Dartmouth Events

Livestream Link: https://dartgo.org/volklecture

Co-sponsored with the Dartmouth Lawyers Association & the Dartmouth Legal Studies Faculty Group

Courts, Myths, and the Foundation of Liberty: Exploring Misperceptions about Judging and the Threat to Our Independent Judiciary

Speaker:
Beth Robinson ’86
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit

Host:
Susan J. Brison
Eunice and Julian Cohen Professor for the Study of Ethics and Human Values
Professor of Philosophy

Moderator:
Herschel Nachlis
Research Assistant Professor of Govt.
Policy Fellow, Rockefeller Center

Lecture Info:
If Americans lose faith in our independent Judiciary, the foundation of our liberty will weaken. One threat to public confidence in the courts is a misunderstanding of how judges do our jobs. Using actual cases, the presentation will explore the practice and challenge of interpreting the law, in an effort to move beyond common myths about judging to more nuanced understanding.

Speaker Bio:
Judge Beth Robinson was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Nov. 2021. Prior to her appointment to the federal court of appeals, she served as an Assoc. Justice on the Vt. Supreme Court for nearly a decade.
 
Before her time on the bench, Robinson served as Counsel to Vt. Governor Peter Shumlin for nearly a year, and practiced law at Langrock Sperry & Wool in Middlebury and Burlington, Vt. for 18 years. Her varied civil practice included workers’ compensation and personal injury, employment, family, and civil rights matters. She was best known for her leadership and advocacy for the freedom to marry for same-sex couples in Vt.  
 
Judge Robinson graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth in 1986, and Univ. of Chicago Law School, where she was elected to Order of the Coif, in 1989. After law school, she clerked for Judge David B. Sentelle, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Host Bio:
Susan J. Brison is Eunice and Julian Cohen Professor for the Study of Ethics and Human Values at Dartmouth and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Princeton Univ. She has been a Mellon Fellow, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, and a Member of the School of Social Science at the Inst. for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. She has published scholarly articles about feminist philosophy, free speech, gender-based violence, and other topics and is the author of Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self and co-editor of Contemporary Perspectives on Constitutional Interpretation and Free Speech in the Digital Age. She has also raised public awareness of rape, domestic violence, pornography, and racist hate speech through international talks, radio and television interviews, and articles in Time, The Guardian, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The New York Times.  

Moderator Bio:
Herschhel Nachlis is Research Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Government and Policy Fellow in the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences.

He studies and teaches American politics, law, and public policy, focusing on health policy, regulation, and political institutions. His work has been published in journals including JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association and Studies in American Political Development and public outlets including The Washington Post and STAT.
 
He received his PhD and MA in Politics and Social Policy from Princeton and BA in Political Science from Macalester.