O’Connor welcomes attorney Ginsburg to event


The audience at the upcoming 12th Annual Willard H. Pedrick Lecture is in for a treat, as both the guest speaker and the person introducing him are known for their wry wit and entertaining stories.

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor will introduce Martin D. Ginsburg, a Washington , D.C. , attorney and professor at Georgetown University Law Center . The event, which is free and open to the public, is at 4 p.m., March 29, in the Great Hall at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law.

“I will have a lot of funny stuff in my introduction, and they'd better not miss a word of it,” O'Connor says.

O'Connor is a former colleague of Ginsburg's wife, Ruth, who gets this mention in his bio: “(He) moved to Georgetown University in 1980 when his wife obtained a good job in Washington .”

Ginsburg's topic at the Pedrick Lecture, named for the founding dean of ASU's College of Law , is “Some Reflections on Imperfection.”

“Murphy's Law, everyone knows, states that if something can go wrong it will,” Ginsburg says. “A more accurate formulation, I hope to demonstrate, would be that if something can go wrong it will, sometimes – and if it does go wrong, it will likely be in a way you might have predicted if you had not been so certain you were right.

“What you will be far less able to predict is whether the going wrong ultimately is going to prove a good thing or a bad thing. I suppose that if Murphy had said all this, it would be called ‘Murphy's Law and Regulations,' but I am a tax lawyer and we are used to that.”

The annual lecture was established in 1997 by Pedrick's family and has brought to the College of Law outstanding legal scholars, jurists and practitioners to enrich the intellectual life of the college and the community. Past lecturers include law professors Benjamin Barber, of Rutgers University; Robert Post, of the University of California-Berkeley; Kathleen M. Sullivan, of Stanford University; Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University; and Mary M. Schroeder, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

A reception will follow the lecture. To R.S.V.P., or for more information, call (480) 965-6405.

Judy Nichols , judy.nichols@asu.edu