L-r: Mayor Karl Dean (at podium), John Seigenthaler, Lynn Baker and Richard C. Schragger. (John Russell/Vanderbilt)
Vanderbilt Law School hosted a panel discussion Feb. 15 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the consolidation of Nashville city and Davidson County governments in 1963.
Nashville’s consolidation was the first true city-county consolidation in the country, and Nashville-Davidson County thus became a pioneering role model for future city-county consolidations.
Panelists included former Tennessean publisher John Seigenthaler, Metro Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and Vanderbilt University Law School alumnus (1981), and two leading scholars of models of local government and their role in shaping America’s cities: Lynn A. Baker, the Frederick M. Baron Chair in Law and co-director of the Center on Lawyers, Civil Justice and the Media at the University of Texas at Austin; and Richard C. Schragger, the Barron F. Black Professor of Law at the University of Virginia.
Students, faculty, staff and members of the community were in attendance, including Nashville’s first vice mayor George Cate and Sen. Thelma Harper, D-Nashville.