Higginbotham Memorial Lecture 2025

Presenting this year’s Higginbotham Memorial Lecture will be Janai S. Nelson, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

This program has been approved for a total of 1.0 Substantive CLE credits for Pennsylvania lawyers. CLE credit may be available in other jurisdictions as well. Attendees seeking CLE credit can make a payment via cash or check made payable to ”The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania” on the day of the event or prior to the event via the online registration link in the amount of $40.00 ($20.00 public interest/non-profit attorneys). In order to receive the appropriate amount of credit, evaluation forms must be completed.

Penn Carey Law Alumni receive CLE credits free through The W.P. Carey Foundation’s generous commitment to Lifelong Learning.

Damon T. Hewitt's Bio

Janai Nelson is President and Director-Counsel of the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), the nation’s premier civil rights law organization advancing racial justice and equality. Nelson has spent nearly three decades fighting for racial justice as a renowned litigator and prolific legal scholar with specific expertise in election law. Nelson formerly served as Associate Director-Counsel, as a member of LDF’s litigation and policy teams, and in various other leadership capacities at LDF. Prior to joining LDF in June 2014, Nelson was Associate Dean for Faculty Scholarship and Associate Director of the Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development at St. John’s University School of Law where she was also a full professor of law and served on the law school’s Senior Leadership Team. Before entering academia, Nelson was a Fulbright Scholar at the Legal Resources Center in Accra, Ghana. Nelson began practicing law as the 1998 recipient of an NAACP LDF/Fried Frank Fellowship. She received a B.A. from New York University and a J.D. from UCLA School of Law. Upon graduating from law school, Nelson clerked for the Honorable Theodore McMillian on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit (1997-1998) and the Honorable David H. Coar on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (1996-1997). Nelson regularly speaks as a civil rights, constitutional law, and election law expert at conferences and symposia nationwide and has been listed in multiple venues as a suggested candidate for the federal judiciary. Nelson is a member of the board of directors of the Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights and a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.