The Columbia Law School Chapter of the American Constitution Society

2009-2010 Board of the Columbia American Constitution Society

2009-04-22T12:00:00.001-04:00

Please join us in congratulating the 2009-2010 Board of the Columbia American Constitution Society!

President: Ron Balfour

Vice-President: Taylor Kirklin

Events Chair: Alexandra Briggs

Media Chair: Michael Overmyer

Finance Chair: Helen Mayer

External Relations Chair: Lisa Knox

Thanks to everyone who ran and voted, and best of luck to our new board!

Columbia ACS Board Election -- Candidates Statements

2009-04-20T00:07:00.005-04:00

President

Ron Balfour
Certainly everyone running for ACS board is dedicated both to the cause and the organization. However, I bring two unique things to the table. The first is experience. As a 1L representative I have seen first hand how the organization runs and created important contacts. For example, I *already* have two professors who are committed and eager to speak to the Columbia ACS community this fall about criminal justice issues. The second thing I bring is a creative vision for where ACS goes from here. While I'm proud of what we've done as an organization this year, I think we might be too over-reliant on the "lunchtime debate" event format. Though other events are less conventional, I think ACS is the kind of organization that can and should be pushing the envelope. While my attempts at "open forum discussions" about issues and movie nights haven't gained the kind of traction I'd hoped for, I think I've now had enough experience that I could make these kinds of things happen, if given the opportunity. I think this kind of creativity is important if we want to prevent ACS from degenerating into just another unsolicited email for free pizza lunch; I like free pizza as much as anybody, but ACS can, should, and, with a little creativity, WILL be more than just that.

Taylor Kirklin
I would like to provide leadership for the Columbia ACS chapter because I have both an intellectual interest and personal commitment to the goals of the organization. During the past year, I served as a 1L representative on the ACS board. In this position, I planned several speaker events, including a recap of the 2008 Presidential election and a lunch event focusing on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. As President, I would continue to expand ACS’s membership and involvement in the CLS community, both through regular social events and lunch events on topical constitutional issues. I would also like to plan events with ACS student groups at other law schools in the area, so that we can meet and network with other New York students with interests similar to ours.

Vice-President

Ron Balfour
Please see my statement for President; I believe the same more or less applies here. I am absolutely dedicated to ACS and will use the skills I mentioned in that statement to improve the organization reagrdless of my position on the board.

Alexandra Briggs
I am running for a board position with the Columbia Law School chapter of the American Constitutional Society because of my beliefs in individual rights protected by the Constitution of the United States. My interest in the role that protected individual liberties play in the United States was sparked during high school when a klu klux clan rally took place near the boarding school I attended. I was outraged by the appearance and the demonstration and found it hard to believe that such individuals still existed. As I pondered it more, however, I began to think about how the freedom every individual has to express her opinions allows a constant discussion and dichotomy throughout the country. And while I may often feel horrified with an individuals personal beliefs, it is more important that they are given the freedom and allowance to express those opinions. Since that time in high school I have become increasingly aware of how important individual liberties are and the important role they play in this country’s history and future.

I have also become more keenly aware of how often these rights and liberties are threatened today. This became especially vivid in Constituional Law when I read Hamdi, and the threat he faced of being detained indeterminately without a right of habeas corpus and a possible utter failure of due process.

It is these beliefs that have motivated me to run for a position on the board of the Columbia Law School chapter of ACS.

Taylor Kirklin
While serving as a 1L representative on the ACS board over the past year, I gained experience working with other members of the board to coordinate events for the organization. As Vice President I would be well equipped to provide support to the President and other board members in planning the group’s events.

Events Chair

Ron Balfour
Obviously the discussion of creativity in event planning that I talked about in my statement for President is particularly relevant here. Moreover, I think we have some work to do in terms of publicity for events. While we're pretty good at sending out emails for events, we've been less good at flyering and have almost entirely neglected the use of facebook events (though I did have a facebook event for my "Roger & Me" event). Again, I think the creative element is of fundamental importance.

Alexandra Briggs
I am running for a board position with the Columbia Law School chapter of the American Constitutional Society because of my beliefs in individual rights protected by the Constitution of the United States. My interest in the role that protected individual liberties play in the United States was sparked during high school when a klu klux clan rally took place near the boarding school I attended. I was outraged by the appearance and the demonstration and found it hard to believe that such individuals still existed. As I pondered it more, however, I began to think about how the freedom every individual has to express her opinions allows a constant discussion and dichotomy throughout the country. And while I may often feel horrified with an individuals personal beliefs, it is more important that they are given the freedom and allowance to express those opinions. Since that time in high school I have become increasingly aware of how important individual liberties are and the important role they play in this country’s history and future.

I have also become more keenly aware of how often these rights and liberties are threatened today. This became especially vivid in Constituional Law when I read Hamdi, and the threat he faced of being detained indeterminately without a right of habeas corpus and a possible utter failure of due process.

It is these beliefs that have motivated me to run for a position on the board of the Columbia Law School chapter of ACS.

Taylor Kirklin
I have planned several events for ACS the past year and am familiar with the process for organizing speakers, making room and food arrangements, and handling other logistics for the group’s activities.

Michael Overmyer
My name is Michael Overmyer and I’d like to be the Events chair next year. I’ve been involved in ACS this year mainly through the moot court team. I’ve also worked to further progressive goals outside of ACS, including volunteering to teach middle-school students about environmental justice and going to Virginia on the Law School Democrats trip in November to campaign door-to-door and work the polls as an election monitor. I have a lot of experience in event planning. In college I ran a student journal on international affairs that published articles by academics. We would organize a forum bringing together some of the authors from each issue to come to campus and discuss their articles. We also hosted a more high-profile speaker once a year, and this included working with speakers agencies and organizing receptions. Last year I was at SIPA (as part of the joint-degree program) and I worked part time at Columbia’s East Asian Institute, where I helped organize and publicize their events. I think the ACS events this year have been really interesting and I’d like to continue to arrange similar talks by professors and practitioners. I’d also be interested in organizing more social events—maybe arranging for a group to go watch a taping of the Daily Show or Colbert. I would also like to try to organize more social events with ACS chapters at other New York law schools.

Finance Chair

Helen Mayer
I got involved with ACS during my 1L year as Assistant to the Finance Chair. I (not surprisingly) helped our current Finance Chair with his duties and served as an active member of the organization. I hope to continue and broaden my involvement with ACS next year as your Finance Chair!

Taylor Kirklin
I am familiar with ACS’s financial procedures, including the process for obtaining funds and the balancing of the group budget.

Michael Overmyer
My name is Michael Overmyer and I’d like to be the Finance chair next year. I’ve been involved in ACS this year mainly through the moot court team. I’ve also worked to further progressive goals outside of ACS, including volunteering to teach middle-school students about environmental justice and going to Virginia on the Law School Democrats trip in November to campaign door-to-door and work the polls as an election monitor. I have a lot of skills and experiences that I think will make me an effective finance chair. First, I’ve taken an accounting course. Second, in college I ran a student publication with a $10,000 annual budget. I was responsible for securing funding from various academic departments, the university president’s office, and the provost’s office. This required drafting a comprehensive budget plan outlining the publications goal and projected expenses. I also paid the publisher and arranged compensation for travel expenses for out-of-town speakers. Finally, when I was working before law school, I helped in drafting my unit’s budget proposal. I think these experiences give me a good background for serving as ACS’s finance chair next year.

Media Chair

Michael Overmyer
My name is Michael Overmyer and I’d like to be the Media chair next year. I’ve been involved in ACS this year mainly through the moot court team. I’ve also worked to further progressive goals outside of ACS, including volunteering to teach middle-school students about environmental justice and going to Virginia on the Law School Democrats trip in November to campaign door-to-door and work the polls as an election monitor. I think I have a lot of skills that would be make a good media chair. I’ve previously worked reporting on Congressional hearings and policy speeches, so I have a lot of experience applicable to writing and editing the stories on the blog about ACS events. I’d like to see the website and blog become more active, perhaps with more student-written opinion pieces. Recruiting students to write short (200 – 500 word) posts could be a great way to get more students involved in the chapter. Though I’m not an HTML expert, I did help with the redesign of the website of one of the places I’ve worked at, and I’m confident I can manage maintaining the website and learning anything I don’t know. I also have some friends in the local freelance web design community who may be able to help in making the website and blog more visually dynamic.

External Relations Chair

Ron Balfour
For this position, I think my experience as a 1L representative is particularly relevant. I am comfortable going out into the community (or the virtual community via email) and representing ACS because I've gotten my feet wet doing it this year. Of course, for any good representative, brevity is of utmost importance. :)

Alexandra Briggs
I am running for a board position with the Columbia Law School chapter of the American Constitutional Society because of my beliefs in individual rights protected by the Constitution of the United States. My interest in the role that protected individual liberties play in the United States was sparked during high school when a klu klux clan rally took place near the boarding school I attended. I was outraged by the appearance and the demonstration and found it hard to believe that such individuals still existed. As I pondered it more, however, I began to think about how the freedom every individual has to express her opinions allows a constant discussion and dichotomy throughout the country. And while I may often feel horrified with an individuals personal beliefs, it is more important that they are given the freedom and allowance to express those opinions. Since that time in high school I have become increasingly aware of how important individual liberties are and the important role they play in this country’s history and future.

I have also become more keenly aware of how often these rights and liberties are threatened today. This became especially vivid in Constituional Law when I read Hamdi, and the threat he faced of being detained indeterminately without a right of habeas corpus and a possible utter failure of due process.

It is these beliefs that have motivated me to run for a position on the board of the Columbia Law School chapter of ACS.

Taylor Kirklin
I have experience organizing events with academics and attorneys outside of the law school for ACS events. Additionally, I think it would be useful to organize events with ACS student groups at other law schools in New York.

Lisa Knox
I am running for External Relations Chair. As a 1L board
representative for ACS, I have seen what a great job the organization
does of arranging speaking events for students. However, I think that
an area in which students would like to see more activity is in
interaction with practitioners and other law schools. To that end, I
would like to serve as External Relations Chair in order to expand
ACS' activities outside of the law school, including getting a
mentorship program off the ground that could link CLS students to ACS'
national network of progressive lawyers in the City and beyond.

Michael Overmyer
My name is Michael Overmyer and I’d like to be the External Relations chair next year. I’ve been involved in ACS this year mainly through the moot court team. I’ve also worked to further progressive goals outside of ACS, including volunteering to teach middle-school students about environmental justice and going to Virginia on the Law School Democrats trip in November to campaign door-to-door and work the polls as an election monitor. I think I’d be an effective external relations chair for several reasons. First, I’m not shy about picking up the phone and calling someone or sending an e-mail to try to get a conversation started. Second, when I was working before law school, a lot of what I did was liaising with other organizations. I have several ideas of what I’d like to do if elected to be external relations chair. I think it would be great to organize more frequent events with ACS chapters at the other New York law schools, and maybe even try to build up a network between ACS chapters throughout the region. Building these ties with ACS students at other schools would be very helpful for maintaining a progressive network throughout our careers after law school. I also think there’s a lot to be gained from increasing our ties to practitioners. For example, I think the ACS Columbia chapter could be a conduit for connecting ACS students looking to fulfill their pro bono requirement to ACS lawyers at local public interest groups. Similarly, I would also like to explore the possibility of students fulfilling their pro bono requirement by working with ACS lawyers at firms who are handling progressive cases on a pro bono basis.

3L Representative

Kate Sauser
I am running for 3L Representative because, after serving as President this past year, I feel like I have valuable information to contribute to next year's board about this chapter's operation and running an organization at Columbia. I hope to continue to serve ACS by planning events, contacting speakers, and improving upon what we did this year. I will also be available to assist board members in anything they might need. I have really enjoyed being a part of ACS and think that the organization is growing more important all the time, and I look forward to staying involved my 3L year and once I graduate. Thanks for your vote!

