Next Tuesday marks the beginning of “Civil Discourse: The Peter and Marilyn Coors Conversation Series,” with the first event featuring guest speakers Neal Katyal and George T. Conway III. To kick off the series, these two lawyers will discuss executive power in politics in front of a campus audience.
George T. Conway III, lawyer, is the husband of senior counsellor to President Trump Kellyanne Conway and a graduate of Yale Law school, and works in the litigation department of firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz. Conway has argued cases such as Morrison v. National Australia Bank before the Supreme Court, which redefined overseas financial fraud legislation.
Neal Katyal is a professor at Georgetown University and partner at Hogan Lovells, an international law firm. In 2018, he argued Trump vs. Hawaii, the case regarding the travel ban created by the president via executive order.
He has argued more cases before the Supreme Court of the United States than Thurgood Marshall, breaking the record for most cases argued before the Supreme Court by a minority attorney in United States history, according to Georgetown Law’s website.
Kaytal served as Acting Solicitor General under the Obama administration from 2010 to 2011, where he was “responsible for representing the federal government of the United States in all appellate matters before the U.S. Supreme Court and the Courts of Appeals throughout the nation,” according to Georgetown Law’s website.
Other career highlights include his 2009 victory in arguing to uphold the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In addition to these victories, he has also been the recipient the Edmund Rudolph Award; the highest award that the Department of Justice can bestow.
“I hope the speakers will shed light on the common concerns that progressives and conservatives share about the importance of maintaining a balance of power between the various branches of government,” said Eduardo Peñalver, Dean of Cornell Law School.
“One of the great things about the gift that created this series is that it provides the resources to bring people up to Ithaca to engage with one another in ways that we would not otherwise typically see on campus,” said Peñalver.
The series is an opportunity for the Cornell community to engage in “intellectual discourse on difficult yet timely issues facing the nation,” according to the event website.
Future events include “Is Illiberalism Corroding Our Democracy? With Ezra Klein and Andrew Sullivan” and “Have Tech Platforms Gotten Too Big and Need to Be Broken Up? With Megan McArdle and Tim Wu”.
“The series was made possible by a very generous gift from Pete and Marilyn Coors, both Cornell alumni who believe that college is a time for thinking about big issues and challenging our own assumptions,” said Peñalver.
This discussion will take place Tuesday, Sept. 17 from 5:30pm to 6:30 p.m. in Statler Auditorium. The event is open to all Cornell students and faculty.