8/18/97
CONTACT: Elaine C. Ray, News Service (650) 723-7162;
e-mail elaineray@stanford.edu
Wendy Linden, Stanford Law School (650) 723-2232;
e-mail wlinden@popserver4.stanford.edu
Connie Hellyer, Stanford Law School (650) 723-3019;
e-mail chellyer@leland.stanford.edu
Supreme Court Justices William H. Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor will participate in a retrial of the famous Lizzie Borden murder case on Tuesday, Sept. 16. The mock trial has been scheduled to celebrate the establishment of the new Judge John Crown Professorship in Law and to install the inaugural Crown Professor, Barbara Allen Babcock. The event is sponsored by Stanford Law School.
In addition to Chief Justice Rehnquist and Associate Justice O'Connor, who will return to their alma mater to serve on the bench, the event will feature Babcock, who will act as counsel for the defense. Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a Harvard law professor and a member of Stanford's Board of Trustees, will present the people's case, and Kathleen M. Sullivan, the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law at Stanford, will narrate the proceedings. "Lizzie Borden on Trial: A Dramatization" will take place at Dinkelspiel Auditorium from 5 to 6:30 p.m. and is free of charge.
The Judge John Crown Professorship in Law was established with a gift from the Crown family of Chicago. The new professorship was established in memory of the Hon. John Crown, who served on the Cook County Circuit Court for 22 years. It will support teaching and scholarship in the law, particularly in the fields of evidence, procedure, advocacy and professional responsibility.
"This gift demonstrates the Crown family's renewed commitment to and investment in the future of the Law School and its faculty," said Paul Brest, dean of Stanford Law School. In the 1970s, Judge Crown was instrumental in securing his family's support for the construction of a new Law School site called Crown Quadrangle, and the Robert Crown Law Library, named in memory of his brother. Judge Crown also served four terms on the Law School's Board of Visitors from 1971 to 1987.
Crown received a bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford University in 1951 and a law degree from Northwestern University in 1955. After serving as assistant state attorney for Cook County, Illinois, he went on to clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thomas C. Clark. Following his clerkship, he worked as a trial attorney for the Tax Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and subsequently became a partner in the Chicago law firm of Raymond, Mayer, Jenner & Block. In 1974, Crown was appointed to the Cook County Circuit Court and was reelected every six years until he retired from the bench in 1996.
"My father had a rewarding and challenging law career, and my family wanted to celebrate his achievements," said William H. Crown, president of CC Industries in Chicago, who received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Stanford. "What better way to honor a great man than to create a professorship in his name at an institution that he loved."
Babcock, a criminal and civil procedure scholar who has been a member of the faculty since 1972, was the first woman to be awarded tenure at Stanford's law school. She earned a bachelor's degree in 1960 from the University of Pennsylvania and her LLB in 1963 from Yale Law School. She served as the director of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia from 1968 to 1972 and as assistant U.S. attorney general in the Carter administration from 1977 to 1979. Babcock writes and lectures extensivel