Judge Connie Callahan to be Honored as Alumna of the Year at the 2005 Pacific McGeorge School of Law Commencement Ceremony
May 12, 2005For Immediate Release - May 12, 2005 - Sacramento, CA
Contact: Janet Konttinen, 916.739.7047
Judge Connie Callahan, ’75, of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will be honored as Alumna of the Year at the 2005 University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law commencement ceremony at 1 p.m., Saturday, May 14 at Sacramento’s Memorial Auditorium. The former San Joaquin County Superior Court judge and Court of Appeal justice has served on the second highest court in the land since the unanimous confirmation of her presidential nomination by the U.S. Senate in 2003. Throughout her distinguished judicial career, Judge Callahan has been a staunch supporter of her legal alma mater. She served on the board of the Pacific McGeorge Alumni Association for four years and is its immediate past president. She was elected a member of the University of the Pacific’s Board of Regents in 2004.
Constance Rice, co-founder and co-director of The Advancement Project in Los Angeles, will be the keynote speaker at the graduation exercise culminating the law school’s 81 st academic year. The Advancement Project is a public policy and legal action group that supports organizations working to end community problems and address racial, class, and other barriers to opportunity.
Renowned for her unconventional approaches to tackling problems of inequity and exclusion, Rice teamed up with conservatives on education issues and with LAPD officers to support the Watts gang truce. She has received more than 50 major awards for her leadership of diverse coalitions, and her non-traditional approaches to litigating major cases involving police misconduct, employment discrimination and fair public resource allocation. A graduate of Harvard College and the New York University School of Law, Rice successfully co-litigated class-action, civil rights cases winning more than $1.6 billion in policy changes and remedies during her nine-year tenure in the Los Angeles office of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc.
Rice received the 2001 Peace Prize from the California Wellness Foundation and the 2002 John Anson Ford Humanitarian Award from Los Angeles County. She is a first cousin to U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.
Student speakers for the commencement will be Matt Darby and Trent Diehl. Pacific McGeorge will award 332 Juris Doctor degrees and 23 Master of Laws degrees. Presiding over the ceremony will be Dean Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker.
