SAN FRANCISCO (October 9, 2013) – Dr. Oscar Arias Sánchez, two-time president of Costa Rica and 1987 Nobel Peace Laureate, will deliver the 2013 Alexander F. Morrison Lecture at the annual meeting of the State Bar of California on Saturday, October 12, in San Jose. The Morrison Lectures were created in 1930 to honor the memory of Morrison & Foerster founder Alexander F. Morrison, a lawyer, scholar and internationalist. Mr. Morrison's widow, and four of his former law firm partners, conceived and funded a public lecture series to coincide with the annual California State Bar meeting.
Dr. Arias is world renowned as a spokesperson for the developing world. He has traveled the globe advocating for peace and applying lessons garnered from his guidance of the historic Central American peace process, as well as discussing topics of current global debate. The New York Times opined that Dr. Arias's "positions on Central American issues have become the standards by which many people in Congress and elsewhere have come to judge United States policy."
Zane Gresham, the Morrison & Foerster partner who serves on the Morrison Lecture Committee, observed that Dr. Arias is an estimable global citizen.
"Dr. Arias has championed such issues as human development, democracy and demilitarization and continually adds original insights to the body of legal and cultural thought," said Mr. Gresham. "We could not be more honored to have him as our lecturer this year."
Dr. Arias joins a distinguished group of Morrison Lecturers, which includes esteemed scholars, renowned lawyers, Supreme Court justices, senators and ambassadors. Over the nearly 80 years of the lecture series, Morrison Lecturers have included Harvard Dean Roscoe Pound, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, Ambassador George F. Kennan, U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright and U.S. Senator Frank Church. Recent speakers include Southern Poverty Law Center Founder Morris Dees, author of the new South African Constitution Judge Albie Sachs, former Solicitor General and Yale Law School Professor Drew S. Days III, Director of Harvard's W.E.B. Dubois Center for African American Studies Dr. Henry Lewis Gates, Jr. and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Dr. Arias was elected to his first term as president of Costa Rica in 1986, during a time of inordinate regional conflict. In 1987 he drafted a peace plan to end the regional crisis, an initiative that culminated in the signing of the Esquipulas II Accords by five Central American presidents. That same year he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was elected to a second term as President in 2006, making him the first Nobel Laureate in history elected to a nation's highest office after winning the prize. Since leaving office in 2010, Dr. Arias has dedicated his time to the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress, which he created in 1988 and funded with the Nobel Prize monetary award.
The Morrison Lecture is the centerpiece of the annual Bench and Bar Luncheon. Justices of the California Supreme Court, the outgoing and incoming officers of the State Bar, representatives to the Conference of Delegates, and an audience of several hundred lawyers, community and government leaders attend. The lectures are administered by a committee that includes the bar's president-elect Luis Rodriguez, its executive director Joseph Dunn and Mr. Gresham.