Oklahoma City University School of Law is pleased to welcome Richard Schragger, Walter L. Brown Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, as the 2025 Brennan Lecture Series lecturer. Professor Schragger will give his lecture on “The Attack on American Cities” Thursday, Nov. 20 at 5 p.m. in the Crowe Dunlevy Commons at OCU Law. A light reception will follow.
“We are fortunate that Professor Rich Schragger, one of the nation’s leading experts on city governance, will deliver this year’s Brennan Lecture,” said Andrew Spiropoulos, professor of Constitutional Law and director of the Center for the Study of State Constitutional Law and Government at OCU Law. “His innovative and important scholarship draws upon multiple disciplines, including constitutional law, federalism, and urban policy.”
Schragger’s lecture, based on a book manuscript in progress, “chronicles the law and politics of anti-urbanism, describing how state and federal governments are aggressively preempting municipal legislation, threatening local officials with removal and, in some cases, taking over cities’ core municipal functions.”
Schragger’s scholarship focuses on the intersection of constitutional law and local government law, federalism, urban policy, and the constitutional and economic status of cities. He also writes about law and religion. He has authored articles on the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses, the role of cities in a federal system, local recognition of same-sex marriage, takings law and economic development, and the history of the anti-chain store movement. Schragger has published in the Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Virginia and Michigan law reviews, among others. He teaches property, local government law, urban law and policy, and church and state.
Schragger received an M.A. in legal theory from University College London and received his J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School. He was a supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review. After clerking for Dolores Sloviter, then-chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Schragger joined the Washington, D.C., firm Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin, where he practiced for two years. He is the author of City Power: Urban Governance in a Global Age (Oxford University Press, 2016).
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is available online at okcu.link/Brennan2025
The Brennan Lecture is named in honor of the late United States Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. The lecture provides a forum for distinguished jurists and scholars to examine timely issues in the field of state constitutional law.