Deputy attorney general serves as Edith House Lecturer
Lisa O. Monaco, the deputy attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, served as the School of Law’s 2022 Edith House Lecturer.
This virtual event was moderated by second-year student Madison D. Tucker and third-year student Kate J. Grier, the president and vice president of the law school’s chapter of the Georgia Association of Women Lawyers, respectively.
During the conversation, Monaco touched on several topics ranging from her current role to working in the federal government, and she encouraged attendees to expose themselves to different types of people and different types of work.
“I think it’s great if you have an interest or a passion in a particular area of the law … but I also think you shouldn’t limit your horizons,” she said. “Don’t artificially narrow what you’re looking at in potential goals and potential opportunities. … Right now I think for folks who are in law school or who are graduating soon – and early on in your career – I think it’s much more important who you’re working with and for than what you are working on.”
Monaco is the 39th deputy attorney general of the United States. In this role, she is the department’s second-ranking official and is responsible for the overall supervision of the department. She serves as the chief operating officer, and the department’s litigating and policy components, law enforcement agencies and more than 90 U.S. attorneys report to her. She also advises and assists the attorney general in formulating and implementing the department’s policies and programs.
The Edith House Lecture is sponsored by the UGA Chapter of the Georgia Association for Women Lawyers in honor of one of the first female graduates of the School of Law. House, a native of Winder, Georgia, was co-valedictorian of the law class of 1925, the first to graduate women.
Former federal judge gives Sibley Lecture
Former Judge J. Michael Luttig delivered the 121st Sibley Lecture, which focused on the topic “American Democracy in Peril.”
During the lecture, Luttig encouraged a revival for the Constitution and the rule of law.
“To whom do we turn, when our political leaders have failed us?” he asked. “Well, the answer lies in the first seven words of the Constitution, written by the prophets of our nation – we turn to ourselves, to we the people of the United States. Perhaps it is fitting that we ourselves must come to the aid of our struggling America.”
He encouraged members of the audience to “begin talking with each other again as allies and friends, not as mortal enemies” and to “refocus more on the much that matters that we have agreed upon and [that] unites us and focus less on the comparatively little of importance that we disagree upon and [that] disunites us today.”
Luttig served as a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1991 to 2006. Prior to his service on the bench, he was assistant counsel to President Ronald Reagan, served as assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice under President George H.W. Bush and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger and then-Judge Antonin Scalia.
Since stepping down from the bench, he has held private sector positions with Boeing and Coca-Cola.
The Sibley Lecture Series, established in 1964 by the Charles Loridans Foundation of Atlanta in tribute to the late John A. Sibley, is designed to attract outstanding legal scholars of national prominence to the School of Law. Sibley was a 1911 graduate of the law school.
Pin Point scholars meet with former U.S. deputy attorney general
Third-year student Tanner Huff (left), second-year student Hunter Payne and first-year student Ikram Ali Mohammed (right) spent some time with Sibley Professor in Corporate and Business Law Larry Thompson. Thompson has held positions in both the public and private sectors, including service as deputy attorney general of the United States as well as leadership roles with Pepsi and Volkswagen. All three students are Pin Point Scholarship recipients.