Immigration Enforcement and the Obama Administration

2009-04-10T11:50:00.003-04:00

On Monday, ACS joined CJAN, SIRR, and LaLSA in presenting "Immigration Enforcement and the Obama Administration." The panel discussion featured Joanne Lin, Legislative Counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, Diana Sen, Associate Counsel for LatinoJustice, and Rebecca Reilly, an Associate with Dewey & LeBoeuf.

Immigrant communities have been greatly impacted in recent years by home and workplace raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The panel discussed these raids and what changes might be expected under the Obama administration.

Ms. Reilly began by describing the experience of immigrants during an ICE raid. Often occurring between 3 and 6 in the morning, agents pound on the door until admitted, and then begin sweeping the home for fugitive people, often with guns drawn. The raids understandably terrify those subjected to them. Ms. Reilly explained that there is usually no consent given by the subject of the raid, not a request for consent. Furthermore, there is usually no warrant, nor any probable cause. If individuals are detained and then released upon verification of their citizenship status, no apology is offered, nor even transportation home. Ms. Reilly suggested that these raids violate the 4th Amendment, and also present an equal protection problem in that ICE tends to call off the raid when a non-Latino individual opens the door.

Ms. Reilly described a class action suit that have been brought against 61 defendants, including Michael Chertoff and 52 ICE agents and supervisors, alleging violations of the 4th and 5th Amendments, Bivens and FTCA claims. Ms. Sen then spoke about litigation resulting from ICE raids that LatinoJustice is involved with. She explained some of the difficulties in bringing such cases and discussed a particular example in which it appears the government has litigated in bad faith, and now faces paying a steep fine to the plaintiffs.

Ms. Lin then spoke about how immigration enforcement might change under the Obama administration. She discussed a likely end to workplace raids, and an emphasis on punishing employers who break the law, rather than the immigrant workers. She also spoke about problems related to increased efforts by local law enforcement to enforce immigration laws and the resulting terrorizing of some immigrant communities. There is also pressure exerted on immigration issues from the ongoing war on drugs. However, Ms. Lin was hopeful that immigration may now no longer be a losing political issue, but one where consensus can be reached and progress made.

Is Section Five of the Voting Rights Act still valid?

2009-04-07T10:48:00.002-04:00

On Tuesday, March 31st, ACS co-hosted a talk by Professors Nathaniel Persily and Ted Shaw on the upcoming Supreme Court case Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder, which tests the continuing validity of Section Five of the voting rights act, which mandates pre-clearance of any voting laws or regulations passed by districts with a history of racial discrimination in voting. The regulations on what districts qualify as having a "history of racial discrimination", and how they can be removed from this list, have been changed several times since the passage of the voting rights act.

Professor Persilly opened up by noting the elephant in the room - the election of President Obama calls into question the continuing need for the Voting Rights Act. The case itself challenges the Voting Rights Act on the Bernie standard - Federal power to remedy civil rights violations is proportional to the violations, and the case charges that the law has not kept up with changing circumstances.

As Professor Persilly noted, the election of Obama in itself is not dispositive of the issue. Research shows that while Obama gained 3% over Kerry's numbers in jurisdictions not covered by Section Five, he gained nothing overall in jurisdictions still covered by the Voting Rights Act. While this also is not proof of continuing racial discrimination - there may be other factors involved (covered jurisdictions are more solidly conservative or the like), it is suggestive that there are still continuing differences between covered and non-covered jurisdictions.

Professor Shaw opened by noting that while the renewal of the Voting Rights Act passed the Senate 98-0 and the House nearly unanimously, the actual behavior of legislators was much more nuanced than the figures suggest. Knowing that a constitutional challenge was coming, many legislators spent time inserting seeds into the record to support the challenge to the Act (suggesting they were voting for the act with serious reservations about its continuing constitutional validity) rather than opposing the act itself.

Professor Shaw also went into detail on why the Act has a sunset provision and is limited to specific jurisdictions; to survive Constitutional challenges. Since Federal power to remedy racial discrimination exists only so long as such discrimination exists, a permanent law exceeds the power of Congress. Applying Section 5 to the entire country would also almost certainly exceed Congress's power to remedy specific instances of discrimination.

The case is considered too close to call, and will most likely depend on which way Justice Kennedy rules.

Polls, Predictions and the 2008 Election

2009-02-28T13:12:00.002-05:00

On Thursday ACS was pleased to have Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com speak on his work during the 2008 election cycle, the methodology of poll analysis, and his own plans for the future. Silver, who recently signed a two-book deal with Penguin Group USA, outlined the necessary considerations in political forecasting and how to account for the natural bias exhibited by polls.

FiveThirtyEight.com was created out of frustration with the unsophisticated treatment of polls in the national media, and as an attempt to offer a context that would distinguish different polls and hold polsters accountable for their results. Citing the bad apple effect, where outlier polls garner attention due to their sensationalist results, Silver showed how a flawed polling methodology, such as out-of-date likely voter models or narrow data collection practices, could lead to skewed reporting.

Using various statistical models, including trend adjustment, simulations, and tipping point states, Silver accurately predicted the winner of 49 of 50 states in the 2008 presidential election. But in keeping with his mission is to uncover the hidden agenda of numbers, Silver did not gloat in these results. Instead, he showed that most polls did a good job in this election cycle, and there was only a point of difference between the major poll aggregators. However, while there might not be a significant difference in forecasting, it is in the details that Silver believes there is the most to learn about electoral predictions.

Silver frankly acknowledged that there may be no necessary social purpose for polling, and that he does it for the fun of the numbers. He is turning his attention to new forecasting exploits, and has two upcoming books, treating the art of prediction, including weather forecasting and the science of fashion trends, and the nitty-gritty mechanics of electoral politics. We eagerly look forward to both.

Proposition 8

2009-02-24T17:45:00.003-05:00

Today ACS, along with the Federalist Society, CALSOC, CLS ACLU, and BLSA, welcomed Maggie Gallagher, the President of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, and Jennifer Vanasco, the Editor in Chief of 365gay.com, for a discussion about the policy issues surrounding California's Proposition 8 and the issue of gay marriage generally. The two spoke about the moral and philosophical background that animates the discussion between the pro- and anti-gay marriage communities, and urged that those invested in the debate seriously take account of reasons the other side has for its position.

Speaking first, Ms. Vanasco related the many forms that marriage has taken from a world-historical perspective. Stressing that while there is no universality to marriage in its current form, a union between two willing and loving heterosexual partners of similar age, there are certain norms and benefits that contemporary marriage conveys, and that these norms hold equally true for committed gay and lesbian couples. Studies have shown that people in committed relationships, gay or straight, are generally happier, healthier, live longer, and have more support in times of crisis than their single peers.

What the current debate often overlooks, in Ms. Vanasco's view, is that the gay community is not simply seeking legal rights, rights that the civil union experiment has not always afforded, but also seeking recognition of the responsibilities that gay partners have assumed for one another and their children. Pointing to the continual hurdles that even those with all the proper legal documentation have in gaining recognition of their relationship, Ms. Vanasco questioned what harm to the institution of marriage was enough to nullify the negative ramifications of not recognizing in law the commitments and responsibilities of gay and lesbian couples.

Noting that many in the room were in agreement with Ms. Vanasco's position, as was typical in her tours of elite universities throughout the country, Mrs. Gallagher urged that the audience attempt to understand the viewpoint of many in the country who believe that changing the definition of marriage to something other than between a man and a woman would alter the cultural understanding of marriage and potentially weaken the bond that keeps families intact.

Mrs. Gallagher also urged that those on the pro-gay marriage side look at the effects of a legal change in definition to the other side. Citing Bob Jones University v. United States, she claimed that expanding the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples would force upon private citizens and organizations legal obligations that would violate their privately held religious beliefs. It would stigmatize as bigotry opposition that arises from worries for the welfare of children born into situations where the bond of the family was less than in the past.

Blogging Politics: How Nate Silver Called the '08 Election

2009-02-24T07:49:00.000-05:00

Blogging Politics: How Nate Silver Called the '08 Election

Thursday, Feb. 26, 12:10 p.m.
JG 103

Those who were addicted to political blogs during the '08 campaign could not overlook FiveThirtyEight.com, Nate Silver's contribution to political discourse. Using his unique method of statistical analysis and insightful commentary, Nate kept us up-to-date on daily fluctuations in polling and projections, finally making predictions that were eerily close to the outcome on election night. In addition to his political expertise, Nate offers predictions for sports and, most recently, the Oscars. Come listen to Nate chat about his methods, his experiences on the campaign trail, and what he's up to until 2010.

Lunch will be served

The Debate on 8: A Discussion on California's Gay Marriage Ban

2009-02-24T07:47:00.000-05:00

TODAY!
Tuesday, February 24, 12:00 PM
JG 101
Lunch will be served

Maggie Gallagher, President of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, and Jennifer Vanasco, Editor in Chief of 365gay.com will discuss the policy issues surrounding California's Proposition 8, which amended the California state constitution to restrict the definition of marriage to opposite-sex couples.

Co-sponsored by the Federalist Society, the American Constitution Society, CALSOC, CLS ACLU, and BLSA

Fifth Annual ACS National Student Writing Competition

2009-02-16T09:56:00.001-05:00

The deadline for submissions to the Fifth Annual ACS National Student Writing Competition is coming SOON - Friday, February 20! So, pull out your seminar papers, brush them up and submit them!

This competition is an exciting opportunity for students to gain national recognition for their scholarship and to earn substantial prizes. The student authors of the top three papers will also receive special acknowledgment at the 2009 ACS National Convention to be held June18-21, 2009 in Washington, DC.

The author of the Winning Paper will receive:

an offer of publication in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law

a $3,000 check.

The two leading Runners-Up will earn $1,000 each.

So, What Should You Submit?

The American Constitution Society welcomes all papers furthering and promoting a progressive vision of the Constitution, law, and public policy. Subject matters include: Access to the Courts; Civil Liberties; Consumer Rights; Criminal Justice; Disability Rights; Freedom of Speech; GLBT Rights; Human Rights; Immigration; Labor Law; the Political Process; Privacy; Protection of Health,Safety and the Environment; Racial Equality; Religion; Separation of Powers and Federalism; and Women's Rights and Reproductive Freedom.

So, How Will The Paper Be Judged?

Papers will be judged on their effective use, analysis, and/or expansion of progressive legal scholarship. The judging committee will include federal judges and leading academics. The 2009 submission form and information about competition rules, eligibility and format are available online.

Questions?

Please direct questions to LadyStacie Rimes at lrimes[at]acslaw.org or to Rachel Zuraw atzuraw[at]law.upenn.edu. Competition updates will be posted online at ACSLaw.org and the University of Pennsylvania student chapter's website. Participants must be active members of the national ACS. For a mere $10 donation, you can join or renew your ACS national membership here: http://www.acslaw.org/join.

Overturning Ledbetter with Legislation

2009-02-16T09:52:00.002-05:00

Overturning "Ledbetter" with Legislation: The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

Tuesday, February 17, 2009
12:00 - 1:00 PM; JG 101

Professor Olati Johnson will discuss the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, recently signed by President Obama in response to the Supreme Court's ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, and the implications of the Act. Contact: Taylor Kirklin, jtk2121@columbia.edu

Restoring America

2009-02-09T22:37:00.003-05:00

Today ACS and the CLS ACLU welcomed Susan Herman, President of the ACLU, for a discussion of the ACLU's transition plan for the new administration. The ACLU has prepared Actions for Restoring America, an action plan for the Obama adminstration to folow in "reparing the damage to freedom in American after Bush." Ms. Herman spoke about the plan's short-term and long-term objectives, describing it as the ACLU's wish list.

