The Third Annual Daryl Fair Memorial Lecture
Before Brown: A History of Law School Desegregation
Presented by New Jersey Supreme Court Justice
Fabiana Pierre-Louis
Wednesday, March 12, 2025 at 4:30 pm
Brower Student Center 100 East
Reception to follow
While many people know the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education in which the Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, many people are not aware of the decades of work and cases that laid the groundwork for Brown. Those cases primarily focused on the desegregation of law schools. Justice Pierre-Louis will discuss some of those cases and their rulings.
Justice Fabiana Pierre-Louis was nominated by Gov. Phil Murphy on June 5, 2020 and was sworn in as an associate justice on Sept. 1, 2020. She is the first Black woman and woman of color to serve on the Supreme Court of New Jersey. Justice Pierre-Louis, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, received a bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University in New Brunswick and a law degree from Rutgers Law School in Camden. Justice Pierre-Louis was a federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for almost a decade. She later served as the Attorney-in-Charge of the Trenton and Camden offices and was the first woman of color to hold both positions. Justice Pierre-Louis began her legal career as a law clerk to New Jersey Supreme Court Associate Justice John E. Wallace Jr., whose seat she now occupies.