Chief Judge Sutton to Speak at Annual Bellwood Lecture in Boise on Oct. 12  

BOISE, Idaho — Oct. 10, 2023 — The University of Idaho College of Law, the Idaho Supreme Court and the Idaho State Bar Association will host Chief Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton of the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit for the 2023 Sherman J. Bellwood Memorial Lecture on Thursday, Oct. 12, in Boise.

Sutton will present his lecture, “What Should be Local and What Should be National in American Judicial Review,” at JUMP Boise, 1000 Myrtle St., in the Pioneer Room. The event begins at 5 p.m. MDT, and Sutton will take the stage at 5:40 p.m. CLE credit will be offered.

A watch party will be held in Moscow in the Menard Law Building Courtroom on U of I’s campus. Doors open at 4:30 p.m. PDT. A live stream of the event will be available through the Idaho State Bar Association’s website.

Sutton has served as the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit since being appointed in 2021. The 6th Circuit serves Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee. He has also served as chair of the federal Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure and as chair of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules. He currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States and as the commissioner of the Supreme Court Fellows Program.

Since 1993, Chief Judge Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, where he teaches seminars on state constitutional law, the United States Supreme Court and appellate advocacy. He also teaches a class on state constitutional law at Harvard Law School. Among other publications, he is the author of  “Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation and 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law.” He is the co-author of a casebook, “State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience,” as well as  “The Law of Judicial Precedent.” He is also the co-editor of  “The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law.” In 2006, Chief Judge Sutton was elected to the American Law Institute, and in 2017 he was elected to its council.

As the largest endowed lecture series at the U of I, the Sherman J. Bellwood Lecture brings prominent local, regional and national leaders to the state of Idaho. The Boise event was added during Chief Justice John G. Roberts’ appearance in 2009 to celebrate Idaho Law’s centennial anniversary and to bring this event to both locations. The lecture will alternate years in Moscow and Boise moving forward.