Issues of the Court: Asking Hard Questions + Seeking Common Ground
Join us for an in-depth and nuanced exploration of cases facing the Supreme Court with former federal and state prosecutor Tali Farhadian Weinstein. Tali will be joined by experts on the issues who will demonstrate constructive disagreement by giving voice to a range of perspectives on the issues that have the greatest impact on our country and society.
On Thu, Apr 20, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder joined Tali to discuss Supreme Court case Moore v. Harper and its impact on democracy, the courts, and how elections run.
Wed, May 17, 7 pm: Jeannie Suk Gersen joins Tali to discuss Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and its impact on affirmative action in college admissions.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Tali Farhadian Weinstein, a former federal and state prosecutor, has spent nearly two decades working across a range of American legal institutions. Tali and her family came to the U.S. on Christmas Eve, 1979 as refugees fleeing the violence and antisemitism of revolutionary Iran, and she has dedicated her career to fighting for safety, fairness, and justice. After earning degrees from Yale College, Oxford University (as a Rhodes Scholar), and Yale Law School, Tali clerked for Judge Merrick B. Garland at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and at the U.S. Supreme Court for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Throughout Barack Obama’s presidency, she worked at the U.S. Department of Justice as counsel to Attorney General Eric Holder and as a federal prosecutor. From 2018-2020, she served as the general counsel of the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office, and she has taught criminal and immigration law and policy at NYU Law School and Columbia Law School. Tali is currently Of Counsel at Kaplan Hecker & Fink, where she litigates public interest cases, and a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the New York Daily News, and other publications. Tali lives in Manhattan with her husband and three daughters.
Eric Holder served as U.S. Attorney General from February 2009 to April 2015. As the third longest serving Attorney General in U.S. history and the first African American to hold that office, he is an internationally recognized leader across a broad range of regulatory enforcement, criminal justice, and national security issues. In 2014, Time magazine named him to its list of 100 Most Influential People, noting that he had "worked tirelessly to ensure equal justice." Including his tenure as Attorney General, Eric has served in government for more than 30 years, having been appointed to various positions requiring U.S. Senate confirmation by Presidents Obama, Clinton, and Reagan.
Jeannie Suk Gersen is the John H. Watson, Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She teaches and writes on a wide range of subjects, including constitutional law, criminal law and procedure, family law, sexual assault and harassment, and Title IX. Before joining the Harvard faculty, she served as a law clerk to Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court, and to Judge Harry Edwards on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She graduated from Yale, earned a doctorate in philosophy from Oxford, where she was a Marshall Scholar, and law degree from Harvard Law School, where she was a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow. Her book, At Home in the Law: How the Domestic Violence Revolution is Transforming Privacy, was awarded the Law and Society Association’s Herbert Jacob Prize. She has been a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and of Harvard Law School’s Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence. She is a contributing writer to The New Yorker.