Charles J. Ogletree, Jr.

Internationally Renowned Legal Theorist
UB's 40th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Keynote Speaker

Thursday, February 11, 2016, 8 p.m.
Alumni Arena, UB's North (Amherst) Campus

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Ogletree is the Harvard Law School Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, and Founding and Executive Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice that focuses on a variety of issues relating to race and justice. Ogletree is a prominent legal theorist who has earned an international reputation by taking a hard look at complex issues of law and by working to secure the rights guaranteed by the Constitution for everyone equally under the law. He has examined these issues not only in the classroom, on the Internet, and in the pages of prestigious law journals, but also in the everyday world of the public defender in the courtroom and in public television forums where these issues can be dramatically revealed. He furthers dialogue by insisting that the justice system protect rights guaranteed to those citizens by law.

Ogletree's book titles include "Punishment in Popular Culture," a collection of essays released in June 2015 which he co-edited with Professor Austin Sarat of Amherst College; "The Presumption of Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Race, Class and Crime in America," which draws on the 2009 mistaken arrest of Gates to explore issues of race and what must be done to create a more just legal system; "When Law Fails," which contains ten original essays; "From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State: Race and the Death Penalty in America," which he co-edited with Professor Sarat; "Brown at 50: The Unfinished Legacy," which he co-authored with Professor Deborah Rhode of Stanford University to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education; and "All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education," his historical memoir that has received enthusiastically favorable reviews from many distinguished scholars, including Skip Gates, David Levering Lewis, Alan Dershowitz, John Hope Franklin, and Anita Hill. He is also the co-author of the award-winning book, "Beyond the Rodney King Story: An Investigation of Police Conduct in Minority Communities," and he frequently contributes to many journals and law reviews.