The Memorial Lecture honors the memory of Dr. Daryl Fair, who devoted 44 years of his professional career to The College, the Department of Political Science, and his students., forming the Prelaw Advisory Committee and the Prelaw Society.
Dr. Fair had wide-reaching scholarly interests. While trained as a judicial process and courts scholar with a focus on state courts, he published research on judicial decision-making, political science pedagogy, church-state relations, state policy-making, and political parties and elections. He taught, at one point or another, most of the American Politics courses in the Political Science Department’s curriculum. In addition to creating the department’s law courses, Daryl also taught about political parties and interest groups, public opinion and voting, American political institutions, and various political theory courses, an impressive range of expertise.
During his years at TCNJ, no faculty member spent more time working one-on-one with individual students, in this case helping to match students with law schools and crafting effective applications and personal statements. No faculty member has written more letters of recommendation, in this case primarily to law schools. Thus, he guided generations of students through the law school application process: hundreds of current attorneys in New Jersey and elsewhere owe their success in no small measure to his advice, guidance, and support..Thanks to Dr. Fair’s lasting legacy, the TCNJ Prelaw Program has and continues to support generations of students.
The Fourth Annual Daryl Fair Memorial Lecture
Jury Trials as a “Front Row Seat” to Democracy
with Hon. Jack M. Sabatino, P.J.A.D., Presiding Judge
Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division
March 10, 2026 at 4:30 PM in Education 212
Reception to follow
Hon. Jack Sabatino presents “Jury Trials as a ‘Front Row Seat’ to Democracy’” for the Fourth Annual Daryl Fair Memorial Lecture. Hon. Sabatino offers reflections about American jury trials in criminal and civil cases, their historical and constitutional underpinnings, current trends, and observations on how jury trials provide citizens with a ‘front row seat’ to democracy in action.
Hon. Jack M. Sabatino is a Presiding Judge of the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey, where he has served since 2005. From September 2022 through July 2023 he served in a temporary assignment on the Supreme Court of New Jersey to fill a vacancy for that Court Term. He was a trial judge for five years, where he presided over a hundred jury trials in the Civil Part and also served in the Family Part. Before his judicial appointment in 2001, he was an Associate Dean at Rutgers Law School in Camden. At Rutgers, he taught Evidence and other courses for twenty-three years, and he has taught undergraduate courses at Rutgers’ Eagelton Institute of Politics and Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. His career includes private practice in litigation, service as an Assistant State Attorney General and Director of the Division of Law, and full-time law teaching. The judge has published numerous law review articles. He chaired the Supreme Court Committee on Civil Practice and also serves as Vice Chair of the Supreme Court Committee on Evidence. He is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a Member of the American Law Institute. He is a summa cum laude graduate of Yale College, a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, and has an LL.M. degree from Duke Law School as a Master of Judicial Studies.
Past Daryl Fair Memorial Lecture Presentations
March 12, 2025
Before Brown: A History of Law School Desegregation Presented by New Jersey Supreme Court Justice Fabiana Pierre-Louis
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.
March 5, 2024
The Plight of Climate Refugees: Rising Seas, Melting Ice, and Inadequate Legal Frameworks with Randall S. Abate, Assistant Dean for Environmental Law Studies, The George Washington University Law School
Climate change impacts continue to displace vulnerable communities around the world with increasing frequency and intensity. Existing domestic and international legal frameworks are inadequate to confront the unfolding global climate change displacement crisis. The global community needs to bridge the divide between international environmental law and international human rights law frameworks to address this pressing issue at the forefront of global climate change adaptation and resilience. Climate displacement case studies within and outside the U.S. will be examined to expose the gaps in the legal frameworks and explore possible solutions.
Randall S. Abate joined GW Law in July 2022 as the Assistant Dean for Environmental Law Studies. He brings 28 years of experience teaching, writing, managing programs, and mentoring students on domestic and international environmental law issues in various contexts.
Prior to coming to GW Law, from 2018-2022, Dean Abate served as the inaugural Rechnitz Family and Urban Coast Institute Endowed Chair in Marine and Environmental Law and Policy and a Professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey. Prior to Monmouth, Professor Abate was a full-time faculty member at six U.S. law schools. Throughout his academic career, Dean Abate has taught courses in domestic and international environmental law, climate change law and justice, ocean and coastal law, constitutional law, torts, and animal law.
Dean Abate has published six books and more than thirty law journal articles and book chapters on environmental and animal law topics, with a recent emphasis on climate change law and justice. Early in his career, Professor Abate handled environmental law matters at two law firms in Manhattan.
September 29. 2022
The Underappreciated Role of State Constitutions in the Protection of Individual Rights with Ethan Kisch, TCNJ Class of 2014, Gibbons Fellow in Public Interest & Constitutional Law
Ethan Kisch graduated from TCNJ in 2014 with a major in political science and attended Harvard Law School. Mr. Kisch clerked the Honorable Stuart Rabner, Chief Justice, Supreme Court of New Jersey and the Honorable John Michael Vazquez, United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. He was an associate at Patterson, Belknap Webb & Tyler in New York City and now serves as a Gibbons Fellow in Public Interest & Constitutional Law.