Perry is a civil rights advocate and the state's first African American federal judge. The law program coincides with the April 23 dedication of the Matthew J. Perry Jr. United States Courthouse in Columbia.

The event begins at 6:30 p.m. April 22 with a cocktail reception and black tie dinner at the Capital City Club in the South Trust Building, 1201 Main Street. Keynote speaker will be Randall L. Kennedy, a Columbia native, Rhodes Scholar, and Harvard Law School professor.

A continuing legal education program will follow on April 23 at the USC School of Law. The “Matthew J. Perry: The Man, His Times, and His Legacy” seminar qualifies for 4.0 Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credit hours, although members of the University community and the public are encouraged to attend at no charge.

Moderators will be Joseph F. Anderson Jr., chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, and Richard M. Gergel, Columbia attorney and legal historian.

Several nationally known legal experts also will speak, including Robert L. Carter, chief trial counsel for the plaintiffs in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, and Leon Friedman, a professor at Hofstra University School of Law and one of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars.

Sponsors of this event are the S.C. Bar Continuing Legal Education Division, the S.C. Bar Foundation, the S.C. Chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates, Supreme Court of South Carolina, and the USC School of Law.

For more information or to register, call the S.C. Bar CLE Division at 771-0333.

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