EUGENE–The role of the Supreme Court in the recent presidential election will be the topic of the Oregon Humanities Center’s 2000-01 Colin Ruagh Thomas O’Fallon Memorial Lecture in Law and American Culture on Monday, April 9, at the University of Oregon.

Frank I. Michelman, a Harvard University law professor, will present "Machiavelli in Robes? The Court in the Election" at 7:30 p.m. in Room 175 of the Knight Law Center, 1515 Agate St. A brief reception will follow.

Michelman, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard, says "some call the Supreme Court’s role in the Year 2000 election a betrayal of the rule of law. Others warmly commend the court for having done its duty to guard the country from serious loss or damage.

"Both claims reflect prior ideas about the court’s role in American politics and government," he notes. "What exactly are those prior ideas, fully spelled out? What are their further implications? How should we respond to them in the light of the election experience?"

Michelman, who has taught at Harvard since 1963, received his bachelor of arts degree in history from Yale in 1957 and his LL.B. degree from Harvard Law School in 1960. From 1961 to 1962, he clerked for former U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr.

The author of "Brennan and Democracy" (1999), Michelman has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, property law and theory, local government law, and jurisprudence.

Michelman was the 2000 Storrs Lecturer at Yale University, where he spoke on "Constitutional Essentialism: On the Idea of the Constitution in the Liberal Justification of Politics." He is the recent past president of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy, and he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Over the past several years, he has consulted on matters of constitutionalism in South Africa.

For more information about the talk, or to arrange for disability accommodations by April 2, browse <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~humanctr/> or call the Oregon Humanities Center,
(541) 346-3934.

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