FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, June 1, 2006
Contact: Dave Wellman, Director of Communications (304) 696-7153

 

Marshall professor Jean Edward Smith to give banquet address
to Judicial Conference of the District of Columbia Federal Circuit

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – Jean Edward Smith, the first John Marshall Professor of Political Science at Marshall University, and a John Deaver Drinko Distinguished Fellow, will give the keynote address to the annual Judicial Conference of the District of Columbia Federal Circuit on Thursday, June 8.

The address will take place at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in Farmington, Pa. Professor Smith will speak on the judicial legacy of John Marshall, of whom he wrote the highly acclaimed biography, “John Marshall: Definer of a Nation.”

The District of Columbia Circuit includes all federal magistrates, district court and appellate judges in Washington, D.C., plus the Supreme Court alumni of the D.C. circuit: Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

An estimated 600 to 700 members of the District of Columbia federal bar also will attend the three-day conference.

“I always look forward to doing these kinds of talks,” said Smith, who spoke to the Judicial Conference of the Fourth Circuit four years ago. “This one will be interesting because we have a new chief justice in John Roberts.”

Smith joined the Marshall faculty in the fall of 1999. He first visited campus in October 1997 when he delivered two presentations based on his biography of John Marshall. The addresses were so well received that he was asked to return to campus in May 1998 as Marshall’s commencement speaker, at which time he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. Smith joined the Marshall faculty a year later.

Smith received his A.B. degree (magna cum laude) from Princeton University and his Ph.D. from the department of public law and government at Columbia University. He has served on the faculty, or as a visiting professor, of such noteworthy institutions as the University of Toronto, Dartmouth College, Princeton and Columbia universities, the University of California, the University of Virginia, and the John F. Kennedy Institute of the Free University of Berlin.

In addition to his biography on John Marshall, Smith has written 12 books, including a biography of U.S. Grant that was listed as a New York Times Notable Book, an American Library Association Notable Book and Publisher’s Weekly Book of the Year. He was nominated in 2002 as one of three Pulitzer Prize finalists for “Grant.” His biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt will be published by Random House later this year.

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