Author and UCLA Professor Eugene Volokh Speaking March 8 on Foreign Law, Religious Law, US Legal System

For immediate release    Media contact: Evie Klopp Holzer, (405) 831-0709

NORMAN –  Author and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Professor Eugene Volokh will be the featured speaker in the 2013 Henry Lecture Series Friday, March 8, at the University College of Law. Volokh will speak to students on “Foreign Law, Religious Law, and the American Legal System” in the Kerr Student Lounge on the first floor of the law school, 300 Timberdell Road in Norman.

Eugene Volokh teaches free speech law, criminal law, tort law, religious freedom law, and church-state relations law at UCLA School of Law, where he has also often taught copyright law and a seminar on firearms regulation policy. Before coming to UCLA, he clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court and for Judge Alex Kozinski on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (4th ed. 2011), The Religion Clauses and Related Statutes (2005), and Academic Legal Writing (4th ed. 2010), as well as more than 150 law review articles and op-eds. He is a member of The American Law Institute, a member of the American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel, and the founder and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a Weblog that gets about 20,000 visits per weekday.

He is among the five most cited under-45 faculty members listed in the Top 25 Law Faculties in Scholarly Impact, 2005-2009 study, and among the forty most cited faculty members on that list without regard to age. These citation counts refer to citations in law review articles, but his works have also been cited by courts. Six of his law review articles have been cited by opinions of the Supreme Court Justices; twenty-one of his works (mostly articles but also a textbook, an op-ed, and a blog post) have been cited by federal circuit courts; and several others have been cited by district courts or state courts. 

“The Henry Lecture series carries on its tradition of bringing excellent scholars and enriching dialogue to the OU Law campus,” said OU Law Dean Joe Harroz. “We are looking forward to Professor Volokh’s presentation.”

The Henry Lecture Series is an annual event initiated in 2000 to inspire and educate future generations of scholars, lawyers and public servants. Five attorneys in the Henry family graduated from the OU College of Law: the Honorable Lloyd H. Henry and his sons, the Honorable L. Wayne Henry and Oklahoma City University President Robert H. Henry, and the Honorable Charles T. Henry and his son, Brad Henry, Governor of Oklahoma from 2003 to 2011.

“The Henry Lecture series has brought diverse scholars to address the most important topics that face America today,” said OCU President Robert Henry. “Professor Volokh is an amazing scholar, and is speaking on a subject that has been subject to much controversy.  We should listen carefully to what one of our top legal scholars has to say.” Previous Henry Lecture series speakers include Frederick A. O. Schwarz, Jr., chief counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law; 2009-2010 White House Counsel Greg Craig; Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Stephen Breyer with the U.S. Supreme Court; Michael McConnell from Stanford Law School; Elizabeth Garrett from the University of Southern California Gould School of Law and Elizabeth Warren from Harvard Law School.

For additional information and for accommodations based on disability, call (405) 325- 4702.

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