On January 18, 2008, the University of Louisville Law Review will host a symposium on the voluntary school integration cases that were recently decided by the United States Supreme Court in Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education. The decision of these cases will likely define schools’ ability to encourage diversity and prevent a reversion to segregation. While undoubtedly of great importance around the country, this decision is especially important here in Louisville, where one of the cases originated.

The Law Review’s Symposium aims to encourage an interdisciplinary approach to the continuing national debate on issues of race and inclusion and to contribute to the scholarship on school desegregation and race. The following distinguished scholars, who are experts in fields related to this issue, will submit articles exploring the strengths and weaknesses of the Supreme Court’s decision, the future of voluntary school integration, and other avenues for addressing the issue of voluntary school integration, as well as many other aspects of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Meredith case:

• Professor Orfield's most recent publication is Lessons In Integration: Realizing the Promise of Racial Diversity in America's Public Schools (with E. Frankenberg) (In Press).

• Liliana M. Garces, who will collaborate with Dr. Orfield, is a Research Assistant at The Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles and a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research centers on issues of access and diversity in higher education and school desegregation policies in K-12. She served as counsel of record in the amicus brief submitted by 553 social scientists in support of the respondents in the voluntary school integration cases, Parents v. Seattle School District No. 1 and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education. She is co-editor of “Charting the Future of College Affirmative Action: Legal Victories, Continuing Attacks, and New Research” (with Orfield, G., Marin, P. and Flores, S.M.) (forthcoming, by the Civil Rights Project). She is also a member of the editorial board of the Harvard Educational Review. Prior to joining the Project and pursuing her doctorate in education, she was a staff attorney at the Immigrant Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation in Oakland, California and served as a judicial clerk for the Honorable John C. Coughenour in U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington. She received her Ed.M. from Harvard University, her J.D. from the University of Southern California Law School, and her B.A. from Brown University.
• Erica Frankenberg, who will collaborate with Dr. Ofield, is an advanced doctoral candidate at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and is a research assistant at The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. She is the co-editor of Lessons in Integration: Realizing the Promise of Racial Diversity in America’s Schools (with Gary Orfield, 2007) from the University of Virginia Press. Recently, Frankenberg helped coordinate and write a social science statement filed with the Supreme Court regarding the benefits of integrated schools and also helped produce a manual on voluntary integration. She has authored a report on the racial segregation of public school teachers and is also co-author of a series of reports and articles on school desegregation trends. Other recent publications include “The Impact of School Segregation on Residential Housing Patterns: Mobile, AL and Charlotte, NC,” in School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back? (2005) and “Reviving Brown v. Board of Education: How Courts and Enforcement Agencies Can Produce More Integrated Schools.” in Brown at Fifty: The Unfinished Legacy (with Gary Orfield, 2004). She received her A.B., cum laude, from Dartmouth College and received high honors for her thesis in Education Policy. She also received a M.Ed. in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from Harvard. Ms. Frankenberg has also worked with a non-profit educational foundation in Alabama.
• Girardeau A. Spann - Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center
  Professor Spann served as a staff attorney for the Public Citizen Litigation Group before joining the Law Center faculty in 1979. Professor Spann has written several articles and books on race issues and the law.
• Bryan K. Fair – Professor of Law at the University of Alabama, School of Law.
  Professor Fair teaches courses on constitutional law; race, racism, and the law; gender and the law; and the First Amendment. His writings, including his book, Notes of a Racial Caste Baby: Colorblindness and the End of Affirmative Action, primarily focus on issues involving race.
• john powell -- Professor john a. powell, is an internationally recognized authority in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties, and issues relating to race, ethnicity, poverty and the law. He is the executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University. He also holds the Williams Chair in Civil Rights & Civil Liberties at the Moritz College of Law. He has written extensively on a number of issues including structural racism, racial justice and regionalism, concentrated poverty and urban sprawl, opportunity based housing, voting rights, affirmative action in the United States, South Africa and Brazil, racial and ethnic identity, spirituality and social justice, and the needs of citizens in a democratic society.

All of the preceding authors will present their articles at the live symposium on January 18, 2008. Prof. Gary Orfield will be presenting the Keynote speech during the afternoon of the symposium. Their articles will be published in the Law Review's Third and Fourth Issues in the spring.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Emily Zahn at ewzahn01@louisville.edu or (502) 648-3062.

To read the full opinion, visit the Supreme Court's website: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-908.pdf