Ohio Northern University’s Pettit College of Law will present the 2016 Carhart Program in Legal Ethics in the Celebrezze Large Moot Court Room on Thursday, April 21, at noon. The program will feature “Zealous Advocacy and Testing Boundaries: The Role of a Criminal Defender” presented by Judge Amul R. Thapar, United States district judge for the Eastern District of Kentucky.

This event is open to the public.

Thapar is the country’s first South Asian Article III judge. President George W. Bush nominated him to the federal bench on May 24, 2007, and the United States Senate confirmed him by unanimous consent on Dec. 13, 2007.

Prior to his confirmation, Thapar served as the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky. While United States attorney, Thapar was appointed to the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (AGAC) and chaired the AGAC’s Controlled Substances and Asset Forfeiture subcommittee. He also served on the Terrorism and National Security subcommittee, the Violent Crime subcommittee, and Child Exploitation working group.

Thapar also has worked for the law firms of Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., and Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in Cincinnati, Ohio, and served as an assistant United States attorney in both the Southern District of Ohio and the District of Columbia. Between 1994 and 1997, Thapar served as a law clerk to S. Arthur Spiegel, who sits on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, and Nathaniel R. Jones, who sat on the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.

In the past year, Thapar has taught at the University of Virginia School of Law, Vanderbilt Law School, and the Northern Kentucky University Chase College of Law. He received his undergraduate degree from Boston College and his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

The Fred L. Carhart Memorial Program in Legal Ethics was established at ONU’s College of Law in 2007 through an endowment from the estate of alumnus Dwight L. Carhart in memory of his father, Fred L. Carhart, a lifelong attorney in Marion, Ohio, until his death in 1948. The program brings eminent scholars, jurists and lawyers to Ohio Northern to actively engage in lectures, seminars and panel discussions for the benefit of students, the college and University communities, the public, and the bench and bar. The Carhart Program funds lectures and symposia in alternating years.