Duke has received a $5 million gift to support academics at its law school.

The gift comes from Stanley and Elizabeth Star, longtime donors to the school. Stanley Star, a 1961 graduate of the law school, is the formal principal of Cliffstar Corp. which began as his family's 19th century winery and became a top private-label juice manufacturer.

The $5 million gift, announced Friday, will support faculty, student scholarships, law school programs and other initiatives.

Previously, the Stars donated funds to help launch the school's Law and Entrepreneurship LLM program, which debuted in August. And in 2004, the couple gave $3 million to create the Star Commons, a law school gathering spot.

Stanley Star is a member of the school's board of visitors and previously co-chaired its building campaign committee.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito will discuss his career in law, public service, and on the federal bench during an appearance at Duke's law school Wednesday.

Alito's conversation with law school dean David F. Levi is part of the school's "Lives in the Law" series and starts at 12:15 p.m. in room 3041.

Overflow seating will be available in rooms 3037 and 3043.

Lunch will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. Due to high demand, this event is limited to members of the Duke Law School community. The conversation will be webcast live and streamed on Duke University's channel.

Prior to taking his seat on the Supreme Court on Jan. 31, 2006, Alito served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit for 15 years. A native of Trenton, New Jersey, he was an assistant U.S. attorney for the district of New Jersey, 1977–1981, and served as the U.S attorney in that district from 1987-1990. He was deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice from 1985-1987, and assistant to the U.S. solicitor general in the U.S. Department of Justice from 1981-1985.

For the second consecutive year, Alito is teaching a weeklong seminar to upper-year students at Duke Law School, titled Current Issues in Constitutional Interpretation.

A Duke Law School conference this month will examine issues at the heart of public discourse on race in America.

The conference, April 8-10,  is called “From Slavery to Freedom to the White House: Race in 21st-Century America, a Conference in Honor of John Hope Franklin." It is free and open to the public.

All discussions will be in Room 4047 of Duke Law School, located at the corner of Science Drive and Towerview Road on Duke’s West Campus. Parking is available at the Bryan Center.

Conference participants come from a range of disciplines such as law, history, social psychology, economics, political science and the humanities. The full Thursday-Saturday conference schedule and list of participants is online at www.law.duke.edu/lrp/conference/agenda.

In a series of roundtable discussions, they will examine such issues as the role that race plays in politics and the significance of the Obama presidency; the future of voting rights, civil rights and racial justice; the causes and implications of interracial disparities in wealth; how social psychology can inform our understanding of societal disparities; and how immigration factors into many of these issues.

“Our goal is to identify questions about the future of race or racial inequality that merit examination but are not currently being addressed or are given insufficient attention in scholarly and public discourse,” said Duke Law professor Guy-Uriel Charles, co-director of Duke’s Center on Law, Race and Politics, in a Duke news release. “For example, to what extent is race something other than a site of grievance? To what extent is it simply a negative, victim-centered framework and to what extent ought it be a more positive, empowering framework?  Should -- can -- we reframe the stories we tell about race?”

Journalists Brent Staples and Ray Suarez and Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson will offer keynote remarks at the event.

The conference honors John Hope Franklin’s life and work, which were devoted to understanding the impact of racism on American life. (Franklin taught at Duke Law School late in his career.)