On July 12th, Douglas S. Eakeley, Member of Lowenstein Sandler PC moderated a panel exploring the jurisprudence of Supreme Court Justice William Brennan at the New Jersey Historical Society in Newark. Gary Wingens, Managing Partner at Lowenstein, provided welcome remarks as the Lowenstein firm hosted the event.

The panel, titled “The Legacy of Justice Brennan in the Twenty-First Century” featured New Jersey Supreme Court Justice Anne Patterson, former New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice James Zazzali and former New Jersey Supreme Court Justice James Coleman. Mr. Eakeley and the Justices engaged a diverse audience of dozens of practitioners, legal interns and policy students in a thoughtful discussion of how Justice Brennan ascended to the highest court in the land, how his time on the New Jersey Supreme Court informed his later jurisprudence and how many of his 1360 published opinions as a US Supreme Court Justice, which is second only to Justice Douglas, directly impacted members of the New Jersey Supreme Court.

The event was held as part of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice’s Summer of Social Justice Panel Series, a series of panels and cutting edge conversations between established and emerging leaders for social change. A particular aspiration of the Summer of Social Justice is to provide interns, summer associates and young professionals working in greater Newark an opportunity to engage well- established leaders in law, policy, and social justice—both on the panel and in the audience.