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Judge Nancy Gertner to Deliver 2014 Pope & John Lecture on Professionalism

November 04, 2014

Honorable Nancy Gertner, professor at Harvard Law School and former federal judge for the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, will be the featured speaker for the Law School’s annual Pope & John Lecture on Professionalism. Gertner’s lecture, “Decisions I Would Have Written,” will be held on Wednesday, November 12, at 5:30 p.m. in Lincoln Hall.

Gertner was appointed to the federal bench of the US District Court of Massachusetts in 1994 by President Clinton.  In September 2011 she retired from the federal bench and became part of the faculty of the Harvard Law School teaching a number of subjects including criminal law, criminal procedure, forensic science, and sentencing. Gertner’s autobiography, In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate, was released in 2011. Her book The Law of Juries, coauthored with attorney Judith Mizner, was published in 1997 and updated in 2010.

Gertner has been honored with a number of awards throughout her career, including the 2008 Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association, Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities; she was the second woman to receive this honor (Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the first). In 2010 she received the Morton A. Brody Distinguished Judicial Service Award. In 2011 she received the Massachusetts Bar Association's Hennessey award for judicial excellence and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Brandeis University. In 2012 she received the Arabella Babb Mansfield award from the National Association of Women Lawyers, and the Leila J. Robinson Award of the Women's Bar Association of Massachusetts. She has been selected to receive the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award from the American Bar Association Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession in August 2014.  She has been profiled on a number of occasions in the Boston Globe, the ABA Journal, Boston Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. She has written and spoken widely on various legal issues and has appeared as a keynote speaker, panelist or lecturer concerning civil rights, civil liberties, employment, criminal justice and procedural issues, throughout the US, Europe and Asia.

Gertner is a graduate of Barnard College and Yale Law School where she was an editor on the Yale Law Journal. She received her MA in political science at Yale University.

Preregistration for this event is encouraged. This lecture is approved for 1.0 professionalism CLE credit in the state of Illinois. To receive credit, attendees must sign-in onsite during the event.

Established in 1991 by the Chicago firm Pope & John Ltd., Northwestern Law’s annual Pope & John Lecture on Professionalism focuses on the many dimensions of a lawyer's professional responsibility, including legal ethics, public service, professional civility, pro bono representation, and standards of conduct. The series is part of the Law School's Bartlit Center for Trial Advocacy, which is directed by Professor Steven Lubet.

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