The 2023 Honorable Clifford Scott Green Lecture The Value of Tilting at Windmills

April 13, 2023
4:00 PM
Duane Morris LLP Moot Court Room 

About the Event

Judge Clifford Scott Green was a legal giant, a trailblazer whose accomplishments continue to inspire us today. A teacher and community leader, Judge Green grounded his service in an ethic of care for those around him and those to come. Professor Dorothy A. Brown, the Martin D. Ginsburg Chair in Taxation at the Georgetown University Law Center and author of The Whiteness of Wealth: How The Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans-And How We Can Fix It (Crown 2021), joins us as this year’s guest speaker. Professor Brown is a nationally recognized scholar in a variety of areas: the effects of tax policy by race, class, and/or gender; workplace equity and inclusion; and law school reform.

Watch

About the Speaker

Dorothy A. Brown

Martin D. Ginsburg Chair in Taxation, Georgetown University Law Center
Author, The Whiteness of Wealth: How The Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans-And How We Can Fix It

Dorothy A. Brown is the Martin D. Ginsburg Chair in Taxation at Georgetown University Law Center and author of The Whiteness of Wealth: How The Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans-And How We Can Fix It (Crown 2021). A nationally recognized scholar in the areas of race, class, and tax policy, she is the author of numerous law review articles, book chapters, and essays. She is also the author of Critical Race Theory: Cases, Materials, and Problems (West Publishing Corporation, 2023) and co-author of Federal Income Taxation: Cases, Problems, and Materials (West Publishing Corporation, 2019). She was recently appointed as an inaugural member of the Treasury Advisory Committee on Racial Equity. She received her law degree from Georgetown University and her LLM in Taxation from New York University. She has appeared on ABC’s The View, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, New Yorker Radio Hour, NPR’s Marketplace, and PBS News Hour. Her opinion pieces have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. 

About the Lectureship

The Honorable Clifford Scott Green Lectureship was established in 2003 to perpetuate the civil rights legacy of Judge Clifford Scott Green LAW ’51 and to honor his distinguished service to Temple University. 

Judge Green was described as “an inspiration, a mentor, a teacher, a role model, and a friend to innumerable minority and non-minority law clerks, interns and students.” Clifford Scott Green grew up in Philadelphia in a poor but close and supportive family. He fulfilled their aspirations for him by being the first in the family to finish high school, then college and law school. As a law student he distinguished himself with honors for the highest grades in constitutional law and conflicts of laws, and as an associate editor of the law review. In 1952, Judge Green joined the first African-American law firm in Pennsylvania, which later became Norris, Schmidt, Green, Harris, Higginbotham and Brown. 

Judge Green received numerous awards for his community service, integrity and professional excellence, including the first Judge William Hastie Award from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1985. In 2002, he was awarded the Spirit of Excellence Award from the American Bar Association Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity. He was appointed judge of the County Court of Philadelphia in 1964, and President Richard M. Nixon named him to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in 1971, where he assumed senior status in 1988. 

During 36 years on the federal bench, Judge Green presided over a number of notable cases, and was regarded as one of the most popular judges in the district. Green was a long-time adjunct professor at the law school, teaching evidence, criminal law, and criminal procedure. In the early 1970s, he was instrumental in creating the Temple-LEAP mock trial competition for high school students. He was a founding member of the law school board of visitors and a member of the university’s board of trustees and, in 1997, he was awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree by the university. 

For More Information

For more information or questions about Temple University Beasley School of Law’s Honorable Clifford Scott Green Lectureship, please contact:

Dorothy Lee
Director of Special Events
(215) 204-9000