Janet E. Halley, professor of law at Harvard University, will deliver three Messenger Lectures at Cornell University this fall.

The theme of the lectures is "Sexuality Harassment/Same-Sex Marriage." All lectures are free and open to the public.

The lectures are:

• Monday, Oct. 15, "Sexuality Harassment I," 4:30 p.m., 165 McGraw Hall;
• Tuesday, Oct. 16, "Sexuality Harassment II," 4:30 p.m., 165 McGraw Hall; and
• Wednesday, Oct. 17, "Same-Sex Marriage: What is the Right Question?" 4:30 p.m., 165 McGraw Hall.

Halley, who joined the faculty of Harvard Law School in 2000 and teaches courses on family law, is a leading scholar on the law, politics and theory of sexual orientation and group identity. Says Harvard Law School Dean Robert C. Clark: "She is renowned for her work in family law, the theory of social movements and law and culture. She is both an experienced attorney and a bridge between the worlds of law and literary criticism."

Previously, Halley was on the faculty at Stanford Law School, where she was named the Robert E. Paradise Faculty Scholar for Excellence in Teaching and Research in 1996. At Stanford, she taught civil procedure, family law and a course titled "Races, Communities and Nations: Identity in Law and Culture."

Halley is the author of Don't: A Reader's Guide to the Military's Anti-Gay Policy (Duke University Press, 1999) and a series of law review articles on equal protection for sexual minorities. She also has published widely on heresy and orthodoxy in early modern England and on 17th-century English literature. She has four books in progress, including Suspect Class(ifications): Rights and the Problem of Sexual Orientation Identity and Sexuality Harassment: A Critique of Sex Harassment Law . Halley earned a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1988, a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1980 and a B.A., summa cum laude, in English literature from Princeton University in 1974. She has worked as an associate at the firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, as a judicial clerk for Judge Gilbert S. Merritt of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and as an assistant professor of English at Hamilton College before she earned her law degree. At Stanford, she also helped manage the Don't Ask/Don't Tell/Don't Pursue Database, a web site providing documents in the history of U.S. military regulation of sexuality.

The Messenger Lectures were established in 1924 by a gift from Hiram Messenger, who graduated from Cornell in 1880, with the intent to raise the moral standards of political, business and social life.