Intended Audience
Sherrilyn Ifill, civil rights lawyer and scholar, to deliver the 2024 Judge William O.E. Sterling Constitution Day Lecture at St. Mary's College of Maryland. The event is free and open to the public.
From 2013-2022, she served as the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), the nation’s premier civil rights law organization fighting for racial justice and equality. She recently served as a Ford Foundation Fellow and as the Klinsky Visiting Professor for Leadership & Progress at Harvard Law School. Ifill is currently the Vernon Jordan Distinguished Professor in Civil Rights at Howard Law School, where later this year she will launch the 14th Amendment Center for Law & Democracy. Ifill holds a fellowship at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Ifill’s tenure at the helm of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund was widely praised for elevating the profile and influence of the organization, and for expanding its work across multiple areas of civil rights law. Ifill played a prominent role in shaping our national conversation about race and civil rights during a tumultuous period of racial reckoning. Her strategic vision and counsel remains highly sought after from leaders in government, business, law, grassroots organizations and academia.
Ifill is a scholar whose work has appeared in leading law journals, periodicals and the nation’s leading newspapers. Her book "On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century" is credited with laying the foundation for contemporary conversations about lynching and reconciliation. She is currently completing a new book about race and the current crisis in American democracy titled, "Is This America?"
Ifill is a graduate of Vassar College and earned her J.D. from New York University School of Law. She was named by TIME magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2021. Ifill is a recipient of the Radcliffe Medal, the Brandeis Medal, the Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association and the Gold Medal from the New York State Bar Association.
The Judge William O.E. Sterling Constitution Day Lecture is an annual lecture held on or around September 17th to commemorate the signing of the U.S. Constitution. Previous Constitution Day speakers include Nina Totenberg, Neal Katyal and Congressman Jamie Raskin.