College of Law Newsroom

Professor Zietlow to Present at Symposium on Thirteenth Amendment

Professor Zietlow

January 23, 2012

Rebecca Zietlow, the Charles W. Fornoff Professor of Law and Values, will participate in a symposium on the Thirteenth Amendment hosted by The Columbia Law Review on January 27, 2012 in New York.

The symposium, titled “Thirteenth Amendment: Meaning, Enforcement, and Contemporary Implications,” will examine the contemporary significance of the Thirteenth Amendment. Adopted in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and was an essential legislative tool during the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War.

Symposium participants will analyze the Thirteenth Amendment’s guarantees of fundamental freedoms and discuss how the amendment remains relevant to such modern topics as racial profiling, affirmative action, hate speech, abortion rights, and constitutional interpretation.

Professor Zietlow has written extensively about the history and meaning of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. Her interests include congressional protection of individual rights, constitutional theory, and popular constitutionalism.  She is the author of the book Enforcing Equality: Congress, the Constitution and the Protection of Individual Rights (2006).