Melissa Murray To Deliver Samuel J. Konefsky Memorial Lecture: “Dobbs, Democracy, and Distrust”

Brooklyn College is proud to announce that Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law at NYU School of Law Melissa Murray will deliver the Samuel J. Konefsky Memorial Lecture, titled “Dobbs, Democracy and Distrust” on November 9 at 12:30 p.m. in the Woody Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College Library.

Murray teaches constitutional law, family law, criminal law, and reproductive rights and justice. Her writing has appeared in a range of legal and lay publications, including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. She is a legal analyst for MSNBC and is a co-host of “Strict Scrutiny,” a Crooked Media podcast about the Supreme Court and legal culture.

In the lecture, Murray will interrogate Dobbs’s claim to vindicate the principles of democracy, examining both the intellectual pedigree of this claim and its substantive vision of democracy.

“In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Samuel Alito justified the decision to overrule Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey with an appeal to democracy,” Murray explains. “He insisted that it was ‘time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives. This invocation of democracy had undeniable rhetorical power: it allowed the Dobbs majority to lay waste to decades’ worth of precedent while rebutting charges of judicial imperialism and purporting to restore the people’s voices.’”

Melissa Murray

Murray is a graduate of Yale Law School and the University of Virginia. Following law school, she served as a judicial clerk to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, then a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Stefan Underhill of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut. The Konefsky Lecture is an annual event that honors Samuel J. Konefsky, an alumnus of Brooklyn College who became a professor of constitutional law at Brooklyn College from the 1940s to 1970.

In 1972 the Samuel J. Konefsky Memorial Lecture Series was established by former students, friends, and family members of the late Brooklyn College professor. The inaugural lecture was given by former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Arthur Goldberg. Other speakers through the years include Alan Dershowitz ’59 and NYC Police Chief Benjamin Ward ’60, both former students of Konefsky, as well as prosecutor Linda Fairstein and District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman.

A popular professor, Konefsky often tutored students in his home and the classroom and could recognize any student in his class by their voice after only a few days.  Apart from a few fellowships and visiting professorships spent at other institutions, Konefsky taught for 33 years at Brooklyn College, and generations of BC students remember his sagacious mind, his kind and patient attitude, and his deeply informative lectures. He joined the college faculty as an instructor after graduation while earning his Ph.D. from Columbia University.  He became a full professor at Brooklyn College in 1964.

Konefsky graduated from Brooklyn College in 1937 (cum laude), where he was a member of the debating team and was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Blinded in an accident when he was 8 years old, he was brought to the United States at the age of 11, and within two months he had mastered elementary English, Braille, and typing. He completed an eight‐year course at Public School 157 in Brooklyn in three years, and a four‐year course at Thomas Jefferson High School in another three.

He was the author of Chief Justice Stone and the Supreme Court, in 1945, and edited The Constitutional World of Mr. Justice Frankfurter: Some Representative Opinions, in 1949. On a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1950, he prepared The Legacy of Holmes and Brandeis: A Study in the Influence of Ideas, which was published in 1956.  His last book, John Marshall and Alexander Hamilton: Architects of the American Constitution was published in 1964.

For more information, please visit the library guide developed by Brooklyn College Professor Helen Georgas. It provides free electronic access to a selection of writings Murray’s work.