Chief Judge Carl Stewart, of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, will speak 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 26, in the Apache Rooms of Rogers Student Center.
Admission is free and the event is open to the public.
Held in celebration of U.S. Constitution Day, the event is sponsored by the Smith County Bar Association and Smith County Bar Foundation, with the assistance of the TJC Criminal Justice and Paralegal programs. Constitution Day is traditionally celebrated on Sept. 17, memorializing the day the Constitution was signed in 1787.
Judge Stewart has been on the 5th Circuit since 1994 and became Chief Judge in 2012. He is a graduate of Dillard University in New Orleans and received his Juris Doctorate from Loyola University College of Law in New Orleans in 1974.
He served in the United States Army as a Judge Advocate General and later as a defense attorney in private practice. He began his work within the federal criminal justice system as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Western District of Louisiana from 1979 to 1983.
He later served as a state court judge and appellate judge in Louisiana before being appointed to the federal bench in 1994. When he was appointed to his current position, he became the first African-American Chief Judge of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.