Dean's Speaker Series
Pepperdine Caruso School of Law has a well-earned reputation for welcoming distinguished scholars, judges, government officials, and leaders to campus to share their views on important current issues with our community. Our speakers, like our community, have diverse perspectives and believe that we all benefit when we engage in meaningful dialogue with each other in an atmosphere of mutual respect.
Through the years, we have hosted a dozen Supreme Court Justices on campus to share their varying judicial philosophies, from Harry Blackmun to Sandra Day O'Connor, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Antonin Scalia.
Caruso Law holds several high-profile events each year with esteemed guest speakers, including our annual graduation ceremony and law school dinner, as well as symposia and the William French Smith Lecture Series. In recent years we have hosted speakers such as English Court of Appeals Lord Justice Mary Mance Arden, California Governor Jerry Brown, Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, American Bar Association President Linda Klein, and Federal Communications Commission Chair Ajit Pai.
A recent peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Legal Studies examined the political ideologies of all law school faculties and determined that the Pepperdine Caruso faculty is the most ideologically diverse in the country [Adam Bonica (Stanford), Adam Chilton (Chicago), Kyle Rozema (Northwestern), and Maya Sen (Harvard), The Legal Academy's Ideological Uniformity, 47 J. Legal Stud. 1 (2018)]. The chart below has more details of the article's findings.
Caruso Law launched a Dean's Speakers Series in 2019 to enrich the intellectual life and enhance the diversity of speakers on our campus.
2022-2023 Speakers
2021–2022 Speakers
2019–2021 Speakers
2020-2021
2019–2020
Nominate a Speaker
The Pepperdine Caruso Law community is invited to participate in developing a robust roster of speakers with diverse backgrounds and perspectives for the Dean''s Speaker Series. Submit a speaker or topic for consideration by completing this form. All submissions will be considered and evaluated based on programming needs.