Professor Bruce Allen Murphy Discusses Chief Justice’s Role on Supreme Court

In celebration of Constitution Day, Bruce Allen Murphy, Fred Morgan Kirby Professor of Civil Rights, will present “Roberts Save this Honorable Court!” 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 19 in Kirby Hall of Civil Rights room 104.

The event is free and open to the public. A reception will follow the lecture.

“The purpose of the lecture is to celebrate the Constitution in accordance with federal law as proposed by Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia,” explains Murphy. “In an election year like this one, there is no more timely topic to discuss as we head out to the polls than the nature of the Constitution, the nature of the Supreme Court, and the nature of our government.”

According to Murphy, some expected that the new “Bush Court” – created by the appointments of Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts to replace “swing justice” Sandra Day O’Connor and Chief Justice William Rehnquist – would immediately tip to the right by unifying the five conservative votes on the Court. Chief Justice Roberts’ speech to the graduating class of Georgetown Law School this past spring seemed to offer his agenda for doing so by encouraging “more consensus” on the Court.

Murphy will argue that a series of long-term trends on the Court will make it extremely difficult for the new Chief Justice to manage as a group, thus affecting Court operations and, unless they are changed, its future decision-making. This lecture will suggest the means by which the new Chief Justice can avert this crisis.

Murphy is a nationally recognized judiciary-system scholar and author of several best-selling books on the Supreme Court. MSNBC featured him in “Justice Stevens is Key to High Court’s Future” on aging Supreme Court justices’ reluctance to step down from the bench. He is author of Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas(Random House, 2003), a definitive biography of the Supreme Court’s most accomplished and most controversial justice. His first book, The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection: The Secret Political Activities of Two Supreme Court Justices (Oxford University Press, 1982), was featured in a front-page story in the New York Times and became the subject of a nationwide debate on judicial ethics. Murphy’s second book, Fortas: The Rise and Ruin of a Supreme Court Justice (William Morrow, 1988), was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.

He also is accomplished as a mentor to Lafayette students, nurturing them in advanced research projects. Recently, he collaborated with Melissa Mazer ’07(Jericho, N.Y.) to update the political science textbook Approaching Democracy. He advised honors thesis research that Judith Hirx ’06(Milford, Mass.) conducted last year on the debate over same-sex marriage.

Murphy also led a collaborative project last year through the Community of Scholars program. Lori Weaver ’06 (White Haven, Pa.), Brendan O’Regan ’06 (Ringwood, N.J.), and Allison Ligorano ’06 (Clinton, N.J.) examined Justice Antonin Scalia’s decisions using Daniel Levinson’s seasons of life theory. Prior to that, he worked with another Community of Scholars team to study the Supreme Court justices as a group through the lens of the seasons of life theory.

Murphy joined the Lafayette faculty as Fred Morgan Kirby Professor of Civil Rights in 1998. Established in 1920 through a gift from Fred Morgan Kirby, the Kirby professorship in Lafayette’s department of government and law was the first endowed chair in civil rights at any college or university in the nation. Murphy earned his doctorate in 1978 from the University of Virginia, where he received the Allan T. Gwathmey Foundation Fellow, given to the top student in the Graduate School of Arts and Science. He holds a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He graduated in 1973, summa cum laude, with a major in political science and was listed in Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.