Event

From the Penn Carey Law website:

Dean and Bernard G. Segal Professor of Law
Sophia Z. Lee
Cordially invites you to the
Owen J. Roberts Lecture in Constitutional Law

Power and Possibility at the U.S. Supreme Court: A Historian's View of the Most Recent Term

Speaker: Karen M. Tani L'07, PhD'11

Tuesday, October 29th, 2024
4:30 PM
Michael A. Fitts Auditorium
Reception to follow in the Haaga Lounge

Register Now

The U.S. Supreme Court is one of the most important and closely watched institutions in modern American life. And yet aspects of the Court’s power remain obscure to the public. Drawing on methods and insights from the discipline of history, this lecture emphasizes the influence that the Court exerts over the legal questions on its agenda, the people and problems that it makes visible, and the stories that it tells about both litigants and itself. The U.S. Supreme Court is one of the most important and closely watched institutions in modern American life. And yet aspects of the Court’s power remain obscure to the public. Drawing on her forthcoming Foreword to the Harvard Law Review’s annual Supreme Court issue, Professor Tani’s lecture emphasizes the influence that the Court exerts over the legal questions on its agenda, the people and the problems that it makes visible, and the stories that it tells, about both litigants and itself. She illustrates these points by examining major decisions from the Supreme Court’s most recent term, including in cases involving administrative law, the Second Amendment, and presidential immunity. 

This program has been approved for a total of 1.0 Substantive CLE credits for Pennsylvania lawyers. Attendees seeking CLE credit can make a payment via cash or check made payable to The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania on the day of the event or prior to the event via the online registration link in the amount of $40.00 ($20.00 public interest/non-profit attorneys). In order to receive the appropriate amount of credit, evaluation forms must be completed.

Penn Carey Law Alumni receive CLE credits free through The W.P. Carey Foundation’s generous commitment to Lifelong Learning.

Professor Karen M. Tani L'07, PhD'11

Karen Tani joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 2020 as the Seaman Family University Professor. A distinguished legal historian, she is a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor, with joint appointments in Penn Carey Law and the Department of History in the School of Arts & Sciences. 

Her legal-historical research has focused on pressing contemporary issues, including economic inequality, civil rights, sexual violence, federalism, and the administrative state.  Her current research is on the legal concept of disability and its role in modern American governance. She is the author of States of Dependency: Welfare, Rights, and American Governance, 1935-1972 (Cambridge University Press, 2016), which won the 2017 William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Book Prize, awarded annually to the best book in the field of American legal history by an early career scholar. Other published work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal, the Law & History Review, and the Disability Studies Quarterly, among other outlets. She is authoring the Foreword to the Harvard Law Review’s annual Supreme Court issue, due out in mid-November.

As a leader in the field of U.S. Legal History, Professor Tani has served many of the fields most important journals and institutions, including the American Society for Legal History, the Law & History Review, the American Journal of Legal History, and the Journal of American Constitutional History. At Penn, she directs the JD/PhD program in American legal history, runs the Legal History Workshop, and helps administer the Minor in Legal Studies and History.