2023 Constitution Day Lecture

September 18 2023 12pm
Fitzsimmons Event Hall

Guest Lecturer - Richard Katskee, Director of the Appellate Litigation Clinic and Assistant Clinical Professor at Duke University Law School

Before arriving at Duke Law School, Katskee was the Vice President and Legal Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, where he challenged and defended governmental action in cutting-edge cases in the fields of healthcare, education, employment, public accommodations, and immigration, principally under the First Amendment's Establishment, Free Exercise, and Free Speech Clauses.

Katskee was also a member of the Supreme Court & Appellate practice at Mayer Brown LLP in Washington, D.C. and served as Deputy Director of the Program Legal Group in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, where he was legal advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights and led the development of policy initiatives on the implementation of the federal laws barring discrimination on the basis of race, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), and disability in the nation’s schools, colleges, and universities.

He taught First Amendment law at the American University Washington College of Law, and professional and political ethics at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and Harvard College.

Katskee received his J.D. from the Yale Law School, where he was an Articles Editor on the Yale Law Journal; his A.M. in political science from Harvard University, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow; and his A.B. with highest distinction and high honors in political science from the University of Michigan. He clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Learn more about Duke Law and Professor Katskee at law.duke.edu