Harvard law professor Vicki C. Jackson will deliver IIT Chicago-Kent's Centennial Lecture on November 3

Vicki C. Jackson, the Thurgood Marshall Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, will deliver the Centennial Lecture at 3 p.m. on November 3 in the Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Courtroom at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, 565 West Adams Street (between Clinton and Jefferson streets) in Chicago. Professor Jackson will address the topic "U.S. Exceptionalism and Proportionality Review in Contemporary Constitutionalism."

Professor Jackson is a noted authority on state-federal issues. At Harvard, she teaches courses in U.S. constitutional law and comparative constitutional law. Professor Jackson is the author of Constitutional Engagement in a Transnational Era (Oxford University Press 2010) and coauthor of Comparative Constitutional Law (Foundation Press 3rd ed. 2014), a leading course book in the field. She has written extensively on constitutional aspects of federalism, gender equality, election law, free speech, sovereign immunity, courts and judicial independence, and methodological challenges in comparative constitutional law.

Professor Jackson graduated summa cum laude from Yale College and earned her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. She clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Morris E. Lasker, for Judge Murray I. Gurfein of the US. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. She has also practiced law in private practice and as a government lawyer in the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. Prior to joining the Harvard Law School faculty in 2011, Professor Jackson taught and held several administrative positions at Georgetown University Law Center.

On December 11, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court appointed Professor Jackson as amicus curiae in United States v. Windsor to argue an unrepresented position relating to the legal standing of two of the parties in the landmark case.

The lecture is free and open to the public, but reservations are requested. A reception will follow the lecture. To RSVP for the lecture or for more information, please contact Tasha Kincade at tkincade@kentlaw.iit.edu or (312) 906-5006.

Founded in 1888, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law is the law school of Illinois Institute of Technology, a private, Ph.D.-granting institution with programs in engineering, psychology, architecture, business, design and law. The Centennial Visitor lecture series was inaugurated in fall 1987 as part of a yearlong celebration to mark the founding of Chicago College of Law, forerunner of IIT Chicago-Kent, in 1888. Previous lecturers have included the Honorable Harry T. Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for District of Columbia Circuit, the Honorable Stephen M. Schwebel of the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow, economist Jagdish Bhagwati, and University of California Irvine School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.