The Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice will present the first fall lecture in its Human Rights Happy Hour Speaker Series on September 25. Professor James Gibson of Washington University in St. Louis, will present a talk called “Electing Judges: The Surprising Effects of Campaigning on Judicial Legitimacy.” The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place on Tuesday, September 25, from 3:45 p.m.–5:45 p.m., in the Sheffield Room (TNH 2.111) at the University of Texas School of Law.
Gibson is the Sidney W. Souers Professor of Government and director of the Program on Citizenship and Democratic Values at the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis. His research interests include judicial behavior and process, trial courts and criminal justice, constitutional law and civil liberties, and South African politics. Currently, Gibson is researching the Cambodian public’s reaction to the trials of the Khmer Rouge. He is author of the award-winning Overcoming Apartheid: Can Truth Reconcile a Divided Nation?, which investigates the hypothesis that truth led to reconciliation in post-apartheid South African society. He has also written Overcoming Historical Injustices: Land Reconciliation in South Africa; Citizens, Courts, and Confirmations: Positivity Theory and the Judgments of the American People (with Gregory A. Caldeira); and Overcoming Intolerance in South Africa: Experiments in Democratic Persuasion (with Amanda Gouws). He is also Professor Extraordinary in Political Science at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. In August 2011, he received the American Political Science Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award in the Law and Courts Section, honoring a distinguished career of scholarly achievement.
For more information on Professor Gibson and the Speaker Series, please visit the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice website.