Kim Lane Scheppele to Give Chautauqua Institution’s Jackson Lecture

~ John Q. Barrett

I am very pleased to report that Kim Lane Scheppele will give Chautauqua Institution’s 21st annual Robert H. Jackson Lecture on the Supreme Court of the United States, on Monday, August 11, 2025, at 3:30 p.m.

Kim Lane Scheppele is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. She is also a faculty fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her primary field is the sociology of law and she specializes in ethnographic and archival research on courts and public institutions.

Professor Scheppele’s research examines the rise and fall of constitutional government. After 1989, she moved to Eastern Europe, living in Hungary and Russia for extended periods, studying the way that new constitutions were being enacted and entrenched. After 9/11, she examined how constitutions fared under the stress of anti-terrorism campaigns with their repressive new laws, both in the United States and elsewhere. After the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, she studied the way that democracies have come under stress, focusing on the rise of new autocrats, particularly those who are elected on populist political platforms and who then use the law to undermine constitutional institutions. Now, she concentrates in particular on changes within the European Union – exploring the way that the EU has had difficulty holding its own against national popular movements that brought about Brexit and the rise of illiberal autocracies among the member states. She has published widely in both social science and law journals, in both Europe and the US. She is a frequent commentator on the Verfassungsblog.

Professor Scheppele’s work has been widely recognized. In 2014, she received the Kalven Prize from the Law and Society Association for scholarship that has had an important influence on the development of socio-legal studies, and in 2016, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also an elected member of the International Academy of Comparative Law and serves as a “global jurist” on the executive committee of the International Association of Constitutional Law. She served as the elected president of the Law and Society Association from 2017-2019. Her book, Legal Secrets, won Special Recognition in the Distinguished Scholarly Publication competition of the American Sociological Association as well as the Corwin Prize of the American Political Science Association.

Professor Scheppele taught for many years in the political science department at the University of Michigan before joining the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She was the founding co-director of the gender studies program at Central European University, Budapest and served as the director of the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton. She has been a visiting professor of law at Humboldt University, Berlin and Erasmus University, Rotterdam as well as at both Yale and Harvard Law Schools.

The Jackson Lecture at Chautauqua Institution is a leading annual consideration of the Supreme Court of the United States, occurring in the weeks following the completion of the Court’s annual Term. Justice Robert H. Jackson, who served on the Court from 1941-1954, was a lifelong Chautauqua Institution attendee and one of its prominent lecturers. He lived and practiced law for twenty years in Jamestown, New York, which is located on Chautauqua Lake near Chautauqua Institution and is the site of the Robert H. Jackson Center.

**For information on attending Kim Lane Scheppele’s Jackson Lecture on August 11, click here**: https://www.chq.org/event/the-21st-annual-robert-h-jackson-lecture-on-the-supreme-court-of-the-united-states-kim-lane-scheppele/. Attending the lecture requires a Chautauqua Institution gate pass. Please allow sufficient time for parking and entering the grounds.

Chautauqua’s twenty Jackson Lecturers have been:

  • 2005: Geoffrey R. Stone, University of Chicago professor;
  • 2006: Linda Greenhouse, New York Times writer and Yale Law School lecturer;
  • 2007: Seth P. Waxman, WilmerHale partner and former Solicitor General of the United States;
  • 2008: Jeffrey Toobin, legal writer and book author;
  • 2009: Paul D. Clement, Clement & Murphy PLLC partner and former Solicitor General of the United States;
  • 2010: Jeff Shesol, historian, communications strategist, and former White House speechwriter;
  • 2011: Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor at Slate and Amicus podcast host;
  • 2012: Pamela Karlan, Stanford University professor;
  • 2013: Charles Fried, Harvard University professor and former Solicitor General of the United States;
  • 2014: Akhil Reed Amar, Yale University professor;
  • 2015: Laurence H. Tribe, Harvard University professor;
  • 2016: Tracey L. Meares, Yale University professor;
  • 2017: Judge Jon O. Newman, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit;
  • 2018: Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella, of the Supreme Court of Canada;
  • 2019: Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP partner and former Solicitor General of the United States;
  • 2020 (online): Ruth Marcus, Washington Post associate editor and columnist;
  • 2021 (online): Melissa Murray, New York University professor and Strict Scrutiny podcast co-host;
  • 2022: Reva Siegel, Yale University professor;
  • 2023: Justin Driver, Yale University professor; and
  • 2024: Kate Shaw, University of Pennsylvania professor and Strict Scrutiny podcast co-host.

For video of 2005-2017 Jackson Lectures and interviews with the lecturers during their visits to Chautauqua Institution, click here: https://accesschautauquacountytv.org/shows/robertHJacksonCenterChautauquaLectures

For video of more recent Jackson lecturers, click the links below:

Published by John Q. Barrett