The College of Staten Island Legal Studies Institute’s 2016 Annual Lecture in Law, Philosophy, and Public Policy

The Abortion Conflict and the Court:

From Casey (1992) to Whole Women’s Health (2016)

Reva Siegel

Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law

Yale Law School

Thursday, September 15th

Williamson Theatre, Center for the Performing Arts

Building 1 P

5:00 o'clock

Reception to Follow in the West Lounge

In 1992, the Supreme Court decided Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a case which offered a constitutional compromise for a nation divided over questions of abortion. In the interim, states have enacted increasing numbers of restrictions on abortion, not only to protect the unborn, but to protect women’s health, increasingly restricting women’s access. This year in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt the Court by a 5-3 vote struck down a health-justified law on abortion that would have closed ¾ of the abortion clinics in Texas. This lecture will discuss Whole Women’s Health in light of current and coming controversies.

Professor Reva Siegel is the Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Professor Siegel’s writing draws on legal history to explore questions of law and inequality and to analyze how courts interact with representative government and popular movements in interpreting the Constitution. 

Her recent articles include Casey and The Clinic Closings: When “Protecting Health” Obstructs Choice, 125 Yale L.J. 1428 (2016) (with Linda Greenhouse); Conscience Wars: Complicity-Based Conscience Claims in Religion and Politics, 124 Yale L.J. (2015) (with Doug NeJaime); Meador Lecture: Race-Conscious, But Race-Neutral? The Constitutionality of Disparate Impact in the Roberts Court, 66 Ala. L. Rev. (2015); The Supreme Court, 2012 Term — Foreword: Equality Divided, 127 Harv. L. Rev. (2013); and The Constitutionalization of Abortion, in The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law 1057 (Oxford University Press 2012). Her books include Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (with Paul Brest, Sanford Levinson, Jack M. Balkin, and Akhil Reed Amar, 2014); Before Roe v. Wade: Voices That Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court’s Ruling (with Linda Greenhouse, 2012); and The Constitution in 2020 (edited with Jack M. Balkin, 2009). Professor Siegel is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an honorary fellow of the American Society for Legal History, and serves on the board of the American Constitution Society and on the General Council of the International Society of Public Law.

Co-Sponsors: The CORE Program, the Dean of Social Sciences and Humanities, the CSI Student Government Association, the CSI Foundation, the CSI Campus Activities Board, and the CSI Program in Women, Gender, and Sexuality.

For more information, contact Professor Michael Paris, Michael.Paris@csi.cuny.edu