The  Bernstein Lecture, started in 2005 through the generosity of Donald S. Bernstein '75, brings a significant legal scholar to campus each year.  Previous Bernstein Lecturers include Judge Richard Posner (2005), Kenneth Roth (2006), Robert C. Post (2007), Cass R. Sunstein (2008),Israeli Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch (2009), Jack M. Balkin (2010), Yochai Benkler (2011),  Christopher Eisgruber (2013), Trevor Potter (2014), Emily Bazelon (2016), and Anne-Marie Slaughter (2017). 

Jedediah S. Purdy is the Beinecke Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He is the author of six books, most recently This Land Is Our Land: The Struggle for a New Commonwealth. He has contributed to The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Jacobin, n+1, The New Republic, and The Nation, among others, and is a member of the editorial board of Dissent and a co-founder of the Law and Political Economy Project. His scholarship concentrates on the world-making power of environmental law and the relationship between capitalism and democracy in constitutional order. He grew up in West Virginia and for 15 years lived and taught in Durham, North Carolina, where he was involved in the Moral Mondays/Forward Together movement and other local political initiatives.

Presented by the Program in Law and Public Affairs