Challenges to American democracy focus of upcoming UC College of Law talk

Michael Klarman, Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, will discuss challenges to democracy-from political gerrymandering to the President’s challenge of norms—in his talk, “Is American Democracy at Risk?” The event will be held 12:15 p.m., Thursday, March 12, in Rm. 114 at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.  Professor A. Christopher Bryant will provide the introduction.

American democracy is facing dual challenges. First, our president challenges basic norms of democracy, such as respect for a free press, an independent judiciary, the separation of law enforcement and politics, transparency in government, and the separation of public and private interests in the administration of government. Second, today’s Republican Party, especially at the state level, engages in extreme political gerrymandering of legislative districts, purges voter rules, imposes photo ID requirements for voting, reduces early voting hours and polling places, makes it difficult to put referenda on the ballot and ignores the results of referenda when it dislikes them, undermines the power of governors’ offices when Democrats win gubernatorial elections, and pursues various other mechanisms for constricting the size of the electorate. Professor Klarman will describe these challenges to democracy, seek to explain why these things are happening now, and offer some thoughts about how to defend democracy in response.

Professor Michael J. Klarman is an expert on constitutional law and constitutional history with a particular focus on race. His articles have appeared in leading law journals such as the Michigan Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Virginia Law Review, and the Supreme Court Review. He also comments in leading publications such as the New York Times, the Boston Globe, USA Today, and Time Magazine.

Klarman’s scholarly work and teaching has garnered him several awards, including the Roger and Madeleine Traynor Faculty Achievement Award for Excellence in Legal Scholarship, the University of Virginia Harrison Achievement Award, the State Council of Higher Education Faculty Award, and the All-University Teaching Award, one of the highest honors for excellence in teaching, research, and service at the University of Virginia. In 2009 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

His first book, "From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality," received the 2005 Bancroft Prize in History.  He published two books in the several years later: "Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement and Unfinished Business: Racial Equality in American History," which is part of Oxford’s Inalienable Rights series.  In 2012, he published "From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage."

Klarman received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, his J.D. from Stanford Law School, and his D. Phil. in legal history from the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar.  After law school, Klarman clerked for the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.  He joined the faculty at the University of Virginia School of Law in 1987 and served there almost 20 years as the James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of History. He has also served as the Ralph S. Tyler, Jr., Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, Distinguished Visiting Lee Professor of Law at the Marshall Wythe School of Law at the College of William & Mary, Visiting Professor at Stanford Law School, and Visiting Professor at Yale Law School. 

Founded in 1833, the University of Cincinnati College of Law has the distinction of being the first law school west of the Alleghenies. From humble beginnings 175 years ago in a room above Timothy Walker’s law offices to its home today, Cincinnati Law has been on the leading edge of legal education. Thousands of lawyers have graduated from the law school, and about one-third practice in the Greater Cincinnati community, working in all areas of the law. For more information about the College of Law, visit www.law.uc.edu.