The ACLU hoped that on his first day in officer, President Obama would stop torture, close Guantanamo, and end extraordinary rendition. Ms. Herman felt that progress has been made on all of these fronts, but that it is still unclear what their eventual outcome will be. Obama has issued an Executive Order that calls for Guantanamo to be closed, but it remains uncertain whether his administration will see a continued need to hold enemy combatants. It is also unclear as to what will happen with some of the detainees. While some can be released and some tried in federal courts, some detainees cannot be safely returned home due to the threat of harm upon their return. Still other detainees are legitimately dangerous and guilty of criminal acts, yet would prove impossible to prosecute in federal court (see the ACS Blog's recent coverage of this issue). So far the Obama administration has not made it clear that there will be no further preventative detention.

Furthermore, Obama's Executive Order limits interrogation techniques to be employed by government employees to those in the Army Field Manual, but it is yet unclear as to whether this will also prevent individuals who are not government employees from engaging in torture.

Ms. Herman also reviewed some of the ACLU's longer-range objectives for the new administration, including a revived DOJ Civil Rights Division, the end of the abortion gag rule, the end of discrimination against sexual minorities by the federal government and its contractors, and a moratorium on the federal death penalty under its racial disparities are addressed.

This Week @ ACS

2009-02-08T21:37:00.002-05:00

1. QUIZZO
Tuesday, February 10th
7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Lenfest Cafe

Come join us for some good ol' fashioned trivia, pizza, and drinks! The winning team takes home a prize! There is limited space, so sign-ups will be done on a first-come,first-served basis! RSVP your team of 6-8 people (including every teammembers' name and a team name) to Bryant Lee (bpl2108@columbia.edu ).

2. Restoring America
The ACLU's Transition Plan for the New Administration
with Susan Herman, President, American Civil Liberties Union
Monday, February 9, 2009
12:10 pm
JGH 105
Come learn about actions the ACLU thinks President Obama should take during his first year in office. ACLU President Susan Herman will be speaking about the organization's transition plan, which encourages the new administration to repair the damage done to our fundamental rights by working to stop torture and abuse, to recognize the executive's obligation to comply with FISA and other statutes, to order renewedcivil rights enforcement at the DOJ, suspend the regulations for the Real ID Act, implement a federal death penalty moratorium, and to take many other actions. You can read about the transition plan at www.aclu.org/transition.

The New Emperor's Closing Gitmo: The Closing of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility and Its Aftermath

2009-02-04T18:30:00.001-05:00

On Monday, ACS welcomed Jon Hafetz and Matthew Waxman for a discussion on the legal ramifications of the Obama administration's closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention center. Mr. Waxman is Associate Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where he specializes in international law and national security law. Mr. Hafetz is an attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project and has represented several Guantánamo detainees and helped coordinate the challenge to establish the right to habeas corpus at Guantánamo.

Mr. Hafetz began by remarking on how critical the next year will be, as the Obama administration will move away from a number of policies of the Bush administration on issues like Guantanamo and interrogation techniques. However, it is unclear how courts will respond.

Last June, the Supreme Court held that detainees have a constitutional right to habeas corpus, invalidating a congressional pronouncement otherwise. Hearings in their cases have begun, and so far a number of detainees have been ordered released, while other continue to be held as enemy combatants. In these cases, one critical issue, Mr. Hafetz argued, is how “enemy combatant” is defined. The defense department has employed a very broad definition, which would see many more detainees remain held. There is also litigation for individuals being held in Afghanistan and it’s currently unclear whether the Court will find habeas corpus rights extend to them.

So far the Obama administration has ordered Guantanamo be closed within a year, cases of individuals held as enemy combatants be reviewed, extraordinary rendition be abolished, and interrogation restricted to the techniques in the Army Field Manual. However, the President has not yet said whether he will continue holding people as enemy combatants. Overall, Mr. Hafetz stated, Progress has been made under the new administration, but there are many question that remain to be answered in terms of the direction of US detention policy in the coming years.

Mr. Waxman agreed that closing Guantanamo was the right thing to do. However, he suggested that it was not that simple to deal with the detainees. He thought that some that posed no risk and could return home safely should definitely be released. Furthermore, those who have committed crimes should be prosecuted in federal court. Mr. Waxman argued that there is an in-between group of detainees who are dangerous or who will be harmed if sent home, but cannot be prosecuted in federal court. Difficulties with such prosecutions stem from the need to maintain secrecy of US intelligence operations, as well as some cases that are now tainted by past US conduct in collecting evidence and performing interrogations. However, it is unclear how many detainees fit in this category and what the Obama administration should do with them.

One solution, Mr. Waxman said, would be to argue that such detainees fall into the category of enemy combatants in an on-going war. This creates the need for a detention system moving forward. He agreed that the risks of creating new detention laws are too great to justify doing so for just a few past cases, but that there might be a lot of cases in the future that can’t be handled in the existing criminal justice system.

The Closing of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility and Its Aftermath

2009-02-01T14:47:00.000-05:00

The New Emperor's Closing Gitmo: The Closing of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility and Its Aftermath

ACS and the ACLU are hosting a discussion on the legal ramifications of the Obama Administration's closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Speaking will be Jon Hafetz of the ACLU and counsel in several leading post-9/11 detention cases, and Matthew Waxman, Associate professor at Columbia University and an expert in the domestic and international legal aspects of fighting terrorism.

Monday, Febuary 2nd, JGH 105 12:00 - 1:00. Lunch will be served.

Sponsored by the American Constitutional Society and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Religion and the Constitution

2008-11-20T20:01:00.002-05:00

On Tuesday, ACS hosted Bill Marshall, Professor of Law at UNC, to speak on "The Founding Fathers: Religion and the Constitution." Mr. Marshall began his talk by noting that religion serves as the focal point on the on-going culture wars. Both sides think that every case they lose is the end of the world, and that their interests are completely opposed. However, Mr. Marshall argued that the secular and religious forces actually compliment each other.

In his view, the progressives have been the true protectors of religious freedom in the United States, which the conservatives don't seek to protect religious freedom, but a particular partisan agenda. The progressives' mistake, according to Mr. Marshall, is that they have let themselves be portrayed as anti-religion, rather than demonstrating that they are in fact protecting religious freedom by preventing the mixture of any religion and the government.

Mr. Marshall noted that the courts continue to say there are no clear lines in cases focused on establishment (like litigation involving nativity scenes), and that they are right - there are no clear lines as to what is constitutional and what is not, because it is hard to determine what counts as religious belief, when it can encompass almost any type of behavior.

Mr. Marshall also argued that the conservatives have forgotten that the United States is a secular society to begin with. Thus, while most people respond in surveys that they support school prayer, once it is suggested that it may not be their prayer of choice, support for school prayer falls apart. Mr. Marshall suggested that government and religion are dangerous when combined, but that pure secularism has its problems, as it can be divisive. He noted that evangelicals used to be in favor of strict separation of church and state, but that this changed in the 1960s when they looked around and saw part of what they were being attacked. The government actions did not look neutral to them. Instead they saw an overarching secularism as its own form of an establishment, and one that excluded them. This shows that an overly compulsive secularism can create its own problems. In response, the left needs to do more to equate anti-establishment norms with the protection of religion and demonstrate to those on the right that their focus should be not on protecting a certain faith, but ensuring that there is a true separation between church and state. Mr. Marshall believes that the current Summum Supreme Court case shows the intellectual weakness of carrying the conservative argument too far, as they have fought for the equality for religious instiutions and organizations in state treatment and now are faced with the same type of claim in opposition. Hopefully, this will suggest strongly t the conservatives that there is no better way to protect religion than keep the government out of it.

The Founding Father? Religion and the Constitution

2008-11-18T01:04:00.001-05:00

The Founding Father? Religion and the Constitution
featuring Professor Bill Marshall, UNC Law

Tuesday, Nov. 18 @ 12:10 p.m.
JG 101

Come listen to Professor Bill Marshall discuss the religion clauses of the Constitution, including current issues and historical perspectives on the role of religion in government. Bring your questions!

Bill Marshall is a professor of law at UNC-Chapel Hill. He served as Deputy White House Counsel and Deputy Assistant to the President of the United States during the Clinton Administration where he worked on issues ranging from freedom of religion to separation of powers. He has published extensively on constitutional law issues and is a nationally recognized first amendment scholar. He is also the Co-Chair of the Religion Clauses issue group for ACS National.

Faculty Election Discussion - Winners and Losers

2008-11-10T22:51:00.003-05:00

On Monday, Professors Persily and Tierney spoke about the recent election, the results, the litigation, and what clues it offers about the future. The most important issue, that Professor Persily started off with, was the issue that wasn't: electoral litigation. Despite huge amounts of pre-election electoral maneuvering, with Republicans bringing lawsuits over voter fraud and voter integrity issues, while Democrats largely sued to force counties to prepare for anticipated heavy turnout. As it turned out, election lines averaged about ten minutes nationwide, and the anticipated voter challenges did not materialize - likely because of the margin of victory as Obama carried more than enough states to take an Electoral College majority only counting states he won solidly enough no challenge would have overturned the result. As Professor Persily pointed out, had the election come down to Missouri (which still has not certified a winner), the amount of litigation would be starkly different.

Professor Persily went on to explain the demographic results of the election, arguing that far from being an atypical election, this election was a "typical Democratic national victory" (which itself is atypical), largely explainable by a four-point swing in the national vote. The increased youth and African-American turnout contributed, but not by much - what was far more important was the significantly increased margin Obama won both of these demographics by as compared to Kerry. For all the talk of increased turnout, the overall turnout was not sharply higher, as only slightly more Democrats voted, counterbalanced by a slightly smaller percentage of Republicans than in 2004.

The election largely came down to the typical political science model, focused heavily on the incumbent President's approval rating, which has been setting record lows for months, and the economy, which has fortunately not followed the same path as the approval ratings and eclipsed the records set in the Great Depression. Factors such as character attacks, foreign policy, and the like simply were unable to alter the narrative of the race.

Professor Tirney took a sharply different approach than (as he put it) "this was nearly a typical election", instead focusing on the magnitude of Obama's victory. First comparing Obama to Churchill, he focused on the natural political talents Obama has demonstrated throughout the election. Additionally, he focused on several big 'winners' of the election (Obama, Ted Kennedy, Technology, Early Voting, and Howard Dean, among others). The losers were the "Old Baby Boomers" and the era of Vietnam politics, '60s politics and the rest of the baby-boomer era political issues that failed to make an impact this election. Hillary's attempt at power broker politics - lining up the right people to secure their constituents failed as well. Lastly, public financing is dead as it currently stands, though the concern this poses is debatable - Obama's fundraising strategy, relying largely on small donors, poses less of a threat of corruption than the usual bundling and big-donor strategy (though it should be noted Obama used this strategy as well to great effect, and so it may not be as dead as has been assumed). The talk concluded with discussions over the next set of elections (2010), and the still-undecided Alaskan Senate race as Ted Stevens fights to be re-elected to the Senate despite his felony conviction.

Judicial Clerks' Personal Opinions: An Oxymoron?

2008-10-30T19:46:00.005-04:00

On Thursday Judge Lynn Adelman spoke about judicial clerks and how their philosophies and opinions inform their work for judges. Judge Adelman is a Columbia Law alum ('65) and was a Wisconsin state senator from 1977 to 1997. He was nominated by President Clinton to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin in 1997.

Judge Adelman believes that while there is generally no litmus test for hiring clerks, often the best working relationships will be between judges and clerks with similar orientation. Group affiliations may give the judge a clue as to whether there would be working chemistry, but often the hiring process is still a gamble on both ends. When the clerk and judge have complimentary attitudes, the clerk will be well situated to help the judge push a decision in one direction or another.

