Town Hall

Justice William O. Douglas: Public Advocate and Conservation Champion

November 22, 2022

The Honorable Jeffrey Sutton, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, joins the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown, senior judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, for a discussion on McKeown’s new book, Citizen Justice: The Environmental Legacy of William O. Douglas—Public Advocate and Conservation Champion, and the constitutional legacy of U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, one of the court’s longest serving justices. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.


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M. Margaret McKeown has served almost 25 years as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an affiliated scholar at the Center for the American West at Stanford University, and jurist-in-residence at the University of San Diego School of Law. She is the author of Citizen Justice: The Environmental Legacy of William O. Douglas—Public Advocate and Conservation Champion.

Jeffrey Sutton has served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit since 2003 and was appointed chief judge in May 2021. Since 1993, Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law and Harvard Law School. He is co-editor of The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law and the author of several books, including 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law and Who Decides?: States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation.

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.


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