4/07/04—Boston College Law School is pleased to announce that the President-elect of the Association of American Law Schools, Gerald Torres, will be speaking at the Law School on Thursday, April 8, at 12 noon in East Wing room 120. Torres will discuss Affirmative Action in Law Schools and the Legal Profession.

A leading figure in Critical Race Theory, Professor Torres is also an expert in agricultural and environmental law. Currently a professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, he taught previously at the University of Minnesota Law School, and has also served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division in the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., and as Counsel to then U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. His book, The Miner’s Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2002) with Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor, was described by Publisher’s Weekly as “one of the most provocative and challenging books on race produced in years.”

He is a member of the Board of the Environmental Law Institute and the National Petroleum Council and formerly served on EPA’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council. He has been a Visiting Professor at Stanford and Harvard law schools and is a member of the American Law Institute.