Arlin M. Adams Lecture

The family of Sigfried and Janet Weis and The 1994 Charles B. Degenstein Foundation, with support from the Annenberg Foundation, established the Arlin M. Adams Center for Law and Society in 2001 in honor of Adams. The Center presents the annual Arlin M. Adams Lecture, which brings legal scholars to campus to present on relevant legal topics.

Information on the 2024 Arlin M. Adams Lecture speaker(s) coming soon. 

Past speakers

• 2023: Panelists Susan Peikes Gantman, Anne E. Lazarus, Melissa L. Norton and James P. Kleman Jr. ’98, Judicial Discipline
• 2022–23: Christina Boyd, Women in the Federal Judiciary: Trends in Selection and Decisions
• 2022: Rebecca A. Reid, Indigenous Sovereignty and State Compliance to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
• 2021: Anna Gunderson, Captive Market
• 2020: Kaitlin M. Boyle, Reporting Rape on College Campuses: Interactional, Institutional Barriers and Solutions
• 2019: Lee Epstein, The Evolving U.S. Supreme Court
• 2018: Valerie Jenness and Julia Abbate, The Power, Promise and Peril of Law: A Discussion of Law on the Books and Law in Action as It Relates to Prison Rape
• 2017: Shoba Wadhia
• 2016: Paul Kaplan, He Never Had a Chance: Capital Defendants in Contexts of Racist Fear
• 2015: Robin D.G. Kelley, Crimes of Liberty: Race, War and the Unfinished Business of Abolition
• 2014: Robert Skitol, Trust Me? The Shifting Sands of U.S. Antitrust Policy, 1890-2014
• 2013: Richard Leo, False Confession and Wrongful Conviction: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions
• 2012: Timothy Sandefur, The Right to Earn a Living and Valerie Jenness, Agnes Goes to Prison: Transgender Prisoners in Prisons for Men and the Olympics of Gender Authenticity
• 2011: Charles Ogletree, Is America Post-Racial in the Age of Obama?
• 2010: Edward Schumacher-Matos and Angela Davis

The Honorable Arlin M. Adams

Arlin M. Adams was a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. His distinguished career included 17 years on the bench and decades of involvement in professional, charitable and educational organizations.

Adams began his career in private legal practice and, while continuing to practice law, he joined the faculty at University of Pennsylvania. Prior to his appointment as a federal judge, he served a term as secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare. After he retired as a federal judge, he went on to serve as counsel at one of Philadelphia’s largest law firms, Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis, for 25 years. He was also a past president of the American Judicature Society and the American Philosophical Society, and a member of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts.

A Philadelphia native, Adams earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Temple University and a law degree from University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of Penn Law Review. Determined to serve his country, Adams enlisted as a logistics officer with the U.S. Navy during World War II.

A long-time friend of Susquehanna University, Adams was a visiting Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Susquehanna in 1981 and received an honorary Doctor of Laws from the university in 1985.

The family of Sigfried and Janet Weis and The 1994 Charles B. Degenstein Foundation, with support from the Annenberg Foundation, established the Arlin M. Adams Center for Law and Society in 2001 in honor of Adams. The Center presents the annual Arlin M. Adams Lecture, which brings legal scholars to campus to present on relevant legal topics.