For the 2018 Jorde Symposium, Professor Owen Fiss of Yale Law School will discuss “Equality in a Fragmented Society,” focusing on the disparate impact principle of Griggs v. Duke Power Co. and the attempt of the legal system to counteract the dynamics responsible for the perpetuation of racial inequalities.

The Brennan Center Jorde Symposium, an annual event, was created in 1996 to sponsor top scholarly discourse and writing from a variety of perspectives on issues that were central to the legacy of William J. Brennan, Jr.

The Brennan Center named the Symposium in honor of its major benefactor Thomas M. Jorde, former Brennan clerk and Professor of Law at Berkeley Law School. A unique feature of the Symposium is that, each year, the honored lecturer presents the same lecture at two different sites, one in the fall, and another in the spring, with a different pair of prominent commentators at each site. The fall lecture is typically held at Berkeley Law School, where Tom Jorde taught for many years. The spring lecture is at a different law school every year. Both lectures and the four commentaries are published annually in the California Law Review.