Kathleen Sullivan presents “Free Speech, Federalism and the Political Valence of Constitutional Law.”
Kathleen M. Sullivan is partner and chair of the national appellate practice at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, the nation’s largest law firm devoted solely to business litigation, as well as Stanley Morrison Professor of Law at Stanford, where she served as Dean from 1999 to 2004. The first woman dean of any school at Stanford, she is also the first woman named partner at any American Lawyer 100 firm. Widely recognized as one of the nation’s most prominent constitutional scholars and appellate litigators, Ms. Sullivan has been named by The National Law Journal as one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America.
As a professor of law at Harvard and Stanford Law Schools for over 25 years, Ms. Sullivan has taught constitutional law to thousands of law students, served as co-author with the late Gerald Gunther of the nation’s leading casebook onConstitutional Law, and published law review articles on a wide range of constitutional topics, including federalism, separation of powers, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court. She has also provided pro bono representation in a variety of case involving civil rights and civil liberties, including the right of privacy.
Now based in Quinn Emanuel’s New York office, Ms. Sullivan handles appeals and motions in a wide range of business litigation matters. She has argued six cases in the US Supreme Court, winning victories for such clients as Wyeth, Inc. involving federal preemption of design defect suits under the Vaccine Act, Shell Oil in a case involving “arranger” liability under the Superfund statute, and California wineries in a case involving the ability to ship wine directly to consumers across state lines.She also has argued numerous cases in the US Courts of Appeals, including the First, Second, Third, Fifth, Seventh, Ninth and Federal Circuits; and various cases in state appellate courts, including a historic victory in the New York Court of Appeals for the right of New York Governor David Paterson to appoint a lieutenant governor to fill a vacancy in that office
Ms. Sullivan holds a B.A. from Cornell University, where she was a Telluride Scholar, an M.A. from Oxford University, which she attended as a Marshall Scholar, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she won the Ames Moot Court competition. She is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an elected Member of the American Philosophical Society, founded by Benjamin Franklin and based in Philadelphia