President Joe Biden announced on March 3 that he would appoint Dean Emeritus Trevor Morrison to the Permanent Committee for the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise. Established by the US Congress in 1955 with funds bequeathed to the United States by the late Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the committee is focused on documenting the history of the US Supreme Court, principally through publishing a multivolume work documenting the Court’s history.
The committee, which is within the Library of Congress, comprises the Librarian of Congress and four additional members. The appointments of Risa Goluboff, dean of the University of Virginia School of Law, and Martha S. Jones, a legal and cultural historian and professor of history at the Johns Hopkins University, were announced the same day as Morrison’s appointment.
Morrison, the Eric M. and Laurie B. Roth Professor of Law, was dean of the Law School from 2013 to 2022. In his research and teaching, he focuses on constitutional law—especially separation of powers and federalism—and federal courts, with particular expertise in constitutional law as practiced in the executive branch. Morrison clerked for US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and worked as an associate counsel to the president in the Obama administration. President Obama appointed him in 2016 to the Public Interest Declassification Board, which Morrison chaired during the first half of his four-year appointment. In 2021, appointed by President Biden, Morrison served as a member of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Posted March 8, 2023