He gave examples from two cases where his clerks provided useful insight on politically charged issues. In the first, a case of substitute counsel, the state trial court did not give the defendant's new lawyer adequate time to prepare his argument. A clerk interpreted the state court's holding as an unreasonable interpretation of the facts, and this interpretation allowed Judge Adelman to reverse where he felt justice so demanded.

The second, a case of fraud and sentencing guidelines, hinged on the interpretation of "advisory" in United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005). One of Judge Adelman's clerks aided him in maneuvering around a decision by a former Scalia clerk, district judge Paul Cassell. His clerk penned a refutation of overly strict adherence to the formerly mandatory guidelines, which allowed for a more contextual analysis of the situation at hand before sentencing.

Votes We Can Believe In, Part 2: How You Can Make Every Vote Count

2008-10-30T10:39:00.002-04:00

On Tuesday, ACS welcomes Scott Novakowski for Votes We Can Believe In, Part 2: How You Can Make Every Vote Count, a discussion about obstacles voters will face next Tuesday and what is being done to address them. Mr. Novakowsi is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Democracy Program at DEMOS, where he works on issues related to the National Voter Registration Act and ensuring that historically marginalized populations have access to voting.

Mr. Novakowski began by describing voter roll purging. When done properly, purging keeps the voting rolls clean. The National Voter Registration Act tells states how to perform purging and prevents states from purging within 90 days of an election. Howevever, a recent Brennan Center study found that voters who are purged are not notified and that the process is prone to error. The study noted that the purging process is often performed with great secrecy and as a result not much is known about how states go about it.

Another important process is database matching, which is used to create purge lists and satisfy the requirements of the Help America Vote Act, which requires states to create centralized databases of voters. However, states are using this information to strike voters whose information does not match up perfectly. Yet, human error in the entry of data or completion of forms is almost always responsible for data not matching correctly. Mr. Novakowski noted that Florida has a no-match, no-vote law and that a suit in Ohio for similar enforcement is underway.

In terms of what to anticipate for Election Day, Mr. Novakowski said that there will be very long lines in many places across the country. Not only are many jurisdictions unprepared for what will be unusually high turnout, but election resources are seriously misallocated. A result may be that many voters end up casing provisional ballots. While this is better than their not being able to vote at all, a provisional ballot is not a guarantee that a vote will actually be counted. In 2004, for example, one out of three ballots were not counted.

This Week @ ACS

2008-10-28T08:42:00.000-04:00

Votes We Can Believe In, Part 2: How You Can Make Every Vote Count

Tuesday, Oct. 28, 12:15 p.m.
JG 106

The past few election cycles have seen countless acts of intimidation and deception at the polls to prevent low-income and minority voters from exercising their right to vote. What obstacles will voters face this year, and what is being done to overcome them? Scott Nowakowski, Senior Policy Analyst with the Democracy Program at DEMOS, will speak about Demos's work on voting rights, election reform and democracy-related issues in the United States.

Non-pizza lunch will be served!

Judicial Clerks' Personal Opinions: An Oxymoron?
a talk by Judge Lynn Adelman

Thursday, Oct. 30, 12:15 p.m.
JG 103

Columbia ACS is very excited to welcome Judge Lynn Adelman (ED-WI) to campus to speak about judicial clerks and how their philosophies and opinions influence their work for judges. Come with questions and take this opportunity to chat with a sitting judge!

Judge Adelman is a Columbia Law alum ('65) and was a Wisconsin state senator from 1977 to 1997. He was nominated by President Clinton to the U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin in 1997.

Of course we will have food for those in attendance.

New ACS Board Members

2008-10-22T16:19:00.002-04:00

Columbia ACS would like to congratulate the following 1Ls on their selection to the ACS Board:

Board Reps:
Ron Balfour
Taylor Kirklin
Lisa Knox

Finance Assistant:
Helen Mayer

Media Assistants:
Ken Aulet
Zach Weintraub

Debate Watching Party Tonight

2008-10-15T12:42:00.000-04:00

When: TONIGHT, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 8:30 – 11 PM

Where: Lenfest Café

Join the American Constitution Society, CLS Republicans, Federalist Society, IMPACT, ACLU, and CLS Democrats to watch the final presidential debate between Senator McCain and Senator Obama. Come enjoy the pizza, beer, and other drinks. Come to join yourclassmates and fellow political enthusiasts to watch this important debate. Come to learn where the candidates stand on important issues. All members of the CLS community are invited!

Labor and the Economy: The Employee Free Choice Act

2008-10-15T09:05:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, ACS and the Federalist Society presented Labor and the Economy: The Employee Free Choice Act, a debate between Richard Epstein and Mitchell Rubenstein.

Leading off, Mr. Rubenstein described the three main features of the Employee Free Choice Act: the legalization of card-check elections for union recognition, mandatory arbitration of the first contract reached by the union, and stricter penalties for violations of the Labor Relations Act. Card-check elections, where a union can win representation by obtaining he signatures of a majority of workers rather than through a formal election, dominated the debate. Mr. Rubenstein stressed the ability of employers to campaign against union representation, on company time, as a significant abuse that requires card-check elections as a remedy. Additionally, he stressed that 45% of new unions are unable to reach agreements with their new employers, leading to the new first-contract arbitration requirement.

Mr. Epstein in response argued for the repeal of the Labor Relations Act, and a return to the pre-1935 common-law rules on union organizing. Specifically, allowing employers to condition employment on employees not joining unions (formerly known as yellow-dog contracts). His argument stressed economic reasons – the (alleged) greater efficiency of non-union companies creates an economic argument that unions tend to destroy companies and industries they have traditionally dominated, using the American steel and automotive industry as examples. Unions, in Mr. Epstein’s view, should be required to create a win-win situation for the employer in order to win recognition – the unions ought to create incentives for the company to recognize them. Additionally, he charged that card-check elections, since they could be conducted effectively in secret, would force companies into permanent warfare mode against unions, wasting everyone’s time and greater amounts of money.

Mr. Rubenstein’s rebuttal focused on the distinction between economic arguments – that unions impair overall economic efficiency – with social arguments; that the social gains from unions, in equality, expanded power to the middle class, and the like override economic concerns. The argument between the two was essentially one of economic goals vs. societal goals, with Mr. Rubenstein arguing that the societal gains from unions outweigh the economic gains, and Mr. Epstein arguing that societal gains are essentially indefinable, and that the economic gains from greater efficiency makes everyone better off.

EVENT TODAY

2008-10-14T08:42:00.001-04:00

Labor and the Economy: The Employee Free Choice Act

(Tuesday, October 14, 12:10 - 1:00 PM, JG 103)

The American Constitution Society and The Federalist Society present a
lunch debate featuring:

Richard Epstein
Richard Epstein is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service
Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he has taught
since 1972. He served as Interim Dean from February to June, 2001.
He has also been the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the
Hoover Institution since 2000.

AND

Mitchell Rubenstein
Mitchell Rubenstein is Senior Counsel for New York State United
Teachers. He also teaches courses on Labor Relations and Employment
law as an adjunct professor at New York Law School.

Non-pizza lunch will be served!

This Week @ ACS

2008-10-13T13:27:00.001-04:00

This Week @ ACS:
1. Lunch debate: Labor and the Economy: The Employee Free Choice Act
2. Presidential Debate-Watching Party!
3. ACS Membership Party!
4. Tabling in the law school Monday through Wednesday this week
5. Volunteer to Protect Voting Rights on Election Day

1. Labor and the Economy: The Employee Free Choice Act

Tuesday, October 14, 12:10 - 1:00 PM, JG 103

The American Constitution Society and The Federalist Society present a
lunch debate featuring:

Richard Epstein
Richard Epstein is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service
Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he has taught
since 1972. He served as Interim Dean from February to June, 2001.
He has also been the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the
Hoover Institution since 2000.
AND
Mitchell Rubenstein
Mitchell Rubenstein is Senior Counsel for New York State United
Teachers. He also teaches courses on Labor Relations and Employment
law as an adjunct professor at New York Law School.

Non-pizza lunch will be served!

2. Presidential Debate-Watching Party!

Wednesday, October 15, 8:30 p.m., Lenfest Cafe

Join ACS and other CLS political groups to watch the third and final
Presidential debate! Beer and pizza will be served.

3. ACS Membership Party!

Thursday, October 16, 9 p.m., at 526 West 112th Apt. 51.

Come meet others involved in ACS, make bad law school jokes about your
favorite justice, and pre-game for bar review.

The party is free for ACS National members--one of the many perks of
ACS membership. You can join by paying the $10 membership dues at the
ACS table this week on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday from 11-2, or at
the party.

4. Membership Drive Tabling!

ACS will be tabling on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday in the law school
hallway from 11-2 p.m.

Stop by this week to sign up to be a member of ACS National if you
haven't done so already, or just to chat if you have. We could use the
company. Send your friends by, too! Membership is only $10 for the
year for students and allows you to attend the National Convention,
our member parties and other exciting and exclusive ACS events that we
will come up with shortly.

5. Volunteer to Protect Voting Rights on Election Day

The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law ("Lawyers'
Committee") and its coalition partners seek volunteer New York City
attorneys, paralegals and law students to assist in Election
Protection on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. Election Protection is the
country's largest non-partisan voter protection program and is
supported by a national coalition that works throughout the year to
break down barriers to the ballot box for traditionally
disenfranchised voters.

To that end, the Lawyers' Committee and its partners are seeking legal
volunteers in the New York City area to staff the 1-866-OUR-VOTE
hotline and provide live assistance to voters who have questions or
need to report problems with voting. While the voter hotline serves
all voters across the country, it targets traditionally
disenfranchised communities, including African Americans, Asian
Pacific Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and other racially and
ethnically diverse communities, seniors, young people, low-income
voters and individuals with disabilities.

In addition, volunteer attorneys, paralegals and law students are
needed to serve as Mobile Legal Volunteers ("MLVs"). MLVs work in
teams of two, monitoring zones of 4-10 polling places, responding to
incidents reported through the hotline and assisting voters at the
polling place.

Potential problems include dissemination of misinformation by poll
workers, problems associated with voting machines (including new
electronic ones) and potential intimidation of voters.

To volunteer, please sign-up directly at
http://www.nationalcampaignforfairelections.org/page/s/vol08ep.

Maintaining Property Rights within the Context of Environmental Protection

2008-10-07T18:30:00.002-04:00

Today, ACS joined the Federalist Society in presenting Maintaining Property Rights within the Context of Environmental Protection, a debate between Roger Pilon and Doug Kendall. Mr. Pilon is the founder and Director of the Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. Mr. Kendall is the founder and Director of the Community Rights Council. (Mr. Kendall also spoke at a ACS event last year, Reclaiming Our Progressive Constitution.)

At the heart of the debate was under what circumstances the government should have to constitute property owners when enacting statutes that impact property owners' bundles of rights. Mr. Pilon spoke first and argued that when the government created regulations that limited how a property owner could use their property, this was a taking that must be compensated, unless the government was responding to a nuisance with external impact (as this would be an exercise of police power, not a taking). When the government is creating a new public good, he argued, it should not simply be billed to property owners by removing their property rights.

In his response, Mr. Kendall sought to demonstrate that at the crux of this debate about regulatory-takings is the fact that the relevant regulations are not simply removing sticks from property owners' bundles, but working towards important public protection. For example, he explained that in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003 (1992), the state statute limited Lucas' development rights in order to protect all property from increased risk of harm in the face of a hurricane. He also argued that framers did not view property rights as absolute, but saw them as moderated by overarching community concerns. In our modern extremely interconnected world, individuals' decisions to use their property in certain ways has tremendous impacts for our society as a whole, and these impacts should not be ignored when considering the extent of property rights.

