Stephen B. Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, a public interest legal project based in Atlanta which provides legal representation to persons facing the death penalty, will address the Northeastern University School of Law graduates at commencement exercises in Matthews Arena, 238 St. Botolph Street, Boston, on Friday, May 28, at 1 p.m. He will also receive an honorary degree. Aaron Feuerstein, president and CEO of Malden Mills Industries, Inc., and Victoria Roberts '76, US district judge for the Eastern District of Michigan, will also earn honorary degrees during commencement exercises.

Bright is a nationally renowned advocate against the death penalty. He has represented persons facing the death penalty at trial, on appeals and in post-conviction proceedings since 1979. He argued Amadeo v. Zant before the US Supreme Court in 1988, in which the death sentence was set aside because of racial discrimination.

The Southern Center for Human Rights also provides legal representation to prisoners challenging unconstitutional conditions in prisons and jails throughout the South, and is engaged in efforts to improve access to lawyers and the legal system by poor people accused of crimes and in prison, and to bring about greater judicial independence. Bright has been director of the center since 1982.

Bright has testified before committees of both the US Senate and House of Representatives and committees of the legislatures of Connecticut, Georgia and Texas. He served on an American Bar Association Task Force that studied capital punishment issues and made recommendations, ultimately adopted by the American Bar Association with minor modification, to the US Congress about how to improve the fairness of the process by which people are sentenced to death.

Bright received the American Bar Association's Thurgood Marshall Award, presented at the ABA Annual Meeting in 1998; the Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty presented in 1991 by the American Civil Liberties Union; the Kutak-Dodds Prize, presented in 1992 by the National Legal Aid & Defender Association; and other awards.