G. Rollie White Scholar in Residence Fund

The G. Rollie White Public Interest Scholar in Residence Program is endowed and supported by a generous gift from the G. Rollie White Trust. The purpose of the program is to bring outstanding legal scholars, practitioners, and advocates from the field of public service to the Law School to foster discussion of issues related to public interest law, to raise the profile of lawyers working in this area, and to encourage students to view public service as an honored and expected part of every legal career.

The most recent Scholar, Janai Nelson, Associate Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, visited in 2019.

Michael Allen, civil rights lawyer and partner in Relman, Dane & Colfax, visited in 2018.

Janelle Orsi, Executive Director and co-founder of the Sustainable Economies Law Center, visited in 2017.

Christy Lopez, Deputy Chief of the Special Litigation Section, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice, visited in 2016.

Lucas Guttentag, founder and former director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, visited Texas Law in 2015 in conjunction with the Justice Center’s 10^th Anniversary Celebration.

Douglas Laycock, Alice McKean Young Regents Chair Emeritus at Texas Law, and the Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia School of Law, is one of the nation’s leading religious liberties and constitutional law scholars. He visited in 2014.

Marie-Therese Connolly, MacArthur Foundation “genius” fellow and senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, visited in 2013 and addressed issues related to justice for the elderly.

Kathryn S. Fuller, ’76, chair of the Ford Foundation and former president of the World Wildlife Fund, was the inaugural G. Rollie White Scholar in 2010.

The Justice Center thanks the G. Rollie White Trust for the generous gift that created the public interest scholar in residence program.