The Jonathan I. Charney Distinguished Lecture in International Law honors Professor Charney, one of the world's preeminent experts on international law, who held the Lee S. & Charles A. Speir Chair at Vanderbilt Law School until his death in 2002. The series funds academic lectures and other presentations on international law by distinguished figures in the field. Past lecturers have included Paul Ney JD/MBA'84 , General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Defense, Sir Howard Morrison, a judge in the Appeals Division of the International Criminal Court based in The Hague, Netherlands, Sir Michael Wood, a senior fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, Fatou B. Bensouda, Chief Prosecutor, International Criminal Court, and David Caron, President, American Society of International Law.
Each year, the Victor S. Johnson Lecture features a distinguished speaker who addresses a certain aspect of the law and its relation to public policy. The lecture is endowed by Victor S. (Torry) Johnson III '74. Past lecturers have included Zach Fardon '92 (BA'88), U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Richard Susskind, Michael Olivas, William B. Bates Distinguished Chair of Law at University of Houston Law Center, and Randall L. Kennedy, Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
This annual lecture, scheduled during the week of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, addresses civil rights issues and history. Past lecturers have included Professor Jamal Greene, Dwight Professor of Law at Columbia Law School whose scholarship focuses on the structure of legal and constitutional argument, Professor Eleanor Brown, a Jamaican national, of George Washington University, Professor Paul D. Butler of Georgetown Law Center who researches and teaches in the areas of criminal law, race relations law, and critical theory, Dylan Penningroth, a professor of history at Northwestern University who specializes in African American and socio-legal history, Kenneth W. Mack, the inaugural Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, D'Army Bailey, retired circuit court judge and one of the founders of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Judge Roger Gregory of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Georgetown University Law Professor Paul Butler, who researches and teaches in the areas of criminal law, race relations, and critical theory, William M. Van Cleve Professor of Law Adrienne Davis, Vice Provost of Washington University in St. Louis, and L. Song Richardson, Dean and Chancellor's Professor of Law at UC Irvine School of Law.
The Florrie Wilkes Sanders Lectureship was established by the family of Sylvia Sanders Kelley (BA'54) to honor her great-grandfather, Judge John Summerfield Wilkes, and her grandmother, Florrie Wilkes Sanders, who graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1925. Past lecturers have included Justice Cornelia (Connie) Clark '79 (BA'71) of the Tennessee Supreme Court, Katherine M. Franke, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia University, Vicki Schultz, Ford Foundation Professor of Law and Social Sciences at Yale Law School, and Deborah L. Rhode, Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law at Stanford Law School.
This lecture series was established in 1972 to "bring to Vanderbilt Law School distinguished men and women with extensive legal experience to associate informally with faculty and students." The lecture series honors Cecil Sims, a 1914 first-honor graduate of Vanderbilt Law School and a founding member of the Nashville-based firm of Bass Berry & Sims. The Sims lectures vary in format by lecture or more intimate conversations. More recent lecturers have included prominent jurists including U.S. Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor and U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., and past Sims Lectures have been delivered by U.S. Attorney Generals Elliott L. Richardson, Griffin Bell, William French Smith, Edwin Meese III, and Janet Reno; and Supreme Court Justices William H. Rehnquist, Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen Breyer.
This annual lecture series was endowed by Fenwick & West founding partner Bill Fenwick '67 to support the Vanderbilt Intellectual Property Program. Past lecturers have included scholars, jurists and practitioners of intellectual property law including Judge Kathleen M. O’Malley of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Professor Suzy Frankel, Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand), and Professor Peter Jaszi, director of the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Clinic at American University College of Law.
Eleanor Brown, a Jamaican national and professor of law at George Washington University, delivered the 2017 MLK Memorial Lecture entitled, "Reflections on Dr. King: Some Thoughts on Inequality in Unusual Times." She has previously been a Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, a GWIPP Fellow at the George Washington Institute of Public Policy and a Reginald Lewis Fellow at Harvard Law School. She is also Director of the Institute for Immigration Studies at George Washington University.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer delivered the 2010 Cecil Sims Lecture, "Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View"
Eric H. Holder Jr., 82nd attorney general of the United States, delivered the 2012, and afterwards, sat down with Dean Chris Guthrie for a question and answer session. When asked what his greatest success has been, he said, "Revitalizing a Justice Department that, frankly, at some point lost its way."
Fatou B. Bensouda Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) formerly Deputy Prosecutor of the Prosecution Division of the Prosecutor and legal adviser and trial attorney at the International Criminal Tirbunal for Rawanda (ICTR) delivered the 2012-13 Jonathan I. Charney Distinguished Lecture in Public International Law, "Reflections from the International Criminal Court Prosecutor"
Judge D'Army Bailey delivered the 2012 Martin Luther King Lecture, "Law in the Hands of an Angry God." A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Judge Bailey is an activist, politician, attorney, writer, columnist and public servant.
