Sentencing in Our Democracy
presented by
Judge Carlton W. Reeves
Thursday, February 20th at 4:00 pm
Large Moot Court Room and on Zoom
United States District Judge Carlton W. Reeves, a native of Yazoo City, Mississippi, assumed office on December 30, 2010. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1989 and his B.A., magna cum laude, from Jackson State University in 1986. Judge Reeves was previously a partner at Pigott Reeves Johnson & Minor, P.A., Chief of the Civil Division for the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi, an associate at Phelps Dunbar LLP, a staff attorney for the Supreme Court of Mississippi, and a law clerk for Justice Reuben V. Anderson of the Mississippi Supreme Court.
Judge Reeves is the Chair of the United States Sentencing Commission. The Commission establishes sentencing policies and practices for the federal courts, including guidelines to be consulted regarding the appropriate form and severity of punishment for offenders convicted of federal crimes.
Judge Reeves is a former President of the Magnolia Bar Association and Magnolia Bar Foundation. He has received many honors including the Magnolia Bar’s highest honor, the R. Jess Brown Award, the Mississippi Bar’s Curtis E. Coker Access to Justice Award, Mississippi State University Department of Political Science & Public Administration and the Pre-Law Society Distinguished Jurist Award (2016). Judge Reeves was awarded the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Law, the highest external honor bestowed by the University, an Honorary Degree Doctor of Humane Letters from Hunter College. Judge Reeves and his (late) wife, Lora M. Reeves, have one daughter, Chanda.
About the Donahue Lecture Series
The Suffolk University Law Review sponsors the Donahue Lecture Series, which annually attracts lecturers from among the nation’s top legal scholars and jurists. Each Donahue Lecturer is an exceptionally prominent legal scholar who delivers a lecture at Suffolk University Law School that forms the basis for a Lead Article to be published in the Law Review shortly thereafter.
The Law Review instituted this lecture series in 1980 to commemorate the Honorable Frank J. Donahue, former faculty member, trustee, and treasurer of Suffolk University. Judge Donahue graduated from Suffolk University Law School in 1921, and served as an Associate Justice of the Superior Court of Massachusetts for forty-two years — the longest term in that court’s history. As Chairman of the Law School Committee of the Board of Trustees, Judge Donahue played an active role in the expansion of the faculty, library, and other facilities at the law school. For many years, he served as president of the Law School Alumni Association and, in that capacity, personally raised thousands of dollars of scholarship funds to promote, encourage, and reward the pursuit of scholastic excellence.
Over the years, the Donahue Lecture Series has featured a number of outstanding legal scholars and jurists, including Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Associate Justices Antonin Scalia, Stephen G. Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor, Judge Richard A. Posner, former United States Attorney General Edwin Meese III, consumer protection activist Ralph Nader, and Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Linda Greenhouse.