Packing Heat: The Individual Right of the Second Amendment

2008-10-07T18:16:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, ACS joined FedSoc in presenting Packing Heat: The Individual Right of the Second Amendment, featuring Alan Gura and Carl Bogus. Mr. Gura represented Heller before the United States Supreme Court in D.C. v. Heller and Mr. Bogus is a Professor of Law at Roger Williams Unitersity School of Law.

For those who which to learn more about the argument presented by Mr. Bogus, it is more fuly described in The Hidden History of the Second Amendment, 31 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 309 (1998). Believing that the Second Amendment would be alive and well, and protect important state interests, under a collective rights interpretation, he explains what issues the Second Amendment would speak to today in What Does the Second Amendment Restrict? A Collective Rights Analysis, 18 Const. Comment. 485 (2001). Because the Heller majority opted for the individual rights interpretation, perhaps the most timely question is what the decision means for public safety. Mr. Bogus has also written on what kinds of gun control are most effectice - Gun Control and America's Cities: Public Policy and Politics, 1 Alb. Gov. L. Rev. 440 (2008). The Columbia ACS Blog thanks Mr. Bogus for these suggestions for further consideration (and his descriptions thereof). .

McCain or Obama: The Election and Its Implications for the Courts

2008-09-24T21:54:00.004-04:00

Earlier today, ACS joined the Federalist Society in presenting McCain or Obama: The Election and Its Implications for the Courts, a debate featuring Ilya Shapiro, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, and Jeh Johnson, a Partner at Paul, Weiss.

Mr. Shapiro spoke first and began by citing polling data that he argued revealed a stark difference between how Obama supporters and McCain supporters view constitutional interpretation. He claimed that McCain supporters tended to favor interpreting the Constitution "as it was written" while Obama supporters prefered an interpretation tending toward "justice and fairness." Mr. Shapiro then presented a quotation from Obama indicating a desire to choose judges who have empathy for other people with vastly different lives, backgrounds and experiences. Mr Shapiro argued that this reflected a desire for "activist" judges who will fail to adhere to the Constititon "as it was written." He suggested that Obama would select judges who look to foreign law for guidance and trample upon property rights. Mr. Shapiro noted that McCain would apply the law "as it was written," and that McCain had previously voted to confirm Ginsburg and Breyer, suggesting a desire to approve qualified nominees, rather than resort to a litmus test.

Mr. Johnson began by noting that he admired McCain's efforts to ban torture. He then described his extensive experience in evaluating judicial nominees and candidates on behalf of the New York Bar Assocication. In Mr. Johnson's view, there should be no ideological litmus test. Furthermore, Mr. Johnson cautioned against approving only nominees who have what has come to be the usual Supreme Court justice resume, as "greatness in a Supreme Court justice dos not always present itself in conventional terms." He noted that while ever current Supreme Court justice had previously served on a Circuit Court, no members of the Supreme Court as constituted in 1954 had served as Circuit Court judges. Mr. Johnson cited the Obama quote that had been previously identified by Mr. Shapiro and noted that would-be judges ought to have some real-life human experience and empathy. Furthermore, he argued that the selection of future Supreme Court justices should be conducted with an eye toward balancing the Court's current composition. What is wrong, he asked, with a judge that can identify with other types of people, particularly given the current Court?

Ahem

2008-06-14T20:19:00.002-04:00

The Columbia ACS blog is nothing if not modest. But we couldn't help but mention that the blog was recently named one of the top law school blogs in the nation. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to blog.

American Constitution Society National Writing Competition

2008-04-27T18:40:00.002-04:00

Columbia ACS wants to congratulate Jon Sherman, who was recently named the winner of the Fourth Annual American Constitution Society National Writing Competition. Jon's paper, entitled "A Person Otherwise Innocent': Policing Entrapment in Preventative, Undercover Counterterrorism Investigations", will be published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law. Congratulations, Jon!

Congratulations to the Brand New ACS Board

2008-04-14T16:28:00.001-04:00

Without further ado, here's your Columbia ACS 2008 - 2009 Executive Board:

President: Kate Sauser
Vice President: Megan Crowley
Events Chair: Mina Nasseri
External Relations Chair: Adam Sparks
Finance Chair: Max Dubin
Media Chair: Zeke Hill
3L Representatives: Jake Honigman and Laird Nelson

Thank you to everyone who ran, voted, and has been involved in ACS this
year!

Columbia ACS Board Elections - Candidate Statements

2008-04-07T18:45:00.003-04:00

President

Adam Mintz
Kate Sauser

Adam Mintz
At its core, ACS ensures there is a strong progressive voice on campus that informs and inspires the Columbia Community about issues of law and public policy that we must confront. I would like to be President of ACS to ensure ACS continues to serve its important role in the Columbia Community. Not only does ACS ensure important policy issues are discussed by hosting a wide range of speakers, it also assists in the development of important advocacy skills through the Constance Baker Motley Moot Court Competition. While I want to continue both of these programs, my goal for next year is to institute two changes in what ACS does. First, given the important role ACS has in promoting progressive policies, I want to have a speaker series that focuses on how lawyers can shape policy and the what types of jobs law students should look for in that effort. Second, while I think the Moot Court competition was very successful this year, students did not have the benefit of the legal practice workshop before they wrote their briefs and made their oral arguments. I would like to provide additional oral argument and brief writing training by bringing local attorneys or professors to offer 2-4 training sessions in the fall. Also, given the complexity of constitutional arguments and the fact that constitutional law is taught in the spring, I would also like to dedicate one of those sessions to explain how constitutional arguments differ from other legal arguments.

With these goals in mind, I feel I have the talents and experience to be an effective president. This year, I served as a 1L board representative to ACS where I planned events, worked with the ACS national organization, and helped in the group’s decision process. I also participated in the moot court competition. These experiences allowed me to learn about the organization and understand the time and planning necessary to ensure the organization is run effectively. Moreover, as an undergraduate, I was President of the Democratic organization on campus and effectively performed many of the same functions the President of ACS does. Those included planning meetings and events, working with other groups on campus, and communicating with the national organization. I feel I have the dedication, experience and organization necessary to be an effective president and I hope you will give me the opportunity to serve as the President of ACS next year.

Kate Sauser
I believe I would make a good president of ACS for several reasons. First, I served on the Board this year as a 1L Representative. While serving on the Board, I helped plan several events. I planned the Constitutional Law Mixer, which over 50 people attended, in conjunction with the Federalist Society. I also planned for Doug Kendall to come speak on campus. I hosted two ACS parties at my apartment, as well as the CLS/NYU ACS Mixer. I have helped plan and write questions for Quizzo. If elected President, I will continue ACS’s tradition of reaching out to other student organizations and co-hosting events. I believe the skills I’ve gained and contacts I’ve made as 1L Board Rep this year will be very useful in leading ACS, and I hope to have that opportunity.

Vice-President

Megan Crowley
Adam Mintz
Mina Nasseri
Kate Sauser

Megan Crowley
I am running for ACS Vice-President because I think that ACS offers wonderful opportunities to Columbia Law students and I want to help continue providing these events and services, while increasing student involvement in the organization. I am particularly interested in running for Vice President because I want to focus on getting more students involved with both the Columbia and National Chapters of ACS. I believe that my enthusiasm for the organization and ability to generate enthusiasm among other students would be useful assets in this position. There are great resources available to students through ACS and communicating that to members is crucial to building a stronger organization and generating excitement around the issues addressed. I have great interest in these issues addressed by ACS and am eager to work hard to make Columbia’s ACS chapter an even more vibrant organization at school.

Adam Mintz
While my preference is to serve as President next year, I feel the experience and skills necessary to be an effective President would also allow me to be an effective Vice President. Please read my candidate statement for President.

Mina Nasseri
I am running for Vice President of ACS because I love this organization. Being involved with ACS--both the organization and the moot court program--has been one of my most valuable experiences as a 1L. As Vice President, I would continue ACS's tradition of arranging guest speakers to visit, organizing membership drives, and planning fun-filled activities (such as Quizzo and parties). I would also like to start some new programs, such as distributing study packages during finals and putting together a database of outlines/exams for ACS members to use. All in all, I wish to continue my involvement in ACS and believe I could best do that as Vice President.

Kate Sauser
I feel that my serving on the board this year would be very helpful in acting as Vice President of ACS. I have tabled several times to boost ACS membership, which is one of the main responsibilities of the VP. Also, I would organize social events to serve as membership drives. My organizational skills would help me to update the membership database and keep it in order. Also, my extensive involvement with admitted students at Admitted Student Weekends, as well as my participation in other student groups like Law Revue and Columbia Law Women’s Association, has put me in a good position to develop relationships with next year’s 1L class.

Events Chair

Megan Crowley
Max Dubin
Mina Nasseri
Kate Sauser

-

Megan Crowley
I am running for ACS Events Chair because I want to continue bringing excellent events and opportunities to Columbia law students, as have been offered by ACS in the past. Having an organization that allows students to engage with contemporary issues and offers a forum for discussion and debate is a fundamental component of a vibrant law school culture. I am eager to contribute to that effort and think that ACS is the ideal organization through which to do so. I am an organized and hard-working person and think that events chair would be a great position for me to utilize my energy and interest towards making ACS a central forum for engagement and dialogue at the law school.

Max Dubin
I am running for events chair because I've enjoyed all the ACS events that I've been to and I have a lot of event planning experience. At the law school, I was on the Senate social committee, working on events like Iron Chef and Barristers. Before law school, I was president of the Penn Inter Fraternity Council, and have experience overseeing and organizing many projects at once. I also was one the ACS moot court and planning committee, and have a sense of how events are typically handled in this organization. I expect the fall semester will be dominated by the election, and we should capitalize on the excitement in out events, pulling out important issues from the race and inviting speakers or having our own debates. I also have experience from working at NPR's Justice Talking, a legal and social issues debate show, and I have worked in finding and inviting experts to come participate. Beyond continuing to have a full schedule of speakers and social events, I want to find more events that highlight ACS lawyers in the real world, and find the many different paths they have taken. Thank you. Max Dubin

Mina Nasseri
I would like to be the Events Chair of ACS so that I could be involved in planning and organizing ACS activities. I think I would do a good job planning the event logistically (filling out the necessary forms, contacting the necessary people, getting food, etc.) as well as promoting the event through posters and emails. One idea I have for the position is to put a calendar on the ACS bulletin board in JG to display all the activities we have planned. Also, I would like to designate one day (Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday) as "Lunch with ACS" day - where people would automatically know that we have a guest speaker and lunch at the same time and same place every week.

Kate Sauser
As mentioned in my statement for President, I helped plan several events this year, and I believe this experience will be helpful in serving as Events Chair. I have flyered and obtained room reservations for several events this year, including the ConLaw Mixer, Doug Kendall, the Wu’Tierney factor and Guantanamo. Also, my experience with the 1L Planning Committee makes me confident that I can oversee the planning of ACS events while successfully delegating work and making sure everything runs smoothly. I also attended almost all the lunch events last year, and as Events Chair, would encourage all board members who are able to do so as well.

