College of Law

Ginsburg

Speakers, Symposia & Conferences

We engage our Toledo Law community, the larger University, and the city of Toledo in a dynamic conversation about our legal system and the place of law in our society. An overview of our speakers, symposia, and national conferences appears below.

View past lectures on our YouTube page. 


Distinguished Speaker Series

Nationally recognized attorneys, judges, and authors offer unique perspectives on important issues in the Distinguished Speaker Series. Past speakers include:

  • U.S. Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg
  • Samuel Gross, professor of law at the University of Michigan and editor of the National Registry of Exonerations
  • Donald West, the attorney for George Zimmerman, the Florida man acquitted of second-degree murder after shooting and killing teenager Trayvon Martin

Cannon Lecture Series

The Cannon Lecture Series seeks to bring lecturers to Toledo Law who can discuss questions of law and society while emphasizing the humanistic dimensions as well as the limitations of the United States’ legal system. The lecture is sponsored by the Joseph Cannon Memorial Lectureship Fund, established in 1980 in memory of Joseph Cannon, a Toledo-area attorney. Past speakers include:

  • Emily Bazelon, author, senior editor at Slate, and the Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law at Yale Law School
  • Jed Rakoff, a senior U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York and author

"Day After" Speaker Series

Our "Day After" Speaker Series features cases recently argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. Past speakers include:

  • David Friedman, an ACLU attorney who argued McCreary County v. ACLU, which ruled that the display of the Ten Commandments in public courtrooms is unconstitutional
  • Alan Gura, lead counsel for the original plaintiff in D.C. v. Heller, the first right-to-bear arms case to make it to the Supreme Court in decades
  • Stephen Leckar, the defense attorney who argued U.S. v. Jones, which placed limits on warrantless GPS surveillance

Stranahan National Issues Forum

The Stranahan National Issues Forum is a joint program of the College of Law and its chapter of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. It is made possible by an endowment from the Stranahan Foundation. The Forum’s purpose is to address issues of national importance through the lens of the American legal system. Past speakers include:

  • Randy Barnett, the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at Georgetown University Law Center
  • Ross Douthat, New York Times op-ed columnist, author, and blogger
  • Robert George, McCormick Chair in Jurisprudence and the founding director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University

Symposia & National Conferences

The Annual Great Lakes Water Conference addresses the legal and policy issues critical to the Great Lakes, featuring experts from across the U.S. and Canada.

The Annual Law Review Symposium is organized by student members of the Law Review and hosts experts on regional and national topics.

Last Updated: 7/15/24