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Michael Chertoff, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, will deliver the second William H. Rehnquist Center Lecture.

Michael Chertoff, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, will visit The University of Arizona in November to give a free lecture.

Chertoff's Nov. 14 talk will be the second William H. Rehnquist Center Lecture. The event is open to the public and will be held 11 a.m.  in the Ares Auditorum at the UA's James E. Rogers College of Law, 1201 E. Speedway Blvd.

The event is hosted by the nonpartisan Rehnquist Center at the James E. Rogers College of Law. Law students and Rehnquist Center guests will have priority seating and others are welcome on a first-come, first-served basis.

Chertoff is a 1978 Harvard Law School graduate who served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice William Brennan Jr. in 1979 and 1980.

He was sworn in as the second secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in February 2005 and previously served as a U.S. Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals before assuming the cabinet position.

Prior to that time, Chertoff was assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice's criminal division.

Before joining the Bush Administration, Chertoff was a partner in the Latham & Watkins LLP law firm and, in 1994 through 1996, he was special counsel for the U.S. Senate's Whitewater Committee.

For more than one decade, Chertoff was a federal prosecutor in New Jersey. There, he prosecuted political corruption, organized crime and corporate fraud cases.

The UA event is one of many sponsored by the Rehnquist Center to promote public understanding of the separation of powers among the three branches of the federal government, the balance of powers between the federal and state governments and judicial independence.