Finance Chair

Max Dubin

Max Dubin
I am applying for finance chair primarily to get involved in our ACS chapter. I have experience in running club finances in college. I'll keep organized and promptly maintained books. My philosophy for the position is to try to fund every good idea but to have as much planning as possible to keep costs as tight as possible. I have also been on Senate this year, and have a good sense of how to maximize the funding we get. I will be fair and respectful of the rules, but also with clear planning and explanation, try to get as many of our events funded as possible. Beyond this administrative position, I also hope to get plan and execute events, and describes some of my hopes in my other applications. Thank you. Max Dubin

Media Chair

Zeke Hill
Kate Sauser

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Zeke Hill
With your support, I would like to serve as the next ACS Media Chair. This year, I worked on the ACS blog as an assistant to the current Media Chair, including writing BlogThis! emails and blogging ACS events. My experience in this capacity, in addition to attending ACS events, serving on the 1L committee and prior work blogging and developing web content for political and nonprofit organizations, has provided me with a sense of how the blog and the ACS website generally can best serve the organization. Furthermore, I believe that I have all the requisite technical skills and can type at speeds approaching 50 wpm (with 95% accuracy). Aside from its informational and organizational aspects, the blog is a great tool for engaging ACS members in timely issues relevant to ACS' mission. With this in mind, I would continue the current blog practices and also examine how we can expand the blog's use by (and utility to) ACS and ACS members.

Kate Sauser
My undergraduate degree in Journalism and background in media relations makes me confident in my ability to do the job of Media Chair. I have worked on several publications and been an editor of two magazines in the past. I have a blog and some experience with webpage management. As Media Chair, I would solicit blog content from specific students, student leaders, and professors to make the ACS blog a useful and exciting resource for Columbia ACS members and CLS students in general.

External Relations Chair

Max Dubin
Kate Sauser
Adam Sparks

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Max Dubin

I am applying for external relations chair to get more involved in ACS. I see the position as trying to get the most out of ACS nationals, both in money but also in guidance towards finding great speakers or ACS lawyers who have taken non-traditional paths in their careers. This is particularly important, since ACS should encourage conversation on political and legal issues, but also get a sense of how lawyer are pursuing these interests. This also suggests that the position should also try to help the events chair as much as possible. I have a lot of experience and excitement for the events we can have next year, which I discussed in my events chair application and won't make you read again. Beyond connecting with the national organization and lawyers, I think the position should try to work on connections with other ACS chapters. Quizzo is always successful, and it would be easy to challenge other ACS chapters to competitions as well. Thank you. Max Dubin

Kate Sauser
As one of the attendees and hosts of the NYU/CLS ACS Mixer this year, I feel I am well-prepared to assume the job of External Relations Chair, as coordinating with other schools’ ACS chapters is one of the main responsibilities of this position. I also saw the ACS mentorship program in action, and I would welcome the opportunity to make sure that any ACS member who wants a member gets one and that the mentors stay active with their mentees, perhaps by holding mentor/mentee social events throughout the year.

Adam Sparks

I’m running for External Relations Chair because ACS cannot fulfill its mission of “chang[ing] the terms of public debate” without vigorous interaction with peer organizations and practitioners outside of the school. I have a deep appreciation for the roles mentorship and cross-school collaboration should play in the development of this public debate. My work at Columbia Law with the Senate and the Law Revue have proven my ability to capitalize on this belief and to reach out successfully to students and practitioners elsewhere. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, sweet tea runs through this man’s veins; external relations can only improve with that kind of DNA.

3L Representative

Jake Honigman
Laird Nelson
Adam Sparks

Jake Honigman
Serving as President of ACS this past year has been one of the highlights of my law school experience, and I hope to stay involved next year. I plan on being as hands-off as possible, while providing whatever guidance I can to the new board whenever they solicit (or seem like they need) it. I'm proud of the frequency and quality of the programming this year, but think we could have had more discussions related to judicial philosophy, and hope that next year--especially as the general presidential election campaign unfolds--we will focus on that area a little more. I ask you humbly for your vote, and hope to help ACS in whatever way I can for the rest of my time at CLS. Thank you.

Laird Nelson
As the current Vice President, I’m hoping to continue my involvement with our chapter next year in the position of 3L Representative. This year I’ve had a great experience on the board, communicating with speakers and planning events, coordinating with ACS National, reaching out to 1Ls and others to grow our membership, serving as an editor for the ACS moot court, and generally working with my fellow board members to ensure the chapter runs as well as it can. If elected to be 3L Rep, I look forward to helping the new board and sharing my experiences with them, so that we can make next year even more successful. I’ve had the chance to learn a lot about how both our chapter and the larger ACS organization function, and by staying on the board I’d be able to provide some continuity, especially in our contacts with National and membership development, to keep things running smoothly. ACS has a great presence here at Columbia, promoting progressive ideas and debate, and I hope to stay involved in that next year!

Adam Sparks
As what one might call a “4L,” I would bring unprecedented grizzled wisdom to the ACS Board. Having been what one might call a plebian, pawn, or line grunt for three years, I can contribute the perception of the ordinary ACS-er – the common progressive, if you will. I have a lot of experience running events and programs at Columbia Law (see, e.g., Student Senate Treasury, Law Revue Show), and I’d like to help take ACS to even greater heights. In conclusion, please pick me. Don’t make me cry.

Information Please

2008-04-03T16:15:00.005-04:00

With spring upon us, its time for 1Ls to begin making decisions about school next year: housing, clinics, externships, scheduling, classes to take/avoid, EIP/OCI, allowable exceptions to the dormant commerce clause, etc. In the interest of making those decisions (at least somewhat) informed, pose any questions you might have as comments to this post and, voila, sit back and watch as knowledgeable 2Ls and 3Ls reply.

Columbia ACS Moot Court Victories at the Regional Round

2008-03-31T16:34:00.001-04:00

Congratulations to the CLS teams which competed this past weekend in the regional tournament for the American Constitution Society's Constance Baker Motley Moot Court, held at Georgetown Law School. The team had a terrific showing and collected the most wins of
any school at the competition. Of the eight teams that moved on to the final rounds, three were from Columbia!

Our winners were:

Regional Semifinalists:
Megan Crowley & Adriel Cepeda

Regional Quarterfinalists:
Jennifer Sokoler & Corey Miller
Daniel Butrymowicz & Amanda Hungerford

Congratulations also go to Mina Nasseri and Vishal Agraharkar, who
handily defeated 2L and 3L teams from around the country.

ACS Board Elections

2008-03-24T13:29:00.003-04:00

Hey All,
While Hilary and Barack duke it out on the national stage, its about that time of year to have some mud-slingin' election adventures of our own here at CLS. Here's some information from 3L and ACS-election Czarina, Zahra Egal:

ACS Election Procedures 2008

All members of ACS National who will be 2L or 3L students in the following academic year are eligible both to vote and to run for positions on the Columbia ACS Board. Candidates must be registered as members of National by the time candidates’ statements are due (April 4).
The board positions to be filled by election are as follows:

President
Vice President
Events Chair
External Relations Chair
Finance Chair
Media Chair
3L Representatives (2)

Candidates may run for one or more positions. For each position for which they are running, candidates should write a one paragraph statement expressing why they are running for that position. There will be no meeting at which candidates present themselves.
Candidates must also rank their preferences for each position for which they are running—which position is their first choice, which their second, and so on.. This information will be used if a candidate receives the most eligible votes for more than one position (see Step 14, below).
Candidate statements are due by 5:00pm, Friday, April 4. These should be emailed to zahra.egal@gmail.com. Candidates whose statements arrive after this deadline will not be placed on the ballot and will not have their statements posted.
The 3L board members will prepare a list of candidates and candidate statements. This information will be available on the ACS blog, and a link to the information will be emailed to all eligible voters. Additionally, candidate statements will be posted on our bulletin board on the first floor of JG.
Elections will occur over four days, during lunchtime (12:30–1:30), from Tuesday April 8, to Thursday, April 10 Elections will occur at a table in the hall of JG.
The volunteers at the election table will have a list of all eligible voters, the candidate statements, and ballots.
Non-members can also join at the election table and thus become eligible voters.
Ballots will list alphabetically the candidates for each position. To vote, voters will rank their preference for each candidate for each position. Voters must rank each candidate, and cannot put the same ranking for more than one candidate.
The volunteers at the election table will accept completed ballots from eligible voters and keep track of those who have voted. (Each voter may fill out only one ballot.)
After lunch on Thursday, the 3L board members will tally the votes for positions in the following order (though candidate’s preferences will also be taken into account, see Step 14 below:

President
Vice President
Events Chair
External Relations Chair
Finance Chair
Media Chair
3L Representatives (2)

In the case of a tie for a position, ballots that ranked neither candidate as the top available choice will be counted as a vote for whichever of the top two candidates is ranked more highly. Example:

A ballot ranks the preferences for President as follows: Monique is first, Ned is second, Ophelia is third.
On the initial counting, Ned and Ophelia are tied for the position because each is ranked more highly than any other eligible candidate, except each other.
The ballot will then count as a vote for Ned.

If at any time a candidate has the most votes for more than one position, the candidate will be elected to the position he or she has ranked more highly as a personal preference. Example:

Roger has run for both Vice President and for Media Chair and for no other positions. He has ranked Media Chair as his first choice and Vice President as his second.
When the votes for Vice President are tallied, Roger has the most votes for both Vice President and for Media Chair.
Roger will be elected Media Chair.

The results will be announced over email and on the blog by the 3L board members.
In the event that any of the elected positions are not filled after the election, the sitting board member will continue to fill that position until the new board meets first and resolves the problem.

Media Chair Tech Specs

The primary responsibility of the Media Chair is to manage and promote the online presence of Columbia ACS, first and foremost our blog, and to work toward making that presence robust and supplementary of our on-campus activities. In addition to managing our group’s online presence from a content perspective, you are the primary technical resource for the group.
The technical skills required to be an effective media chair are minimal. Since you’ll likely choose 1 or 2 assistant media chairs next year, you personally may not need all these skills.

Using HTML…

You Feel Generally Comfortable With Basic HTML: Unless the board decides that a significant redesign of the blog or website is in order, you’re not going to have to display a real mastery of HTML. Most of your duties will be executed using the Google application, Blogger, that is extremely user-friendly and requires the a very general knowledge of HTML. However, you should expect to be the go-to person for technical matters with the blog and the website. Maintaining both these assets demands fluency with rudimentary HTML.

Using SFTP…

You Can Figure Out How to Use an Graphical FTP Program: To upload and move files around on Columbia’s system, you’ll need to use a program that supports SFTP (like WinSCP). Nothing too technical here, and you’ll receive instructions from the outgoing media chair on how this works.

THIS WEEK @ ACS

2008-03-24T13:26:00.001-04:00

3/24 - 3/28

THURSDAY March 27
12:30 PM; JG 107

Info Session on Running for the ACS Board

We are holding an info session to 1) explain what each of the board positions entails, 2) encourage you to run 3) explain how to do so.

EVERY DAY This Week

Dean's Cup Tickets on Sale

Tickets are on sale this week from 11-2 every day in the lobby. When you buy your ticket, please tell them you want your purchase credited to ACS.

Reclaiming Our Progressive Constitition

2008-03-12T23:52:00.003-04:00

Today ACS welcomed Doug Kendall, executive director of the Community Rights Counsel, a DC-based public interest law firm that promotes constitutional principles to defend laws that make out communities environmentally sound and socially just. Kendall is working now to launch the Constitutional Accountability Center, a think tank, law firm and action center dedicated to fulfilling the progressive promise of the Constitution.

Kendall began his talk by reflecting upon the typical reaction of a progressive law student to their study of Constitutional law. Most progressive students, Kendall believes, conclude that the Constitution is a great, mysterious, flawed document and that the real heroes in the story of constitutional law are judges, not the Constitution itself. Progressive students believe that what we need are more judges like Marshall and Warren and leave law school thinking that the Constitution’s text and history is for conservatives. Kendall commented that he himself left law school with this belief.

Ten years ago he founded the Community Rights Counsel in response to a series of Supreme Court rulings that chipped away at environmental protection laws. Kendall used the text and history of the takings clause to combat this move by the conservative Court. In a 1992 case (Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council Inc. v. Tahoe Reg’l Planning Agency), the Counsel brought in John Roberts to argue the takings clause from a historical perspective and managed to sway some of the conservative justices; by 1995 even Scalia was ready to return the takings clause to its property place in history and thus permit environmental protection laws. Kendall realized that this technique of using text and history could combat the advance of conservatives and forward progressive legal goals.

