The Warner-Booker Distinguished Professor of International Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, G. Mitu Gulati, will deliver the lecture "The SCOTUS Superstar Phenomenon: An Empirical Examination" on April 1, 2025, at the University of Miami School of Law.
Gulati's lecture builds off a paper, "The SCOTUS Tournament: Winning Isn't Everything," he co-wrote with Tracey E. George from Vanderbilt University Law School and Albert Yoon from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law that explains how a handful of elite lawyers dominate U.S. Supreme Court litigation.
The paper is an in-depth study of lawyers who argue at the U.S. Supreme Court and reveals how a powerful and select group of litigators have risen to the top in what the authors call "a tournament of champions."
Gulati, an expert in sovereign debt restructuring and several other areas has begun to apply his analytical skills to federal court trends in recent years. Gulati co-hosts the podcast "Clauses and Controversies" and contributes to the blog Creditslips.org.
"Mitu Gulati is one of the most cited law professors in the United States today. His work spans many different areas of research, and his latest research on lawyering at the Supreme Court is especially exciting," said Kunal Parker, a legal historian and associate dean for Intellectual Life and Dean's Distinguished Scholar at UM Law. "We invited Professor Gulati to UM Law as part of an enrichment initiative pursuant to which he will interact with students and the faculty, deliver a public lecture, and publish that lecture in the University of Miami Law Review. All members of the legal community, and anyone interested in the Supreme Court today, is invited to attend."
Parker's role at Miami Law is designed to cultivate and showcase faculty achievements in research, scholarship, and pedagogy, enhance the scholarship workshops series, support faculty conferences and workshops, launch and lead innovative pedagogy workshop series, and otherwise elevate and celebrate the community's intellectual life.
The Tuesday lecture will be from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. and is free and open to the public with advance registration. It will be held at the School of Law at 1311 Miller Drive, Coral Gables, Florida 33146, in the Law Library's Gail Serota Reading Room on the first floor.
