Dahlia Lithwick will be on campus Thursday to give the annual Judge Hugh H. Bownes Forum on Civil Rights lecture -- inclement weather earlier this winter (imagine that!) delayed the address until this week -- and we thought you'd enjoy reading a selection of some of her recent columns. A taste of what you might hear Thursday:

• Butt Out: A big gun case as a natural experiment in judicial restraint.

• Shades of Gray: Barack Obama has gotten past affirmative action. Have we?

• Yoo Talkin' to Me? Plausible deniability, and other reasons why warfare by midlevel legal memoranda is a really bad idea.

Dahlia Lithwick is senior editor and legal correspondent for Slate magazine, where she writes a column entitled “Supreme Court Dispatches.” Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, Elle, the Ottawa Citizen, and the Washington Post. In 2001, she received the Online News Association’s award for online commentary. Before joining Slate, Lithwick worked for a family law firm in Reno, NV and clerked for Chief Judge Procter Hug of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She holds a BA degree in English from Yale University and JD degree from Stanford Law School.