The Marks Lectures Series

Carol Sanger is the Barbara Aronstein Black Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.  She received her B.A. degree in 1970 from Wellesley College and her J.D. degree from the University of Michigan in 1976.  She began teaching at the University of Oregon, taught at Santa Clara University Law School, visited at Stanford Law School, and joined the Columbia faculty in 1996.  Professor Sanger now also holds a position as Senior Research Fellow at St. Anne’s College, Oxford. 

Erwin Chemerinsky (born May 14, 1953) is an American lawyer and law professor. He is a prominent scholar in United States constitutional law and federal civil procedure. He is the current and founding dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law, which began classes in the fall semester of 2009.

He then earned a bachelor's degree in communication from Northwestern University in 1975 where he competed as a debater and then attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 1978.

Chemerinsky taught for over twenty years at the University of Southern California Law School and at DePaul University College of Law before moving to Duke University on July 1, 2004, and then UC Irvine in July 2008.

Donald Kennedy received A.B. and Ph.D. degrees in biology from Harvard in 1956 and has served on the faculty of Stanford University from 1960 to the present. During his time at Stanford University, he served as Chair of the Department of Biology from 1964-1972; as Director of the Program in Human Biology from 1973-1977; as Provost from 1979 to 1980; and as President from 1980 to 1992. On returning to the faculty, he was resident faculty member at Stanford in Washington (1992-93), taught in the Program in Human Biology, as well as Introduction to the Humanities (1993-2001). He was Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration from 1977-79.

Professor Kennedy was the editor-in-chief of Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is a Center for the Environmental Science & Policy senior fellow by courtesy. His present research program entails policy on such trans-boundary environmental problems as: major land-use changes; economically-driven alterations in agricultural practice; global climate change; and the development of regulatory policies.

Kennedy is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He served on the National Commission for Public Service and the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government, and as a founding director of the Health Effects Institute. He currently serves as a director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and as co-chair of the National Academies’ Project on Science, Technology and Law.

Justice Breyer was born in San Francisco, California, on August 15, 1938. He married Joanna Hare in 1967 and has three children - Chloe, Nell, and Michael. He received an A.B. in 1959 from Stanford University, a B.A. in 1961 from Magdalen College, Oxford, and an LL.B. in 1964 from Harvard Law School. He served as a law clerk for Justice Arthur Goldberg of the Supreme Court of the United States during the 1964 term, as Special Assistant to the Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Antitrust from 1965-1967, as Assistant Special Prosecutor of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force in 1973, as Special Counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from 1974-1975, and as Chief Counsel of the Committee from 1979-1980. He served as Assistant Professor, Professor of Law, and Lecturer at Harvard Law School from 1967-1994, as Professor at the Harvard College Kennedy School of Government from 1977-1980, and as Visiting Professor at the College of Law in Sydney, Australia, and the University of Rome. He also served as a Judge and Chief Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit from 1990-1994, and as a member of both the Judicial Conference of the United States from 1990-1994 and the U.S. Sentencing Commission from 1985-1989. Nominated as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States by President Clinton, he assumed that office on August 3, 1994.

Judge Navanethem Pillay has been both a symbol and a standard-bearer for human rights in South Africa, in the region, and throughout the world. She represented many opponents of apartheid, and handled precedent-setting cases to establish the effects of solitary confinement, the right of political prisoners to due process, and the family violence syndrome as a defense. In 1995, she became the first black woman attorney appointed acting judge of the High Court of South Africa by the Mandela Government. On the heels of that appointment, Judge Pillay was elected by the United Nations General Assembly to be a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. In 2003, Judge Pillay was elected by the Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute as one of the 18 Judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) based in The Hague.

Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg (born March 15, 1933) is an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. Ginsburg was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton with the support of Republican Senator Orrin Hatch. Ginsburg took the oath of office August 10, 1993. Generally she votes with the liberal wing of the court. She is the second female Justice (after Sandra Day O'Connor), and the first Jewish female Justice. Ginsburg spent a considerable portion of her career as an advocate for the equal citizenship status of women and men as a constitutional principle. She engaged in advocacy as a volunteer lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, and was a member of its board of directors and one of its general counsel in the 1970s. She served as a professor at Rutgers School of Law—Newark and Columbia Law School. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.