Kendall believes that part of the reason this technique is not used more is the view of the Constitution adopted by progressives during law school, as described above. The problem for progressives, Kendall believes, is a series of rulings after the Civil War, like the Slaughterhouse Cases, that cut the heart out of the 14^th Amendment. These cases remain good law for the Court has never overruled them and they rear their heads in cases like U.S. v Morrison.

Because of this undercutting, the Court has used other methods, like the Commerce Clause, to stomp out discrimination when this would be the work intended for the 14^th Amendment. Thus, modern progressives on the Court have often gotten to the right answer but for the wrong reasons. As a result, progressives have been left defending positions that are largely indefensible. Progressives are then losing these arguments too often.

Kendall believes that it is time for progressives to take a different approach and embrace the constitutional text and history instead of running from it. This is the only way in which they will be able to connect successfully with the current Court. Kendall concluded by stating that if the differences between liberals and conservatives can be distilled to one points, it’s the meaning of the Reconstruction amendments. The text and history of these amendments must be made central to the progressive cause today and the Constitutional Accountability Center will work toward this end.

Is the Race (Problem in this Country) Over?

2008-03-10T12:15:00.003-04:00

A Conversation with CLS Professor Olati Johnson and Dr. Abigail Thernstrom, a Republican member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Professor Johnson began by reflecting upon the fact that 40 years ago, the year of her birth, the Civil Rights movement was only beginning to incorporate a focus on poverty issues, and that this focus was quickly dissipated following Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination. Now, thinking about race issues focuses more upon the intersection of race and poverty, as well as latent racism and the lingering effects of structural discrimination.

If race is less salient, it is only because it is now more complexly understood and manifested. Professor Johnson discussed the idea of "concentrated poverty" representing the intersection of poverty and race issues, noting that middle class black families are much more likely to reside in areas of concentrated poverty. These areas are ground zero for a confluence of educational, economic, racial and social problems and deficiencies.

Pointing to the recently publicized studies of incarceration rates in the U.S., Professor Johnson noted that the increase in incarceration was driven by enforcement of drug laws and that this enforcement was disproportionately aimed at minority populations. Even if this was driven by a higher rate of law-breaking among minority groups, that should not relieve of us of having to consider the conditions that create these trends.

Dr. Thernstrom disclaimed her remarks as a sort of brainstorming session, inviting the audience to help her more fully form her ideas. Beginning with points of agreement, Dr. Thernstrom pointed to the racial divide in many areas, but also pointed to trends decoupling the effects of race and poverty. Urban schools are unacceptable to people of all colors, and Dr. Thernstrom believes that they pose eminently redressible problems.

Turning to candidate Obama, Dr. Thernstrom analyzed the level of white male voting for Barack Obama. These numbers are very high, almost 50% in many states and over that mark in several. These results evidence a turning point for race relations in this country to Dr. Thernstrom. Obama's self-announced "post-racial" campaign belies the fact that black voters see him as a black candidate and are drawn to that. Dr. Thernstrom praised the 1965 Voting Rights Act at the time of passage, but blamed it, as interpreted, exclusively for the persistent pattern of black candidates only running in majority black settings. These safe districts are encouraging white Americans to think of African Americans as "others".

A lively question and answer session followed.

The Columbia Chapters of the American Constitution Society and the Federalist Society would like to thank Professor Johnson and Dr. Thernstrom for the remarks and all for joining this valuable discussion.

This Week @ ACS

2008-03-10T12:14:00.001-04:00

3/10 - 3/14

MONDAY March 10
12:20; JG 102

Is the Race (Problem in this Country) Over?

Professor Olati Johnson is a leader in the fields of educational opportunity, income inequality, and racial discrimination. Abigail Thernstrom is a Republican member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. They will discuss racial change in the near past and near future, with a focus on the impact that the Obama campaign has had.

Co-sponsored by the Federalist Society.

Lunch served.

MONDAY March 10
4:00 PM; JG 107

The Guantánamo Files

Andy Worthington, a historian and journalist, speaks about his book, The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison, the lead book about the lives of the detainees at Guantánamo. He will be joined by Jonathan Hafetz of the Brennan Center for Justice; Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch; and Wells Dixon with the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Sponsored by The Brennan Center, Human Rights Watch, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Snacks served.

MONDAY March 10

6:10 PM; JG 501

ACS 1L Planning Dinner Meeting

Interested in getting involved in ACS next year?
Need to eat dinner on Monday?
Kill two birds with one stone and come to the ACS 1L Planning Committee Meeting.

Dinner served.

WEDNESDAY March 12
12:20 PM; JG 106

Reclaiming our Progressive Constitution: Why Progressives Need to Embrace, Rather Than Run From, Constitutional Text and History

Doug Kendall is launching a new organization, the Constitutional Accountability Center--a think tank, law firm, and action center dedicated to fulfilling the progressive promise of the Constitution. He is currently the Executive Director of the Community Rights Counsel (CRC), a Washington DC-based, non-profit law firm that promotes constitutional principles to defend laws that make our communities environmentally sound and socially just.

Lunch served.

Felon DisenfranchisementPanel

2008-03-04T23:49:00.002-05:00

Today ACS joined IMPACT, CJAN, the ACLU and CRLS in hosting a panel discussion on felon disenfranchisement. The panel featured Professor Richard Briffault of CLS, an election law expert, Jenign Garrett, staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Glenn Martin, Associate Vice President of Policy and Advocacy of the Fortune Society.

Professor Briffault began the panel by outlining the dimensions of felon disenfranchisement. Felon exclusion currently constitutes the largest voting exclusion in the United States. About four million people, or 2% of the adult population, are currently denied the right to vote because of a felony. Briffault identified three major categories of individuals impacted by felon disenfranchisement. About one third of the individuals impacted are those currently incarcerated. 46 states currently disenfranchise those who are incarcerated. A second major category is comprised of individuals currently in the criminal justice system but not incarcerated, such as individuals on parole or probation. This represents a third of disenfranchised felons, as 32 states deny the right to vote to people on parole and 29 to people on probation. The final group of disenfranchised individuals are those who are currently free but were previously convicted of a felony. About 14 states prevent ex-felons from voting without going through extensive procedures to regain the right to vote. Briffault noted that in states like Alabama and Florida that have lifetime disenfranchisement these categories can represent as much as one third of African American male residents.

Briffault traced the laws denying the right to vote to felons to post-Reconstruction statutes that were designed to make it harder for African Americans to vote. Strangely, many states that deny felons the right to vote still count them in the apportionment of state and congressional seats – this explains why upstate New York (home to numerous prisons) is so well represented.

Garrett then spoke about the Voting Rights Act’s impact of felon disenfranchisement. Because the VRA was designed to prevent racial discrimination in voting regardless of its form, Garrett argues that Section 2 should apply to felon disenfranchisement laws as fellow laws in effect discriminate against minorities. Garrett discussed a recent case in which the District Court for Eastern Washington found that discrimination in the criminal justice system impeded the ability of minorities to vote because of felon disenfranchisement. Though minorities make up only 12% of the Washington population, they comprise 36% of those who have lost the right to vote due to felon disenfranchisement. However, the District Court held that this evidence of discrimination did not mean that the VRA was violated; instead, the District Court ruled that discrimination occuring today not rooted in historical discrimination does not violate the VRA. This case with go to the 9^th Circuit next month. Garrett also discussed the current challenge to Alabama’s felon voting laws, which disenfranchise individuals who commit crimes of moral turpitude, yet fail to define what crimes fall in this ambiguous category.

Finally, Glenn Martin discussed the dimensions of felon disenfranchisement in New York. Currently, about 100,000 New Yorkers are prevented from voting due to felon disenfranchisement. While New York law does not prevent those on probation from voting, many on probation are denied the right to vote due to the mistaken beliefs of local boards of elections. A previous survey by the Fortune Society found that 50% of the boards of elections in New York supplied the wrong response when asked questions about the impact of probation on an individual’s ability to vote. Following extensive efforts by the Fortune Society, a more recent survey found now 35% of the boards of elections in New York are still making such errors. The Fortune Society is continuing to address this issue and may elect to engage in litigation. Martin has also worked on efforts to pass state laws reducing or eliminating felon disenfranchisement. However, despite support in the state house, such bills have failed to get through the Republican-controlled state senate. The Fortune Society is now working on having Gov. Spitzer issue an executive order stating that anyone not incarcerated can register and vote. Martin noted that this method succeeded in Iowa and successfully stood up to legal challenges. Finally, there may be some efforts in the near future by Sen. Specter to push similar federal legislation through Congress.

... And Justice For Pakistan

2008-02-27T12:22:00.003-05:00

In his remarks at the Law School today, Mr. Hamid Khan began with a brief history of Pakistan since the country became independent in 1947. He noted that there have been repeated episodes of military dictatorship. The first military regime devolved into civil war in 1971, leading to a split between West and East Pakistan into two independent states: Pakistan and Bangladesh. Mr. Khan also noted that many of Pakistan’s current problems with jihadist groups originated in the American government’s cooperation with General Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s. America sided with Zia to support the mujahideen who were fighting against the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. Many if not most of these fighters were not from Pakistan or Afghanistan at all, including Osama bin Laden, who came into the country from Saudi Arabia.

After the Soviet threat went away, Pakistan dropped off America’s radar screen until September 11, 2001. Unfortunately, at that point in time, another military dictator had recently seized power in Pakistan: Pervez Musharraf. Hamid Khan’s primary argument today was that President Bush has repeated many of America’s former mistakes in his relationship with Musharraf since 9/11. Once again, America is seen in Pakistan as supporting a military dictatorship in the face of strong democratic opposition.

As Mr. Khan noted, Musharraf has spent most of the last twelve months using his power to undermine democracy and the rule of law in the country, but the tide of public opinion has increasingly turned against him. The first major break occurred in March of 2007, when Iftikhar Chaudhry, the Chief Justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, began to question the military government’s extralegal detention of thousands of people, as well as financial corruption and misdoing among the military leadership. Musharraf responded by trying to intimidate Chaudhry into stepping down, but Chaudhry stood up to him.

This act of defiance mobilized a strong movement in Pakistan for rule of law reforms, spearheaded by the lawyers of the country. The lawyer’s movement achieved an historic victory in July of 2007 when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Chaudhry and against Musharraf. Building on this momentum, they sought to put further pressure on Musharraf by bringing constitutional objections to his candidacy for the Presidency. Musharraf responded by suspending Pakistan’s Constitution and placing most of the country’s judges under house arrest unless they agreed to take an oath of loyalty to him. Shockingly, most of these judges remain under house arrest even now, almost four months after Musharraf suspended the Constitution.

Despite this, and despite his attempts to rig the country’s elections, Musharraf was roundly rejected by the people of Pakistan in the elections this month. Mr. Khan depicted this as a crucial juncture for the country, a test of whether the democratic process would be respected. But he expressed deep cynicism about the acts of the Bush Administration, which has urged the victorious political parties to work with Musharraf in forming a government. From Mr. Khan’s perspective, it is time for Musharraf to go.

There are strong reasons to agree with that, and there are especially strong reasons to be critical of the way that the Bush Administration has treated Musharraf with kid gloves. Not only is the President attempting to deny the clear results of the recent elections, but he has consistently refused to object to Musharraf’s subversion of the rule of law over the past year. This is especially troubling coming from a President who has paid such lip service to America’s role in promoting democracy around the world. President Bush seems oblivious to the fact that American support for military dictatorships breeds deep resentment against the United States, and that jihadist and terrorist groups feed on that resentment. Thus, support for Musharraf in the long term could prove to be a grave mistake.

