Sullivan, a Stanford Law School professor and dean-designate, joined the Stanford law faculty in 1993.

The title of the lecture is "The Last Civil Rights Struggle." According to Sullivan, "Civil rights struggles have traditionally been understood as freeing social groups from discrimination. Civil liberties have traditionally been understood as protecting the rights of individuals. But what happens when those seeking protection from discrimination do not constitute a discrete or insular social group? Do civil rights struggles collapse into struggles for civil liberties? Recent controversies over such issues as the legal treatment of gay people and the continuance of race-based affirmative action illustrate a dilemma for future antidiscrimination law: how can law protect people from the invidious use of group identities without reinforcing group identities for future invidious use?"

Sullivan, a nationally eminent scholar, teacher, and practitioner of constitutional law, will become the next dean of the Stanford University Law School on Sept. 1, succeeding Paul Brest. She received a B.A. from Cornell in 1976, a B.A. from Oxford in 1978, and a J.D. from Harvard in 1981.

She is co-author with Stanford Law Professor Emeritus Gerald Gunther of Constitutional Law, a leading casebook in the field for a generation. Among Sullivan's other books are First Amendment Law, also with Gunther, and New Federalist Papers: Essays in Defense of the Constitution,featuring essays by Sullivan, Columbia historian Alan Brinkley, and University of California, Berkeley, political scientist Nelson W. Polsby.

Since 1941 Harvard Law School has been using a bequest from Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., HLS class of 1866, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Justice, and United States Supreme Court Justice, to support the Holmes Lecture.

The Holmes Lectures have been delivered by such notable speakers as Learned Hand, William J. Brennan, Antonin Scalia, and Ronald Dworkin.