Harvard Law School professor to speak Oct. 12 on ‘American Law and the Age of Globalization’
Internationally known legal scholar, bioethicist and author Mary Ann Glendon will deliver a lecture, “American Law in the Age of Globalization,” at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 12, in Schulze Hall auditorium on St. Thomas downtown Minneapolis campus.
Glendon, 68, is the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She teaches and writes on bioethics, comparative constitutional law and human rights in international law. She also is a notable pro-life feminist.
A former member of President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics, she is author or co-author of 1o books. Among her best known are Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (The Free Press, 1991); A Nation Under Lawyers (Harvard University Press, 1996) and A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Random House, 2001). The National Law Journal named Glendon one of the "Fifty Most Influential Women Lawyers in America" in 1998.
In 1988, Glendon won the Scribes Book Award given by the American Society of Writers on Legal Subjects for Abortion and Divorce in Western Law (Harvard University Press, 1987), a comparative study that was featured in Bill Moyers' PBS television series, "World of Ideas." Another comparative study, The Transformation of Family Law (University of Chicago Press, 1989), won the Legal Academy's highest book award in 1993. In 1991, she was elected president of the UNESCO-sponsored International Association of Legal Science.
In 1994, she was appointed by Pope John Paul II to the newly created Pontifical Academy of Social Science, of which she currently is president. In 1995, she headed the 22-member delegation of the Holy See to the Fourth U.N. Women's Conference in Beijing.
Glendon taught at Boston College Law School from 1968 to 1986, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School and the Gregorian University in Rome. She received her bachelor of arts, juris doctor, and master of comparative law degrees from the University of Chicago. During a two-year post-graduate fellowship for the study of European law, Glendon studied at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and was a legal intern with the European Economic Community. From 1963 to 1968, she practiced law with the Chicago firm of Mayer, Brown & Platt, and served as a volunteer civil rights attorney.
Glendon's talk, free and open to the public, is the 16th annual Stakeholder Dialogue address and part of the Opus Distinguished Speaker series at St. Thomas. This year the event is sponsored jointly by the university's College of Business and School of Law. A reception follows the presentation. R.S.V.P. by Friday, Oct. 6, to (651) 962-4211 or cobevents@stthomas.edu.
