NORMAN – Maeva Marcus and Adam Liptak, who are both noted for their expertise on the Constitution and the courts, will discuss their insight on politics and the United States Supreme Court at a President’s Associates dinner at the University of Oklahoma on Thursday, April 13. Prior to the dinner, they will meet with OU students for an informal discussion.

Marcus is the founding director of the Institute for Constitutional History, located at the New-York Historical Society and the George Washington University, where she also is a research professor of law. Liptak is a Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times and writes “Sidebar,” a column on developments in law.

“The future of the judicial system is a crucial issue for our country. Our guests will provide our community with a clearer insight into developments ahead,” said OU President David L. Boren.

A leading scholar in the field of constitutional studies, Marcus was named director of the Institute for Constitutional History in 2004. The institute is a national forum for scholarship in constitutional history and is dedicated to helping people understand the historical significance of the U.S. Constitution. Marcus has held her position as research professor of law at the George Washington University since 2006.

An author and editor of numerous legal publications, she was recently appointed by the Librarian of Congress as the general editor of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States. Marcus previously served as editor of The Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789-1800, which includes eight volumes that are regularly cited in opinions by judges throughout the federal court system. She also is co-editor of the Cambridge University Press series Studies on the American Constitution. Her dissertation, Truman and the Steel Seizure Case: the Limits of Presidential Power, published by Columbia University Press and reissued by Duke University Press, was nominated for the Bancroft Prize and the Pulitzer Prize, among several other prestigious awards.

Her involvement in several professional organizations includes a two-year term as president of the American Society for Legal History. She was a member of the Permanent Committee for the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise from 2001 to 2009, and she has served as historian of the D.C. Circuit Historical Society since 1990.

Marcus earned a Ph.D. in history with distinction from Columbia University.

Liptak joined the news staff of The New York Times in 2002 and has served as its Supreme Court correspondent since 2008. His column, “Sidebar,” appears every other Tuesday covering legal developments.

He was a 2009 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting for “American Exception,” a series of articles that examined how the legal system of the United States differs from those of other developed nations. His additional investigative reporting includes a 2005 three-part series exploring the rise in life sentences in the United States and, the following year, he and two colleagues studied connections between contributions to the campaigns of justices in the Ohio Supreme Court and those justices’ voting records. In 2010, he received the Scripps Howard Award for Washington reporting for a five-part series on the Supreme Court’s first five years under Chief Justice John Roberts.

Liptak first joined The New York Times as a copyboy in 1984 after graduating from Yale University, where he was an editor of Yale Daily News Magazine. He later returned to Yale Law School, during which he worked as a summer clerk in The New York Times’ legal department. After graduating in 1988, he spent four years as a litigation associate specializing in First Amendment matters at the New York City firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel. In 1992, he returned to The New York Times’ legal department to advise the media company on defamation, privacy and news gathering, and simultaneously litigated media and commercial cases.

While working as a lawyer, Liptak wrote occasional book reviews and contributed to other sections of The New York Times and The New York Observer. His work also has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone,Business Week and The American Lawyer. He is the author of several law review articles, primarily on the First Amendment. In addition, he has taught courses on First Amendment and the Supreme Court at Columbia, UCLA, University of Southern California, Washington University and Yale. He also serves as a visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.

Limited seating for the dinner is available by reservation for OU students, faculty and staff, with overflow seating available to the public. For reservations, more information and accommodations, please call the OU Office of Public Affairs at (405) 325-3784 or email specialevents@ou.edu.