Events Calendar

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Present-day jurisprudence primarily limits state power by recognizing rights. Whereas the federal government is considered one of limited, enumerated powers, state governments are understood to have a general and broad “police power,” and thus fewer internal limitations on what they can do. But as the Supreme Court’s recent jurisprudence on rights evolves, it’s worth rethinking not just how rights protect individuals, but how internal limits on arbitrary exercises of government power can protect them too.

Professor Christina Mulligan (Brooklyn Law) joins us to explore the nature, evolution, and internal limits of the state police power. Lunch will be served. Please RSVP at the link.

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2025/10/14/82821/

Take a break from your schedule to recharge and connect. The Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) will be hosting a meditative tea ceremony and dinner from Nori, offering a moment of mindfulness while providing an introduction to ALDF’s mission and work in animal law. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn how to get involved, network with peers, and explore ways to advocate for animals through the law.

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2025/10/14/84597/

Jennifer Banda, Director of the Center for Women in Law, will host a conversation with Ambassador Carrin F. Patman, former ambassador to Iceland, respected litigator, public service leader and CWIL Founder.

For three decades, Ambassador Patman was a litigator at Bracewell, concentrating on high-stakes litigation, and served on the firm’s management committee. In 2022, President Biden nominated Patman to be the United States Ambassador to the Republic of Iceland, and she was confirmed the same year. Ambassador Patman graduated from Duke University and The University of Texas School of Law, where she was a member of the Texas Law Review.

During this one-hour conversation, she will discuss her 30-year litigation career and the criticality of strategic thinking, zealous client representation, ethical integrity, and negotiation and communication skills.

The conversation will also focus on her just completed ambassadorship, with a discussion about the diplomatic role of an ambassador, the path to public service, her specific work fostering the U.S. and Iceland partnership, engagement through NATO and advocacy for U.S. policies on a range of international issues.

Ambassador Patman will also discuss her commitment to public service and leadership and the importance of cultivating future leaders, including discussion of her own community service roles. She has been very active in her local community in Houston, chairing of the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County. At the University of Texas, she has served as president of the Law School Alumni Association, president of the Texas Law Review Association, Trustee and Senior Trustee of the Law School Foundation and founding board member of the Center for Women in Law. She and her husband founded The Patman Center for Civil and Political Engagement at the LBJ School.

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2025/10/15/84657/

Lunch with attorneys from Willkie discussing practice groups and their firms.

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2025/10/16/82585/

Join us for a special discussion featuring Jim Harrington, Retired Founder of the Texas Civil Rights Project, in conversation with Professor Helen Gaebler. Together, they will explore Harrington’s career and new book, The Texas Civil Rights Project: How We Built a Social Justice Movement.  

The event will take place in the Eidman Courtroom (CCJ 2.306) from 11:50 AM to 12:50 PM. Lunch will be provided in the Jamail Pavilion immediately following the discussion.  

Please RSVP  for lunch by noon on Oct 13: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-discussion-with-jim-harrington-author-of-the-texas-civil-rights-project-tickets-1693521260679?aff=oddtdtcreator

About the Author:  

Jim Harrington grew up in Michigan and received his law degree in 1973 from the University of Detroit. Prior to that, he worked seven summers with migrants in southwest Michigan, most of whom traveled from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.  

After law school, Jim served as Director of the South Texas Project for ten years in the Rio Grande Valley. His legal work, some of it class actions, included the rights of farm workers and poor people in Valley to organize, McAllen police brutality, grand jury discrimination in Hidalgo and Willacy Counties, ending the exclusion of farm laborers from the state’s worker compensation and unemployment compensation laws, abolishing the use of “el cortito,” requiring portable toilets and drinking water in the fields during harvest time, and including farm workers under “right-to-know pesticide regulations. He served as César Chávez’ Texas attorney for 18 years. 

In 1983, Jim became Legal Director of the Texas Civil Liberties Union in Austin. In 1990, Jim founded the Texas Civil Rights Project, a non-profit foundation that promotes social, racial, economic justice, and civil liberty for low income and poor persons. By the time he retired in March 2016, the Project had grown to a staff of 40 with offices in six Texas locations, including along the border in the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso, and established itself as a strong, community-based proponent of civil rights.  

Jim has handled a wide array of civil rights cases, some precedent-setting, involving voting, free speech and assembly, immigration, capital punishment, police misconduct, student rights, privacy, racial and ethnic discrimination, labor unions, and the rights of persons with disabilities. His suit against the Texas Supreme Court was instrumental in establishing state funding for legal aid programs.  

Jim was an adjunct professor at University of Texas Law School for 27 years and taught undergraduate civil liberties courses at UT. He has served on human rights delegations to Central and South America and Israel and Palestinian territories.  

