An accomplished legal scholar, Charles Geyh - the first speaker in the newly constituted Dean's Lecture Series at Elon Law - will propose a new way of looking at how the role of the American judiciary should be conceptualized and regulated.
The Elon University School of Law welcomes to campus this week a nationally renowned legal scholar whose latest book, “Courting Peril: The Political Transformation of the American Judiciary,” coincides with the national debate over the future of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor Charles Geyh, the John F. Kimberling Professor of Law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law in Bloomington, visits Elon Law on Thursday, March 31, for a 12:30 p.m. talk based on his work.
The talk is free and open to the public in Room 207 of the Elon University School of Law at 201 N. Greene Street in downtown Greensboro.
RSVPs are still being accepted here.
“Courting Peril” explores a political transformation several generations in the making that imperils the premise of independent judges disregarding extralegal influences and impartially upholding the law.
Social science has demonstrated that judicial decision-making is subject to ideological and other extralegal influences. In recent decades, challenges to the assumptions underlying the rule of law paradigm have proliferated across a growing array of venues, as critics agitate for greater political control of judges and courts.
The book proposes a new way of looking at how the role of the American judiciary should be conceptualized and regulated. Geyh argues that extralegal influences cannot be eliminated but can be managed, by balancing the needs for judicial independence and accountability across competing perspectives, to the end of enabling judges to follow the “law”, respect established legal process, and administer justice.
Geyh’s work on judicial independence, accountability, selection, administration and ethics has appeared in over 60 books, articles, book chapters and reports. He is the first speaker in the newly constituted Dean’s Lecture Series hosted by Elon University School of Law Dean Luke Bierman.
The lecture series is the latest enhancement to the law school’s intellectual climate.
“With the current controversy over President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court of the United States and the continuing litigation over the selection of Justices of the North Carolina Supreme Court, there is not a more timely topic for us,” Bierman said.