Karl Llewellyn Lecture

Karl Nickerson Llewellyn, by Frank C. Bensing. Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

The Karl Llewellyn Lecture honors the celebrated legal scholar Karl Nickerson Llewellyn. Llewellyn, a former professor at both Columbia University and the University of Chicago, is considered to be one of the founders and thought leaders of American legal realism. Llewellyn’s considerable contributions to American jurisprudential scholarship continue to influence legal doctrine, education, and practice to this day.

On March 19, 2024, Columbia Law Review hosted the inaugural Karl Llewellyn Lecture, featuring the Honorable Judge Guido Calabresi. Judge Calabresi spoke on the promise and peril of “Law and . . .” disciplines, such as Law and Economics and Law and History. 

“We, and no others, carry the burden of making the law worth having—over the long run, and from day to day.”

Karl N. Llewellyn, The Bramble Bush: The Classic Lectures on the Law and Law School (2008)

Inaugural Karl Llewellyn Lecture | March 19, 2024

On March 19, 2024, the Honorable Guido Calabresi delivered Columbia University’s inaugural Karl Llewellyn Lecture.