2010 Phelps Lecturer is Anita Allen of the University of Pennsylvania

The annual Phelps Lecture will be given this year by Anita L. Allen, Deputy Dean and Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.  Dean Allen's topic is “Veiled Women in the American Courtroom: Is the Niqab a Barrier to Justice?“  The lecture will take place on Monday, October 4, 2010, at 5:00 pm in Weinmann Hall, Room 110.

Dean Allen is an expert on privacy law, bioethics, and contemporary legal values, and she is recognized for her scholarsihp about legal philosophy, women's rights, and race relations.  Dean Allen is a prolific scholar whose journal articles are too numerous to list; her books include Unpopular Privacy (forthcoming Oxford, 2010); Privacy Law and Society (Thomson/West, 2007); The New Ethics: A Guided Tour of the 21st Century Moral Landscape (Miramax/Hyperion, 2004); Why Privacy Isn't Everything: Feminist Reflections on Personal Accountability (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003); and Uneasy Access: Privacy for Women in a Free Society (Rowman and Littlefield, 1988).  She also co-edited (with Milton Regan) Debating Democracy's Discontent (Oxford, 1988).  President Barack Obama recently appointed Dean Allen to serve as a member of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

The Phelps Lecture Series was inaugurated in 1992 to honor Ashton Phelps, Sr.  Mr. Phelps was a distinguished Tulane Law School graduate (1937) who practiced law at Phelps, Dunbar, Marks, Claverie and Sims, served as Publisher of The Times-Picayune, and as Vice Chairman of Tulane University's Board of Administrators.  The Lecture operates under the direction of the Ashton Phelps Chair of Constitutional Law, established in 1983 by the S.I. Newhouse Foundation and The Times-Picayune. The Phelps Lecture is dedicated to First Amendment law and related fields because of Mr. Phelps's lifelong activities as a newpaper attorney and newspaper publisher. Information about previous Phelps Lectures is available here.