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2025/10/16/83481/

Texas Federalist Society is hosting a debate on the principles that informed the Founding of the United States - specifically, whether Christianity or the Enlightenment was at the foundation of the country. We will host Professor Justin Dyer and Professor Devin Stauffer, both of whom are from the University of Texas College of Liberal Arts to debate this issue. Chick-fil-a will be provided!

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2025/10/16/84477/

A Shabbat meal hosted by JLS for alumni, students, and professors as well as their families. We ask you RSVP by the 14th so we have enough food and drinks, thanks! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdBwVr75iEGMT8O2w2Kpf6bndeGZbIPga3Y0mhzbKN90CQRyA/viewform?usp=header

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2025/10/17/84192/

Join Texas Law’s chapter of the American Constitution Society for a Know Your Rights discussion and Q&A featuring Kate Gibson Kumar from Texas Civil Rights Project. Ms. Kumar will provide practical insights on immigration rights protections, how individuals can assert their rights in everyday situations, and the role of advocacy in advancing justice. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from an experienced civil rights attorney and ask your questions directly.

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2025/10/20/84596/

Free Speech Week Event!

Join us for a live recording of the Advisory Opinions Podcast. Hosts Sarah Isgur (editor of SCOTUSblog) and David French (Columnist for the New York Times) will talk about recent developments in the law, the courts, their collision with politics, and why it all matters.

RSVPs are highly encouraged. Please visit the link. We hope you join us!

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2025/10/20/82655/

Texas Federalist Society is hosting a presentation on Unitary Executive Theory in the second Trump Administration. We will host Jack Goldsmith from Harvard Law School to discuss this topic, and Professor Ward Farnsworth from the University of Texas School of Law will provide commentary and ask some questions. Chick-fil-a will be provided!

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2025/10/21/84616/

On Tuesday, October 21st, please join the University of Texas’s Strauss Center for International Security and Law, Clements Center for National Security, School of Civic Leadership, and Civitas Institute, in collaboration with the Claremont Institute, in hosting Christopher Caldwell, New York Times columnist and Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute, as he discusses populism and censorship in Europe.

Across Europe, populist movements have gained widespread support, yet face growing restrictions on their political participation and exercise of speech. From the shores of Ireland to the gates of Moscow, debates over immigration, nationalism, and cultural identity have become flashpoints for decisions on who gets to speak in the public square—and who decides what counts as acceptable opinion. Mr. Caldwell will examine how European governments and institutions are responding to the success of populist movements in Europe and what these responses reveal about the state of democracy in the West.

The talk will be moderated by Strauss Center Director Adam Klein. Registration is required and does not guarantee you a seat.

Christopher Caldwell is a Senior Fellow at The Claremont Institute and one of America’s most incisive cultural and political commentators. A contributing editor at The Claremont Review of Books and a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times, Caldwell is the author of Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West and the bestselling The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, both widely praised for their bold, clarifying insight into the social and constitutional upheavals of the modern West. He is the recipient of the 2025 Henry Salvatori Prize in the American Founding.

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2025/10/21/84662/

The Sissy Farenthold Reproductive Justice Defense Project hosts a conversation between Prof.  Rachel Rebouché  and Blake Rocap, who will discuss and analyze new laws passed by the Texas Legislature, changes to shield laws in other states, and ongoing litigation related to reproductive healthcare.

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2025/10/22/84505/

Join us at The Long Goodbye for drinks, networking, and all things IP!

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2025/10/22/84195/

Texas Federalist Society is hosting a presentation on Justice Alito. This will be a review and critique of Justice Alito's jurisprudence and legacy. We will host Adam White from the American Enterprise Institute to discuss this topic, and Professor Aaron Nielson from the University of Texas School of Law will provide commentary and ask some questions. Chick-fil-a will be provided!

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2025/10/23/84720/

In person at Texas Law and streaming virtually

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2025/10/23/84658/

Students will have the opportunity to hear from and ask questions to LGBTQ+ attorneys from big law firms. Panelists will share how their LGBTQ+ identity intersects with working in big law, advice they have for soon-to-be LGBTQ+ attorneys, and what their practice areas entail. Following the panel, guests are welcome to mingle and continue the conversation at the happy hour in the Jamail Pavilion, where drinks and light bites will be served.

RSVP link to be provided soon.

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2025/10/23/84119/

The Scholarship Celebration is an opportunity to gather scholarship supporters and student recipients of this year's scholarships. By invitation only.

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2025/10/24/82938/

Join us for Casino Night! There will be free drinks, a variety of casino games--blackjack, poker, roulette-- and lots of special prizes up for grabs. Your ticket gets you $1,000 of funny money to gamble and win chips that will convert to raffle tickets at the end of the night, so win big to better your odds. Cocktail attire is preferred. All proceeds support needs-based stipends for public interest students during the summer. Tickets are $25 for public interest students and $40 for all other students.

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2025/10/24/84236/