Supreme Court Justice Thomas to Speak at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas will deliver the annual Hanify-Howland Memorial lecture at Holy Cross on Monday, April 8, 2002 at 8:00 p.m. in the Ballroom of the Hogan Campus Center. Justice Thomas' talk, titled "Judging and the Court," is free and open to the public.

Thomas, a 1971 graduate of Holy Cross, has served on the nation's highest court since October 1991. Prior to that he served for one year as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 1981-1982, he served as assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education, and as chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1982-1990.

Following his graduation from Holy Cross, he earned a law degree from Yale Law School in 1974. From 1974-1977, he served as an assistant attorney general in Missouri. He then went to work for the Monsanto Company from 1977-1979, and later worked for then-Senator John Danforth for two years.

The annual Hanify-Howland lecture honors the late Edward F. Hanify, a 1904 graduate of Holy Cross and a Massachusetts Superior Court justice for 15 years, who died in 1954. The series was started by Hanify's friend, the late Weston Howland of Milton, Mass., a board chairman of Warwick Mills, Inc., who died in 1976.