Book Talk with Ninth Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown

Join the Bill Lane Center for the American West, the Stanford Center for Law and History and the Department of History for a conversation with the Hon. M. Margaret McKeown, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  With moderator Emily Greenfield, a Stanford doctoral student in U.S. History, Judge McKeown will discuss her new book: Citizen Justice: The Environmental Legacy of William O. Douglas—Public Advocate and Conservation Champion.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was a giant in the legal world, even if he is often remembered for his four wives, as a target of impeachment proceedings, and for his tenure as the long-serving justice from 1939 to 1975.  His most enduring legacy, however, is perhaps his advocacy for the environment.  In a way unthinkable today, Douglas ran a one-man lobby shop from his chambers at the U.S. Supreme Court, bringing him admiration from allies in conservation groups but raising ethical issues with his colleagues.  Douglas organized protest hikes that leveraged his position as a national figure, he lobbied politicians and policymakers privately about everything from logging to highway construction and pollution, and he protested at the Supreme Court through his voluminous and passionate dissents.  Douglas made a lasting contribution to both the physical environment and environmental law—with trees still standing, dams unbuilt, and beaches protected as a result of his work.

About the author

M. Margaret McKeown has served almost twenty-five years as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an affiliated scholar at the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University, and jurist-in-residence at the University of San Diego School of Law. As a former White House Fellow, she served as special assistant at the White House and as special assistant to the Secretary of the Interior. A Wyoming native, she serves on the board of Teton Science Schools and was a member of the first American expedition to Mt. Shishapangma in Tibet.

Judge McKeown graduated from Georgetown University Law Center and holds an honorary doctorate from Georgetown University.  Before her appointment, she was the first woman partner at Perkins Coie in Seattle and Washington, D.C.

About the moderator

Emily Greenfield is a Stanford PhD candidate in U.S. History, studying slavery in American memory. Her research explores constructions of the past in public space – the remembering and forgetting that unfolds in textbooks and museums, on tour at historic sites, and across the built landscape of America’s memorials and monuments. Before entering her doctoral program, Greenfield was a producer at CBS News and a member of the leadership team of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello.