Adrienne Davis, Washington University (St. Louis, Mo.) vice-provost and William M. Van Cleve Professor of Law, will explore the topic of reparations for slavery at the 2015 Coxford Lecture. Her lecture, The Justice and Jurisprudence of Reparations, will be held at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Faculty of Law’s Moot Court Room.
“Professor Davis is an internationally acclaimed scholar who has published ground-breaking work on legal issues having to do with race, sex and gender,” said Western Law professor Andrew Botterell. “Her visit to Western Law is an exciting opportunity for members of Western’s community to grapple with one of the most challenging issues in contemporary jurisprudence, namely whether the descendants of American slaves are entitled to reparations and, if so, what justifies that entitlement.”
Davis, who joined the Washington University law faculty in 2008, writes and teaches on gender and race relations; theories of justice and reparations; feminist legal theory; and law and popular culture.
She directs the Black Sexual Economies Project at the law school’s Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Work and Social Capital. The group of scholars from seven U.S. research universities crafts new paradigms for thinking about race, gender and sexuality through open dialogue and papers.
Davis earned both her bachelor’s degree and JD from Yale University, where she was an executive committee editor of The Yale Law Journal.
The Coxford Lecture, Western’s leading public law lecture, is supported by Stephen Coxford, LLB’77, former Chair of Western’s Board of Governors. The Coxford lectures are published annually in The Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence.