Hourly Update

Supreme Court justices will teach, lecture at UA during next 2 years

Current Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Stephen Breyer will join retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor as guests of the UA's law school over the next two years. In a written announcement on the visits, Dean Toni Massaro said they "reflect on the college's growing national reputation as a venue for judicial scholarship and public outreach." "This is really the logical extension of our mission," Massaro said. "Arizona Law has a 90-year tradition of launching high-level judicial and legal careers. Especially for our students, the impact of being in the company of these central figures in American history is profound and lasting." O'Connor taught at the UA for the first time last year and will return in February to again teach a course on the inner workings of the Supreme Court, with visiting faculty fellow RonNell Andersen Jones, a former clerk of hers. O'Connor is the second Supreme Court justice with Arizona roots to teach at the James E. Rogers College of Law. The late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, a former Phoenix attorney and Stanford classmate of O'Connor, taught a two-week class on court history at the UA for 11 years. Breyer will deliver the law school's Isaac Marks Memorial Lecture on Sept. 11, 2008. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg delivered the Marks lecture this past September. Planning is also under way for a visit by Chief Justice Roberts in spring 2009. Last spring, the law school established the William H. Rehnquist Center on the Constitutional Structures of Government, naming the late justice's former chief of staff, Sally M. Rider, as its director. O'Connor and Breyer both serve on the Rehnquist Center's advisory board. The center's national prominence will lead to visits by more justices in coming years, Massaro said.