The Mitchell Lecture Series
Antagonists and Enablers: A First Draft History of Biden and the Supremes
Friday, March 14, 2025
2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Lecture followed by a Q&A and a reception. Free and open to the public.
Charles B. Sears Law Library, John Lord O’Brian Hall
University at Buffalo, North Campus [View map]
The conventional wisdom of President Joe Biden and the Court figures them as fierce political adversaries. Yet, for all the adversarial clashes, the usual account of Biden and the Supremes hides a parallel story of mutually enabling institutions.
The modern presidency and its administrative state produce the institutional setting in which the 21st-century conservative court asserts itself. In turn, the Biden years gave us an administration alternately buoyed by the court and exploiting it for tactical advantage. The difficulty-our ongoing difficulty-is that the tragic dance elevating and distorting both the Court and the presidency is deeply destructive of democratic self-government.
Our Speaker
John Fabian Witt
Legal Historian and Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law, Yale Law School
John Fabian Witt is the author of a number of books, including American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law from Smallpox to COVID-19 and Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Lincoln’s Code was awarded both the Bancroft Prize and the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award. It was also a New York Times Notable Book.
Questions? Contact Prof. Matthew Steilen at mjsteile@buffalo.edu.
MITCHELL LECTURE COMMITTEE
Prof. Matthew Steilen (Chair)
Prof. Heather Abraham
Prof. Michael Boucai
Prof. Matthew Dimick
Prof. Paul Linden-Retek
Lisa Mueller
Prof. Anthony O’Rourke
Daniel Ortega
Brandon Tubinis
Registration
About the Mitchell Lecture Series
The Mitchell Lecture Series was endowed in 1950 by a gift from Lavinia A. Mitchell, in memory of her husband, James McCormick Mitchell. An 1897 graduate of the Buffalo Law School, Mitchell later served as chairman of the Council of the University of Buffalo, which was then a private university.
Justice Robert H. Jackson delivered the first Mitchell Lecture in 1951, titled "Wartime Security and Liberty Under Law." The lecture was published that year in the first issue of the Buffalo Law Review.
Mitchell Lecture programs have brought many distinguished speakers to the University at Buffalo School of Law, including Derrick Bell, Paul Freund, Lawrence Friedman, Carol Gilligan, Sheila Jasanoff, Duncan Kennedy, Karl Llewellyn, Stuart Macaulay, Catharine MacKinnon, and Richard Posner.