Ben Crump, renowned civil rights and personal injury attorney and one of the nation’s foremost lawyers and advocates for social justice, will present the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Endowed Lecture on February 20 at the Agnes Flanagan Chapel on the campus of Lewis & Clark College.

Mr. Crump will be joined by Lewis & Clark Law Professor Robert Klonoff for a Q/A format. Professor Klonoff has worked closely with Ben Crump as co-counsel in ongoing litigation on behalf of the family of Henrietta Lacks against companies that profited by the use of Henrietta’s “immortal cell line.”

This is a hybrid event. 

To attend remotely via Zoom, please RSVP here.

There is still space at the lecture in-person, please let us know you are coming: RSVP here

Attendance at the event qualifies for 1.0 MCLE “Access to Justice” credit. (RSVP and advance request for CLE required.)

The Martin Luther King Jr. Endowed Lecture Series

Each year Lewis & Clark Law School hosts an endowed lecture honoring the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made possible by a generous grant from alums Jacqueline Alexander ’07 and Lee Matthews ’73. The mission is to bring internationally recognized legal scholars, practitioners, jurists and civil rights leaders to Lewis & Clark to present a lecture to our law school community on issues of diversity, race relations, tolerance, and equal rights.

A leading voice in Civil Procedure, Simona Grossi, Theodore A. Bruinsma Fellow Professor of Law at the Loyola Law School of Loyola Marymount University, is the 2022-23 International Law Distinguished Visitor with her lecture, “Substantive Due Process After Dobbs v. Jackson: A Principled Approach to Protect our Constitutional Rights Against the Current Challenges.”

Professor Grossi’s Lecture will discuss her cutting-edge paper, THE U.S. CONSTITUTION IS NOT A CODE: UNRAVELING THE IDEA AND THE MEANING OF SUBSTANTIVE DUE PROCESS, that was recently selected by the National Civil Justice Institute for presentation at a Southern Methodist University Symposium. Professor Grossi has granted us special permission to share an early release of the paper prior to its publication. The paper is attached as “Related Content” to this event listing.

Lunch with Tulinabo Mushingi, US Ambassador to Angola and São Tomé y Principe and former ambassador to Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, & Burkina Faso, together with Ambassador Niels Marquardt (retired), Lewis & Clark College Diplomat in Residence. Ambassadors Mushingi and Marquardt will talk about international career options, including at the State Department and foreign service, as well as other ways to work abroad. They are also happy to share some of the challenges they have faced and the fun they have had as America’s top diplomat in nine different African nations. 

The Oregon Supreme Court will hear two cases at Lewis & Clark Law School, as part of their efforts to connect Oregonians with the work of the judicial system.

Lewis & Clark welcomes keynote speaker Jared Bartie, a sports industry veteran and partner in the Corporate & Financial Services Department at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP. Bartie will be joined by Ben Lauritsen, Senior Vice President & General Counsel of the Portland Trail Blazers.

They will be discussing Jared Bartie’s career path, his experiences working in-house and within Big Law, including his pivotal career moments, the challenges he faced as well as his career highlights, and the differences between working as an attorney in-house and in Big Law. Bartie will note the people who influenced him and the lessons he learned from them, as well as how he has worked to give it back and pay it forward. 

The Lewis & Clark Law Review hosted a symposium on April 17, 2021 featuring scholarship on race and criminal justice reform. A recording of the Zoom event is available for viewing here. 

Please join us for an Evening with Frank Pommersheim, Professor Emeritus, University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law .

Professor Pommersheim will be discussing a case study on Tribal-State relations during the pandemic.

The 2021 Distinguished International Law Visitor is Philippe Sands, Professor of Laws and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals, University College London, University of London. He will speak about the flight of Nazis from Germany to Argentina, as well as the origins of the legal concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Please join us for a Celebration of Life in honor of Jeffrey D. Jones: Beloved Professor, Husband, Son, Brother, Uncle, Friend.