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“Race, Power, and American Democracy: Rethinking Voting Rights Law and Policy for a Divided Nation”

October 27, 2021

The lecture by Professor Guy-Uriel Charles of Harvard Law is part of Public Interest Week, the Race and Regulation Lecture Series, and the “Advancing Racial Justice” colloquium.

In the Penn Program on Regulation’s 10th Annual Distinguished Regulation Lecture, Professor Guy-Uriel Charles, the Charles Ogletree, Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, will explain how recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have weakened the Voting Rights Act and undermined its race-based model for protecting voting rights, exploring what the implications are for the future of voting rights in today’s politically polarized and racially stratified society, where many states are considering changes to voting rules.

Charles will present Race, Power, and American Democracy: Rethinking Voting Rights Law and Policy for a Divided Nation” on Tuesday, Nov 2, 2021 via Zoom at 5:00 p.m. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Charles teaches and writes about election law, race and law, constitutional law, and civil procedure, and he directs the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School. He was also the founding director of the Duke Law Center on Law, Race and Politics. The co-author of Election Law in the American Political System, his other books include The New Black: What Has Changed and What Has Not With Race in America and Race, Reform, and Regulation of the Electoral Process. With Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Charles is currently completing his next book, The American Promise: Rethinking Voting Rights Law and Policy for a Divided America.

Charles’ upcoming lecture at the Law School at Penn, which is co-sponsored by The Regulatory Review and the Law School’s Office of Equity and Inclusion, is also part of the Toll Public Interest Center’s Public Interest Week, the Penn Program on Regulation’s Race and Regulation Lecture Series, and the “Advancing Racial Justice” colloquium launched last year.

Since 2012, the Penn Program on Regulation has sponsored an annual Distinguished Regulation Lecture, bringing to campus prominent government officials, legal scholars, regulatory practitioners, and business leaders, all with deep experience in regulatory law and policy, who share their insights with students, faculty, and others within the Penn Law community.

Past Lecturers have included Gina McCarthy, the former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; Eugene Scalia, the former U.S. Secretary of Labor; California Supreme Court Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar; Sally Katzen and Cass Sunstein, both former Administrators of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs; Paul Verkuil, former Chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States; John Cooney, former partner at Venable LLP and chair of the ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice; and Paul Light, the Paulette Goddard Professor of Public Service, Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University, and Ann Klee, former General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and former Vice President of Environment, Health & Safety at General Electric.

Register for the webinar.