacharoff said. “The Supreme Court’s decisions on Alabama’s Shelby County and on Arizona’s voter registration provide some interesting new clues to the complicated interrelation among law, the Constitution, race, and politics.”
Patricia Proctor, director of the Simon Perry Center for Constitutional Democracy, said, “Professor Issacharoff’s lecture will focus on one of the most important core issues in our democracy – ensuring that all eligible citizens have the unfettered right to vote. His entire career has been spent addressing this issue, either by litigating it, working on policy related to it, or teaching about it. I am delighted that he agreed to come to Marshall University to discuss the topic.”
Issacharoff, a 1983 graduate of Yale Law School, formerly practiced law for the Lawyers’ Committee for International Human Rights in Argentina and Uruguay on issues concerning the transition from dictatorship to civilian government and the prosecution of former military rulers. He also spent three years as a staff attorney handling voting rights litigation and other civil rights cases throughout the United States for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in Washington, D.C.
He is a prolific writer, having published dozens of articles in every leading law review. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Law Institute, and served as senior legal counsel to the Obama for America Campaign in 2008 and 2012. He has been a law school professor for 25 years, teaching at the University of Texas School of Law and Columbia Law School before joining the faculty at New York University School of Law in 2005.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 7 p.m. in Marshall University Foundation Hall, home of the Erickson Alumni Center. The Amicus Curiae Lecture Series is supported by a grant from the West Virginia Humanities Council.
