NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Robert Belton, professor of law at Vanderbilt University Law School, was honored with the prestigious Z. Alexander Looby Lifetime Achievement Award at the Napier-Looby Bar Foundation’s third annual Barristers Banquet and Awards Program on Feb. 19 in Nashville.
The Lifetime Achievement Award is named for the founder of Kent College of Law in Nashville and a nationally acclaimed trial lawyer and academician. The Napier-Looby Bar Association is the Middle Tennessee chapter of the National Bar Association, an association predominately comprising African-American lawyers.
A leading scholar and teacher of employment law and civil rights law, Belton was honored for nearly 40 years of practicing and teaching civil rights and employment law. "For me, it truly was an honor to receive an award for the work I’ve done in civil rights throughout my career both as a scholar and a litigator in some of the landmark cases that have had lasting influence in our country, " Belton said.
After graduating from the Boston University School of Law in 1965, Belton served as assistant counsel with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where he headed the Educational Fund, a national litigation project to enforce laws prohibiting discrimination in employment. He was a founding partner of one of the first racially integrated law firms in the South.
He joined the faculty of Vanderbilt Law School in 1975 and became the school’s first tenured African-American professor. He teaches courses on race and the law, the law of work, employment discrimination law and constitutional torts.
Throughout his career, Belton has been instrumental in numerous employment discrimination cases. He litigated several landmark cases that eventually were heard in the United States Supreme Court, including Griggs v. Duke Power Co., Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody and Harris v. Forklift Systems.
He is the author of Remedies in Employment Discrimination Law, the co-author of a casebook on employment discrimination law and the author of numerous articles on employment discrimination law and civil rights.
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Media contact: Susanne Loftis, (615) 322-NEWS
Susanne.loftis@vanderbilt.edu