The Fall 2022 Sussman lecture is Monday, Oct. 24, at 7 p.m. in the Sussman Theater (lower Olmsted Center).

Michael J. Nelson will be giving the hybrid Fall 2022 Sussman Lecture “The U.S. Supreme Court: Yesterday and Today”. This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Both in-person and virtual tickets are available online here. ASL/CART will be provided.

About the Event

In this talk, Nelson will discuss how the Supreme Court has changed over the past few decades in terms of its composition and its workload: there is now a perfect congruence between the ideology of the justices and the party of the presidents who appointed them, and the Court is deciding far fewer cases than in decades past (and using a different process to do so). We’ll talk about the consequences of these trends for the Court’s public standing, the development of American law, and calls to reform the federal judiciary.

About the Speaker

Michael Nelson is a 2009 graduate of Drake University with degrees in Politics and English and a concentration in Business Law. He is currently a Professor of Political Science and Social Data Analytics and Affiliate Law Faculty at Penn State. His research and teaching focus on law and courts, especially the public’s relationship with the judicial branch. He is the author of over thirty peer-reviewed articles and four books and has received three grants from the National Science Foundation. His most recent book, Judging Inequality (Russell Sage Foundation Press), received the C. Herman Pritchett and Virginia Gray awards from the American Political Science Association for the best book published in the fields of Law and Courts and State Politics and Policy.

About the Sussman Lecture Series

Established by Richard Sussman, AS’51, in memory of his late wife Lila, the Sussman Lecture Series takes place twice a year and invites notable public figures to discuss timely topics. Past speakers have in the Sussman Lecture Series include Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, NASA Chief Historian Bill Barry, Microsoft Chief Accessibility Officer Jenny Lay-Flurrie and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kailash Satyarthi.

— Lila Johnson, Harkin Institute for Public Policy & Citizen Engagement