School Of Law To Host Symposium On Two Famous Civil Rights Cases

Fayetteville, Ark. - In recognition of two landmark Supreme Court decisions involving civil rights cases, the University of Arkansas School of Law will host "From Brown to Grutter and Beyond," at 3 p.m. Friday, October 15, in the Leflar Law Center courtroom.

George Haley ('52), a former ambassador to The Gambia and Law School alumnus, will join Dennis Shields of Duke University Law School for the symposium, which will highlight the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education as well as the more recent Grutter v. Bollinger decision.

At the symposium, Haley will discuss the impact of the Brown decision, in which, on May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously declared that separate educational facilities were inherently unequal and violated the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus guaranteeing all citizens equal protection of the laws.

Haley, who entered the School of Law in the fall of 1949, was the third member of "The Six Pioneers," a group of six African-American students who enrolled at the University of Arkansas, making it the first state university among the former Confederate states to integrate voluntarily.

He has served under several national administrations since 1969, having been appointed to posts under Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton. In 1998, President Clinton appointed him as U.S. envoy to The Gambia, a position he held from September 1998 to July 2001.

Currently the assistant dean for Admissions and Financial Aid at Duke University School of Law, Shields was the assistant dean of Admissions at the University of Michigan Law School and was a defendant in Grutter v. Bollinger, a case in which the Supreme Court decided the University of Michigan Law School's use of race in its admission decisions violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The 3 p.m. symposium will include a question and answer session and is open to the public and the media. At noon on the same day, Haley and Shields will take part in the Law School's Faculty Enrichment Luncheon Series. The luncheon is open to members of the UA community, who can attend by sending an R.S.V.P. to Vance Lewis at vjlewis@uark.edu.