We are pleased to present this inaugural installment of a new feature brought to us by SCOTUS Map, created by Victoria Kwan and Jay Pinho. Each month, SCOTUS Map will provide us with a round-up of the Justices’ upcoming speaking engagements, as well as links to coverage of the Justices’ recent appearances.
When the Supreme Court is in session, the majority of the Justices’ events outside the Court typically take place in Washington, D.C. This winter, however, our twelve current and retired justices also traveled (or are planning to travel) to New York, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, Mississippi, and Utah. Let’s take a look at where they went in December 2014, in between oral arguments and holiday festivities:
On December 2, retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor spoke about her civics education non-profit iCivics at The Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, Florida. The Palm Beach Civic Association has a recap here.
On December 5, Justice Stephen G. Breyer addressed students at the National Defense University’s Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy in Washington, D.C. NDU reported on Breyer’s appearance here.
Four days later, on December 9, Justice Breyer sat down with David Rubenstein for a discussion on the Magna Carta and its influence on U.S. law. The event was part of a Library of Congress symposium entitled “Conversations on the Enduring Legacy of the Great Charter.” The Library of Congress blog has a summary of the interview here, while video is available on the C-Span website.
The Justices closed out their December engagements with a pair of joint appearances (which are represented on the map with a red pin that shows the number of Justices who attended). First, Justices Antonin Scalia and Elena Kagan visited the University of Mississippi School of Law on December 15, where their conversation with Jack Wade Nowlin touched on a range of topics such as judicial philosophies, the Supreme Court press corps, and their relationships with their colleagues on the Court. Jeff Amy of the Associated Press, Richard Wolf of USA Today, and Errol Castens of the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal covered the event. During their time in Mississippi, Justices Scalia and Kagan also went duck hunting together, as Jacob Gershman notes in The Wall Street Journal.
Back on the East Coast, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor both gave remarks at the New York County Lawyers Association’s 100th annual dinner honoring the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. A picture of the Justices at the event, which was held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City on December 17, can be viewed at the New York Law Journal.
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Looking ahead to this month:
Two Justices spoke last weekend at the 2015 Association of American Law Schools (AALS) annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Justice Ginsburg was the guest of honor at a January 3 lunch hosted by the Section on Women in Legal Education, where she presented the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award to Herma Hill Kay. You can find the luncheon’s discussion of women in the legal academy in the AALS’s Annual Meeting Newspaper. Shortly after the luncheon, Justice Ginsburg also participated in a program about equality.
Meanwhile, Justice Scalia took part in a January 4 panel organized by the AALS Section on Federal Courts, entitled “The Role of History in the Federal Courts Canon.”
On January 14, Justice O’Connor will co-headline “The Women of the West,” the kick-off event for “What It Means To Be American,” a partnership of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and Zócalo Public Square, an affiliate of Arizona State University. Justice O’Connor will speak alongside fellow Arizona native Anna Maria Chávez (of the Girl Scouts of the USA) at the Heard Museum, a Smithsonian affiliate in Phoenix, about gender roles and opportunities for women in the western United States.
The following day, on January 15, Justice Samuel Alito is set to receive the Judge Edward R. Becker Citizenship Award from the Community College of Philadelphia. Justice Alito will be recognized “for his ongoing efforts to help improve communities.”
Retired Justice John Paul Stevens will discuss his book, Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution, at the University of Florida Levin College of Law on January 20.
Finally, Justice Sotomayor will head west to Salt Lake City at the end of the month, where she will give the keynote address for the University of Utah’s MUSE Theme Year on Justice on January 28 and appear at a Utah Association for Justice lunch on January 29. In the past, Justice Sotomayor has also set aside time to speak with local middle and high school students on her travels outside of Washington, D.C., so be sure to watch this space next month for updates on her Utah visit.
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