Charles R. Lawrence III is a professor of law at Georgetown University. His specialties include constitutional law, race and hate speech, and he is well-known in the legal field for his work on antidiscrimination law, equal protection and critical race theory. Lawrence's legal interests were shaped early; he has been involved in activism activities since childhood, when he and his sisters attended protests, pickets, vigils, and lectures with his parents, who were both very involved in civil rights activities.
Lawrence has collaborated with another Georgetown Law professor, Mari Matsuda, on two books, We Won't Go Back: Making the Case for Affirmative Action and Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech and the First Amendment. He is also a co-author of The Bakke Case: The Politics of Inequality, as well as a contributor to several other books. He has written numerous articles for law reviews and other journals.
Lawrence received his B.A. from Haverford College and his J.D. from Yale University. He began teaching in 1974, at the University of San Francisco. While there, he was a recipient of the Law School's "Most Distinguished Professor" award. Lawrence has also taught at Stanford Law School, where he received the 1990 Hurlburt Award for Excellence in Teaching, and has been a visiting faculty member at several law schools, including Harvard, UCLA and Berkeley.
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