Lectures & Visitors

Our students and alumni benefit from listening to engaging speakers and interacting with them on a personal basis.

Whether it is to expand your classroom knowledge or to fulfill your continuing legal education requirements, we provide innumerable opportunities for UC Law students and alums to come together to learn and to explore differing points of view.

Constitution Day is an American federal observance that recognizes the adoption of the United States Constitution and those who have become U.S. citizens. It is observed on September 17, the day the U.S. Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution in 1787. The law establishing the holiday was created in 2004 with the passage of an amendment by Senator Robert Byrd to the Omnibus spending bill of 2004. Before this law was enacted, the holiday was known as “Citizenship Day”. In addition to renaming the holiday “Constitution Day and Citizenship Day,” the act mandates that all publicly funded educational institutions provide educational programming on the history of the American Constitution on that day. In May 2005, the United States Department of Education announced the enactment of this law and that it would apply to any school receiving federal funds of any kind. When Constitution Day falls on a weekend or on another holiday, schools and other institutions observe the holiday on an adjacent weekday.

The Robert S. Marx Lecture was established by Judge Marx to enrich the curriculum of the College of Law by bringing to the law school the scholarship and learning of eminent persons in various fields of law.

Judge Marx was a graduate of the College of Law and an outstanding member of the Cincinnati Bar for 51 years. The Lecture was endowed in 1989 through the generosity of the Robert S. Marx Testamentary Trustees.

The Judge-in-Residence program started in the early 1980's as a memorial in honor of U.C. Law alumnus Smith Tyler, Jr., who was one of Cincinnati's leading trial lawyers. This tribute was the brainchild of U.S. District Judge Carl B. Rubin and attorney Lawrence A. Kane, Jr., who had been partners with Mr. Tyler in the law firm Tyler, Kane & Rubin.

At a time when law schools generally provided little opportunity for students to see litigation close up, Judge Rubin—the first Judge-in-Residence—scheduled a short trial from his docket to be tried on campus, with the attorneys and judge available for dialogue with the students following the sessions. Over time, a number of well-known jurists and attorneys tried cases on campus, providing a unique litigation experience unlike the then-typical law school curriculum.

With the death of both Judge Rubin and Mr. Kane in the mid-1990's, the program became a tribute to all three former partners. As the College of Law developed more experiential opportunities, the program was modified. Now, renowned judges are invited to be in residence for several days to attend classes and be available to students in a variety of settings. This program provides a unique access to the judiciary and to both the theoretical and practical aspects of judicial decision-making.

In the early years, most of the Judges-in-Residence hailed from the greater Cincinnati area. In 2005,Professor Marianna Brown Bettman—herself a former appellate judge and the widow of former Judge-in-Residence Gilbert Bettman—took the reins of the program. Under her leadership, the program gained renewed vigor, bringing in federal appellate judges from the Sixth Circuit, the Eleventh Circuit, and the D.C. Circuit, as well as justices from the state supreme courts of Utah, Indiana, and Wisconsin.

The Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law was endowed by Stanley M. Chesley (’60) in 2006 to bring outstanding legal scholars of national and international prominence in all areas of law to the College as visiting professors.  

Annually, the College of Law recognizes the distinguished scholarly contributions of individual members of the faculty by bestowing the Harold C. Schott Scholarship Award. This award, established in 2000, thanks to a generous endowment created by the Harold C Schott Foundation, honors outstanding research and scholarly achievement by a Cincinnati Law faculty member based on a collective body of work. The recipient of this awardis the speaker for this annual lecture.

This annual lecture is made possible by the generous support of Victor Schwartz.

Professor Ronna Greff Schneider Constitutional Issues in Education Law Speaker Series: This annual lecture is made possible through the generous support of Dr. John Schneider and his family in honor of Professor Schneider’s 42-year career teaching at the University of Cincinnati College of Law