Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California system and former U.S. secretary of homeland security, will present “Anatomy of a Legal Decision” as the School of Law’s 112th Sibley Lecturer Oct. 27 at 3:30 p.m. in the Chapel. The lecture is open free to the public.
Napolitano became the 20th president of the University of California in September 2013. She leads a university system with 10 campuses, five medical centers, three affiliated national laboratories and a statewide agriculture and natural resources program. The University of California system has more than
234,000 students, approximately 208,000 faculty and staff, over 1.6 million living alumni and an annual operating budget of more than $24 billion.
A distinguished public servant with a record of leading large, complex organizations at both the federal and state levels, Napolitano served as the U.S. secretary of homeland security from 2009 to 2013, as the governor of Arizona from 2003 to 2009 and as the 2003. She began her career in 1983 as a judicial clerk for Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Additionally, she has been named one of the world’s most powerful women by Forbes magazine.
Napolitano earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia and her bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Santa Clara University, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa. She was the university’s first female valedictorian and was selected as a Truman Scholar. In 2010, she was awarded the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal (Law), the University of Virginia’s highest external honor.
The Sibley Lecture Series, established in 1964 by the Charles Loridans Foundation of Atlanta in tribute to the late John A. Sibley, is designed to attract outstanding legal scholars of national prominence to Georgia Law. Sibley was a 1911 graduate of the law school.
