Mississippi Humanities Council Lecturer To Examine Importance Of Free Expression

Professor Ronald J. Rychlak of the University of Mississippi will deliver the Judge William C. Keady Lecture IX at 7 p.m. Monday evening, Oct. 15, at the Mississippi College School of Law Conference Center, 151 East Griffith Street. This bi-annual lecture is sponsored by the Mississippi Humanities Council and co-hosted by the Mississippi College School of Law.

Rychlak received a juris doctor degree from Vanderbilt University School of Law. He joined the Ole Miss faculty in 1987 and serves as the Mississippi Defense Lawyers Association Professor of Law and associate dean for academic affairs. He is a consultant to the Vatican's Delegation to the United Nations and is a member of the Governor's Hurricane Katrina recovery task force.

The Mississippi Humanities Council initiated the Judge William C. Keady Distinguished Lecture Series in 1990 in commemoration of Judge Keady's legacies to Mississippi. Born in Greenville, Keady served 21 years as a federal judge for the Northern District of Mississippi. Among his landmark - and controversial - decisions were rulings favoring desegregation of public schools; decisions forcing the state to improve its deteriorating prisons, especially the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman; and his refusal to block construction of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. The commemorative lectures are to explore the impact of judicial decisions on citizens' everyday lives.

Rychlak will discuss Compassion, Hate and Freedom of Expression. "Before selecting this topic, I did a bit of research into Judge Keady's opinions, and I found that several cases that we might consider 'civil rights' cases were actually matters of free expression," he says. "These cases involved university restrictions on speakers and municipal restrictions regarding parades or protest marches."

Gov. William F. Winter delivered the inaugural Keady Lecture, followed by James Lawton Robertson, former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice, in 1991, Tulane University professor of law, Oliver A. Houck, in 1993, Professor John R. Kramer, also of Tulane University School of Law in 1998, Gov. Winter again in 2000, Dr. Paul Finkelman of the University of Tulsa College of Law in 2003 and Mississippi Supreme Court Justice James E. Graves Jr. in 2005.

Please visit www.mshumanities.org for further details about this lecture series and the Oct. 15 address, which is free and open to the public.

Mississippi Humanities Council is funded by Congress through the National Endowment for the Humanities to provide public programs in traditional liberal arts disciplines to serve nonprofit groups in Mississippi.

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