USC Gould to Host Annual Supreme Court Preview

Former Solicitor General Gregory Garre and California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu will serve on the panel

-By Gilien Silsby

USC Gould School of Law will present its sixth annual “U.S. Supreme Court: A Preview” Tuesday at Town & Gown on the University Park Campus.

Moderated by Elizabeth Garrett, USC provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, the symposium features former Solicitor General Gregory Garre, California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu and USC Gould Professor Rebecca Brown. The event is co-sponsored by the student chapters of the American Constitution Society and The Federalist Society.

“I am thrilled and honored to be continuing our tradition of inviting the nation’s most respected Supreme Court experts to discuss the term. Their experience and perspective will definitely bring the cases to life and show the audience why these issues matter to us all,” Brown said.

Panelists will discuss and debate the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court term, which will begin Oct. 7. In addition, Garre, Liu and Brown will offer their insights on several cases on this year’s docket, which includes such diverse issues as prayer at town hall meetings and abortion. They will also comment on some of the important cases that were decided last term, involving Proposition 8, the Defense of Marriage Act, the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action.

Garre is a premier appellate and Supreme Court advocate. He has argued 38 cases in the Supreme Court and briefed or served as counsel of record in hundreds of additional cases. This past term, he argued on behalf of the university respondent in Fisher v. University of Texas, the high-profile affirmative action case. Garre teaches constitutional law and Supreme Court practice at the George Washington University Law School.

Liu is associate justice of the California Supreme Court. He is an expert on constitutional law, education law and policy, and the Supreme Court. He has published articles in the California Law Review, Michigan Law Review, NYU Law Review, Stanford Law Review and Yale Law Journal, among others.

Brown, Newton Professor of Constitutional Law at USC, is a constitutional theorist whose scholarship focuses on judicial review and its relationship to individual liberty under the Constitution. She clerked for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and U.S. Court of Appeals Chief Judge Spottswood W. Robinson III.

Garrett is an authority on the legislative process, direct democracy, the federal budget process, the study of democratic institutions, statutory interpretation and tax policy. She clerked for Marshall and Judge Stephen Williams on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.