Professor Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago will speak on "Same-sex Marriage: Beyond the Politics of Stigma". Professor David Novak, University of Toronto; Professor Michael Warner, Yale University; and Professor Pam Karlan, Stanford Law School, will serve as commentators.

The Brennan Center Jorde Symposium, an annual event, was created in 1996 to sponsor top scholarly discourse and writing from a variety of perspectives on issues that were central to the legacy of William J. Brennan, Jr. The Brennan Center named the Symposium in honor of its major benefactor Thomas M. Jorde, former Brennan clerk and Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, Boalt Hall. A unique feature of the Symposium is that, each year, the honored lecturer presents the same lecture at two different sites, one in the fall, and another in the spring, with a different pair of prominent commentators at each site. The fall lecture is typically held at the University of California at Berkeley, Boalt Hall, where Tom Jorde taught for many years. The spring lecture is at a different law school every year. Both lectures and the four commentaries are published annually in the California Law Review.

A reception will follow the symposium in the faculty lounge at Stanford Law School.