Video & Audio

Professor Frederick Schauer asked students to consider what it is to “think like a lawyer” at a Student Scholarly Lunch on Wednesday.

Professor Anne Coughlin discusses the status of the feminist movement in contemporary culture and remaining legal roadblocks to equal rights during a Law School Foundation Board and Alumni Council meeting Friday.

From FDR to Barack Obama, Law School Professor Robert Sayler examines how good -- or bad -- oral advocacy has affected modern presidential elections and discusses best practices for public speaking.

Recognizing the role of emotion is critical to a better understanding of family law, experts said Thursday during a conference on law and emotion held in Caplin Pavilion.

Professor Caleb Nelson discusses why the structure of the federal system compels courts to continue drawing certain rules of decision from general American jurisprudence rather than from the local law of any individual state. Nelson spoke Friday at an alumni luncheon.

Judges have a duty to be sincere when making their decisions because it is necessary to ensure that rulings are legitimate, Associate Professor Micah Schwartzman said April 7 during the first in a series of “Meet the Author” lectures sponsored by the Virginia Law Review.

Judges are too often nominated for how they view today’s hot political issues rather than for their overall decision-making abilities, said J. Harvie Wilkinson III ’72, a judge on the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Twice in American history the imprisonment rate in the United States has exploded. These explosions in the rate that people are incarcerated correlates with two crusades by the theologically conservative Protestant church against vice, argued William J. Stuntz '85 at the Meador Lecture Oct. 18.

Peter Rubin, founder of the American Constitution Society and professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, moderated a discussion with two 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges regarding judicial decisions made at the appeals court level.

A series of five Supreme Court rulings from 1901 to 1922, known as the Insular Cases, ensured Puerto Rico’s relationship with the United States would remain unclear to this day, explained panelists at the Latin American Law Organization spring colloquium March 29.

Originalism is a highly effective political strategy, rather than simply a jurisprudential philosophy of adhering to the exact text of the Constitution and the original intent of the framers, said Robert Post at the biennial McCorkle Lecture March 29.

Recently, several leaders in the legal community have voiced concerns that judicial independence is in jeopardy. Thanks to Americans’ recognition of the importance of an independent judiciary, now and throughout history, judicial independence is safe, Judge William H. Pryor said.

The struggle for control of the Supreme Court in recent years has been defined by how justices interact with and react to each other as much as their differing legal philosophies, said Jan Crawford Greenburg of ABC News at a Law School talk.

Chief Judge Paul Michel '66 of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) aimed to dispel some myths surrounding the court in his talk at the Law School March 15.

Dean Jeffries moderates a panel featuring former White House counsel and deputy counsel, as well as assistant and associate attorney generals from the Bush, Carter, and Clinton presidencies.

Laws governing side agreements—agreements made outside of publicly known contracts—should focus on protecting the legitimate interests of third parties such as investors, said law professor George Cohen at a Nov. 7 lecture.

Americans should turn to universal principles, such as the concept of personal responsibility, to decide whether their society should follow a tolerant religious model or a tolerant secular model, said Jefferson Medal in Law recipient Ronald Dworkin at a lecture April 12.

The Constitution was far more democratic, slavocratic, geostrategically motivated and unfinished at its inception than contemporary wisdom often suggests, Yale Law School Professor Akhil Amar explained during a panel discussion of his most recent book, America’s Constitution: A Biography.

Is honor relevant to future lawyers? "Ethical advocacy—honorable advocacy—is good advocacy," argues Professor Earl Dudley Jr. at an event sponsored by the Student Bar Association and the Honor Committee.