Pitt Law School to Present a Discussion on Criminal Justice and Equality Sept. 27

PITTSBURGH-Charles J. Ogletree Jr., Jesse Climenko Professor of Law and director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard University Law School, and Derrick Bell, Pitt law alumnus and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Pitt and visiting professor of law at New York University School of Law, will participate in a discussion titled "150 Years After Dred Scott: Is the Most Criticized Case in American History Still Relevant?" at noon Sept. 27 in Room 111 of the Barco Law Building, 3900 Forbes Ave., Oakland.

Ogletree earned the Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees in political science at Stanford University in 1974 and 1975, respectively, and received his law degree in 1978 from Harvard University. Named professor of law in 1993, Ogletree has served as director of Harvard's Criminal Justice Institute and as both faculty director and associate dean of clinical programs at Harvard.

His books include All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education (W.W. Norton & Company, 2004) and From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State: Race and the Death Penalty in America (coedited with Austin Sarat; New York University Press, 2006).

Bell received his law degree from Pitt's School of Law in 1957, after having earned his undergraduate degree at Duquesne University in 1952. Former litigator with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund from 1960 to 1965, Bell is said to have worked in every aspect of civil rights. Appointed to the Harvard University Law School faculty in 1969, Bell left Harvard in 1981 to serve as dean at the University of Oregon School of Law. He returned to Harvard in 1986, but left again in 1992 to pursue his current position as a visiting (full time) professor of law at the New York University School of Law.

An accomplished writer, Bell is the author of several books, including And We Are Not Saved: The Exclusive Quest for Racial Justice (Harper San Francisco, 1987), Constitutional Conflicts (Anderson Publishing Company, 1997), and his most recent, The Derrick Bell Reader (New York University Press, 2005), edited by Pitt law professors Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic.

The free public conversation will be followed by a book signing at which copies of All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education, From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State: Race and the Death Penalty in America, and The Derrick Bell Reader will be available for purchase and signing.

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