The Law Library of Congress will host Professor Risa L. Goluboff in a celebration of Constitution Day 2013. The title of Professor Goluboff’s lecture is “How the Constitution Changes: Social and Political Aspects of the Law.” This program is part of the Law Library’s annual celebration of Constitution Day and Citizenship Day–a federal holiday that is observed each year to commemorate the signing of the U.S. Constitution on Sept. 17, 1787, and to “recognize all who, by coming of age or by naturalization, have become citizens.”
This program will be held at 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 17, in the Montpelier Room, located on the sixth floor of the Library’s James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. The event is free and open to the public; tickets are not required.
Professor Risa L. Goluboff will discuss how changes in constitutional interpretation occur over time. Professor Goluboff will describe how social movements, judges, lawyers, legislators, administrators, and community pressure all contribute to new understandings of the Constitution. To illustrate these forces, Professor Goluboff will draw from her current book project on the changing constitutional status of vagrancy laws in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the social transformations of that era.
Goluboff is a professor of law and history at the University of Virginia (UVA). She teaches constitutional law, civil rights litigation, and legal and constitutional history, and she directs UVA’s joint J.D.-M.A. program in history. In 2011, she received the University of Virginia’s All-University Teaching Award. She is an affiliated GAGE scholar at the Miller Center and a faculty affiliate at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies. In 2012, Goluboff was named a distinguished lecturer by the Organization of American Historians. Her book, “The Lost Promise of Civil Rights“ (Harvard University Press, 2007), explores varying understandings of civil rights in the era before “Brown v. Board of Education.” The book was co-winner of the 2008 James Willard Hurst Prize, awarded by the Law and Society Association for the best work in socio-legal history. Goluboff is also co-editor (with Myriam Gilles) of “Civil Rights Stories“ (Foundation Press, 2008). Goluboff graduated summa cum laude with an A.B. from Harvard College, in history and sociology. She earned a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. in history from Princeton University.
This event marks the second time that Professor Goluboff will speak at a Law Library event this year. In May, Professor Goluboff was part of our distinguished Law Day panel.
Mark your calendars for this worthwhile event! For those of our readers who will not be able to make it to the event, we will have a member of the In Custodia Legis team attend on your behalf and blog about it afterwards. We will also live tweet the event via Twitter @LawLibCongress.
Update: The event video was added below.