As the U.S. Supreme Court considers a key case on affirmative action, the National Constitution Center and the University of Pennsylvania’s Journal of Constitutional Law convene experts to discuss this important subject as part of the Journal’s annual law symposium. Join Jin Hee Lee of the Legal Defense Fund and Ilan Wurman of Arizona State University for a conversation addressing how the history and original meaning of the 14th Amendment informs the debate about whether the Constitution is colorblind. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.
This program is presented in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law as part of their symposium on "The History, Development, and Future of the 14th Amendment."
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Jin Hee Lee is the senior deputy director of litigation and director of strategic initiatives at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She leads LDF’s representation of a multi-racial coalition of 25 Harvard student and alumni organizations, which serves as amici curiae in Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard. As counsel for the amici curiae Harvard student and alumni organizations, she presented argument to the First Circuit Court of Appeals in the Harvard case. She is the co-author of the chapter “Do Black Lives Matter to the Courts?” in the anthology Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment.
Ilan Wurman is an associate professor at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. He is the author of A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism, The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment, and the casebook Administrative Law Theory and Fundamentals: An Integrated Approach. Ilan also served as leader of Team Conservative for the National Constitution Center’s Constitution Drafting Project, and he is a contributor to the Center’s Supreme Court Case Library.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
- Ilan Wurman, The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment
- Brief of Amici Curia 25 Harvard Student and Alumni Organizations in Support of Respondent President and Fellows of Harvard College
- Amici Curia Brief of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Support of Respondents
- Jin Hee Lee, “A Lawsuit Seeks to Erase Harvard Applicants’ Racial Identity. It Reveals What Some Americans Still Don’t Get About Discrimination,” Time
- Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (2022)
- Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina (2022)
- Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)
- Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978)
- Civil Rights Bill of 1866
- Department of Education: Office for Civil Rights, "Education and Title VI"
- Brief of Professors of History and Law as Amici Curia in Support of Respondents
- Brief of Professors of the Washington Bar Association and the Women’s Bar Association as Amici Curia in Support of Respondents
- Brief of Professors of Constitutional Accountability Center as Amici Curia in Support of Respondents
- Brief of Amicus Curiae Former Attorney General Edwin Meese II in Support of Petitioner
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