But there are reasons to be hopeful. The recent election demonstrated dramatically that Pakistan’s people are ready for a change (sound familiar?). They rejected the military regime and voted in large numbers for the most moderate, democratic choices that were available. If these parties can hold together, and get rid of Musharraf’s stranglehold on the government, there is a window of opportunity.

Getting rid of Musharraf is only step one, however. Mr. Khan did not go into any specifics about what a post-Musharraf government will look like, and the two parties that will form a coalition government have many disagreements. Musharraf hasn’t only been bad for the rule of law, but he has also devoted the government’s resources to enriching his military cronies, rather than to making the much-needed educational and economic reforms to create real opportunities for Pakistan’s people.

If the new government can withstand the test of holding together to get rid of Musharraf, it will face the even tougher challenge of passing real reforms that benefit the country as a whole, rather than any favored constituencies. Hopefully, the American government will realize that our narrow anti-terror focus should be broadened, and we will divert some of our aid to the task of helping the new government move the country forward.

Posted by Thane Rehn

This Week @ ACS

2008-02-26T09:31:00.002-05:00

2/25 - 2/29

MONDAY February 25
6:10 PM; JG 501
Join the 1L Planning Committee

If you're a 1L and you like ACS, take this opportunity to get a little more involved. The ACS 1L Planning Committee will be helping to plan social and substantive events. Stop by our meeting tomorrow (today) and bless us with your ideas. Not a big time commitment.

Email Laird at len2105@columbia.edu if you have any questions.

Pizza Served.

WEDNESDAY February 27
12:20 PM; JG 102

...And Justice for Pakistan

Hamid Khan is a Supreme Court lawyer, former President of the Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association and the senior Vice President of a major Pakistani political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. He will talk about his experience at the forefront of the struggle for justice and the rule of law in his country.
Co-sponsored by SALSA and Qanun.

Lunch Served (Roti Roll.)
12:20 PM; JG 102

THURSDAY February 28
7:00 PM; Lenfest Cafe

Quizzo!

You know the deal. Email Renita Sharma at rns2124@columbia.edu to sign up.
Beer and Pizza Served.

Scandal at 1600: The US Attorneys Affair

2008-02-21T19:39:00.002-05:00

This afternoon, ACS welcomed Preet Bharara, a CLS alum and chief counsel to Senator Charles Schumer, to discuss his investigation into the U.S. Attorneys firing scandal. Bharara graduated from the Law School in 1993 and then worked at a large New York firm, a smaller New York firm, and then the U.S. Attorney’s Office before taking his current position with Senator Schumer; he noted that each new job brought a smaller salary and smaller office.

Bharara began by stating his belief that the firing scandal matters, even though the President can terminate U.S Attorneys as he wishes, because it is critical that people have faith in the Department of Justice to strive for excellence in its work and avoid compromising the quality of its work to serve partisan purposes.

Bharara remarked that the scandal and fallout, like so many tragedies, are comprised of three acts. Act one began in December 2006 when more than a half dozen U.S. Attorneys were fired with no reason given for their dismissal. Because two of the fired Attorneys held California posts, Senator Feinstein began to inquire into the firings. In January 2007, Bharara began to discuss with Senator Schumer the possibility of hearings to investigate the firing, which then began in February.

As the hearings proceeded, questions about the reasons for the firings went unanswered or answers offered quickly collapsed upon further inquiry. For example, some individuals questioned said that the firing were a reflection of the Attorneys’ poor job performances; however, written evaluations demonstrated that in every case but one the fired Attorneys had received extremely positive performance reviews.

The investigation into whose idea the firings had been proved equally troubling. In a series of depositions, the individuals who comprised the core leadership of the Department of Justice denied responsibility for planning the firings. Even Attorney General Gonzales denied a role in formulating the plan to dismiss the Attorneys. Despite Congress and the public’s growing contempt for these denials, the Attorney General did not resign following the hearings and the President stated that he had more confidence in Gonzales than ever before.

The second act of the tragedy concerns Gonzales’ role advising the President while serving as White House Counsel. On March 10, 2004, as Attorney General Ashcroft lay in a hospital intensive-care unit recovering from surgery, Deputy (and Acting) Attorney General James Comey received a phone call informing him that Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card were headed to the hospital to persuade Ashcroft to sign a document reauthorizing the Terrorist Surveillance Program, (which requires reauthorization every 45 days) after Comey had refused to reauthorize, concluding there was no longer legal justification for the program. Comey headed to the hospital and when Gonzales and Card arrived, Ashcroft refused to sign the reauthorization, noting that he could not even if he wished to, as he had temporarily transferred his power to Comey.

The next day, Comey resigned his office, angry over the administration’s attempt to persuade an ill man into signing off on the program once the Acting Attorney General had refused. Indeed, perhaps as many as ten senior Department of Justice officials threatened to submit their resignations in the aftermath. Several days later, the administration backed down and agreed to make changes in the Terrorist Surveillance Program. However, once this tale was related by Comey to a Congressional committee during his testimony about the firing scandal, Gonzales’ reputation was further damaged and calls for his resignation increased.

The third act, as told by Bharara, consisted of Gonzales’ continuing struggle to respond to Congressional committee questions. When he testified about the firings, he was unable to recall answers he had previously given the committee and failed to respond to questions seeking very basic information, such as the number of employees actually terminated in the firings. By August of 2007, nearly all of the leadership of the Department of Justice had resigned and soon Gonzales would follow.

Bharara said that as a result of the firing scandal, protocol at the Department of Justice has changed. For example, hiring practices have been altered such that applicants’ political leanings no longer affect their job prospects. In responding to questions, Bharara noted that the fired Attorneys have landed on their feet, as the hearings actually made clear their talents, rather than exposing any faults.

Finally, Bharara emphasized that the president was free to fire U.S Attorneys as he pleased, but that in this instance the firings were problematic because they seemed to indicate some particular plan, yet the Department of Justice failed to supply answers as to why the firings occurred and where the command to fire came from.

Scandal at 1600: The US Attorneys Affair

2008-02-20T08:25:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow at 12:20 in JG 105, join ACS for Scandal at 1600: The US Attorneys Affair. Preet Bharara, chief counsel to Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and a former assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, will discuss his work for the Judiciary Committee. Bharara is heading the investigation into the Bush administrations' firing of eight U.S Attorneys, allegedly for political purposes, and the resulting fallout. A CLS alum described as sort of the bad boy of the Law Review by a former classmate, Bharara worked in private practice for several years before serving as an assistant US Attorney from 2000 to 2005 where he prosecuted various mafia families.

No Day is Super When You're Being Detained Indefinitely

2008-02-19T22:13:00.001-05:00

This afternoon, ACS was excited to welcome Jonathan Hafetz of the Liberty and National Security Project of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU.

He began by providing an overview of the recent history of Guantanamo litigation, which has been going on since about 2002. In that year, the Bush administration made several key decisions (like deciding not to follow the Geneva Conventions) that led to the current “special prison” situation in Guantanamo and around the world. Despite how long this has been going on, the rights of the detainees have never been clearly determined. There are currently some large cases that seem likely to clear up some of the confusion.

Hafetz focused on Guantanamo specifically, because it is emblematic (and the most iconic one) of the administration’s extra-legal detention centers. Hafetz sees Guantanamo as representative of a larger effort to establish prisons that exist outside of the law.

When lawyers became aware of the situation in Guantanamo, they began attempting to represent the detainees. In 2004, Rasul v. Bush, the Supreme Court rejected the idea that Guantanamo detainees had no right to habeas. Many more cases were subsequently filed and more lawyers began visiting Guantanamo.

The process was then derailed. In December of 2005, Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act. It contained some prohibitions on cruel treatment, but its most significant effect was to strip detainees of Federal habeas rights.

In 2006, the Supreme Court decided Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which challenged the legality of using military commissions to try suspects at Guantanamo. The Court sidestepped the constitutional challenge to the Detainee Treatment Act by saying it didn’t apply to pending habeas cases (of which there were about 200). They then struck down the commissions on the grounds that they violated the Geneva Conventions.

Later that same year, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, which gave legislative approval to the commissions struck down in Hamdan. To deal with the Court’s ruling on the pending habeas cases, the act stripped all habeas rights retroactively and replaced them with a less robust system of adjudication, with the possibility of appeal to the DC Circuit Court.

In February of 2007, the DC Circuit upheld the Military Commissions Act’s suspension of habeas as constitutional because enemy combatants are not U.S. citizens. The Supreme Court initially denied review of this case. Then, on a petition for rehearing, they changed course and agreed to hear it.

Another important case pending decision pending decision is Boumediene v. Bush, which contains two major issues: (1) the question of whether the constitutional right to habeas corpus is limited to the geographic United States. This has broad implications for enemy combatants all over the world. (2) If combatants on foreign soil have habeas rights, is the alternative provided by the Commissions Act a constitutionally adequate substitute? (There are a number of serious flaws in the system).

These issues are now complicated by separate litigation that has proceeded under the Detainee Treatment Act since its passage. There are now separate petitions for review under the substitute scheme, which itself may be ruled unconstitutional.

A recent DC Circuit ruling expanded their power of review of status tribunal and allowed them to look at all of the relevant evidence that led to a conviction, instead of the more limited record they had previously been sent. An en banc hearing on the case was denied 5-5, and the government has petitioned for cert on an expedited schedule so that the case can be heard this term.

Hafetz believes that the Supreme Court will have to clarify the legal rules in Guantanamo in some of these decisions, which will be a big step for detainees. He views Guantanamo as one island in an archipelago of a new kind of prison set up to avoid legal processes.

Clarification of the legal rights of detainees will hopefully lead to some positive change in a dire situation. Before last week, of the 750 inmates that had been at Guantanamo bay, only 5 had ever been charged with any crime. (It is now around a dozen).

Thanks to Jonathan Hafetz for this interesting talk!

Gitmo Tuesday

2008-02-18T10:26:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow at 12:20 in JG 107, join ACS for Gitmo Tuesday: No Day is Super When You're Detained Indefinitely. Jonathan Hafetz of the Liberty and National Security Project of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law will be discussing upcoming developments in detainee litigation currently before federal courts. To get a taste of what's on tap, check out his recent blog posting on the use of special courts to handle terrorism prosecutions or his article in The Nation on Gitmo.

This Week @ACS

2008-02-17T20:35:00.001-05:00

2/18--2/22

TUESDAY February 19
12:20 PM; JG 107

Gitmo Tuesday: No Day is Super When You're Detained Indefinitely

Jonathan Hafetz is counsel for the Justice Program at NYU's Brennan Center. He will give a review of recent, current, and upcoming developments in detainee and Habeas Corpus litigation before federal courts.

Lunch Served.

WEDNESDAY February 20
12:20 PM; JG 105

Inducing Labor: Unions and the 2008 Election
Recent decisions by the National Labor Relations Board have been considered by some to be detrimental to labor. Mitchell Rubenstein, a practicing labor attorney for NYSUT and an Adjunct Professor at St. John's Law and New York Law School, will present labor's perspective while Peter Moss, a pro-business attorney for Jackson and Lewis, will defend the decisions by the NLRB. Both will also discuss the effects the 2008 election might have on the field of labor law. Professor Mark Barenberg will moderate.
Co-sponsored by the Federalist Society.

Lunch Served.

THURSDAY February 21
12:20 PM; JG 105

Scandal at 1600: The US Attorneys Affair
Preet Bharara, chief counsel to Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and a former assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, has been described by Time Magazine as "the point man on the probe" into the US attorneys' firings. Respected on both sides of the aisle, Preet will discuss his work for the Judiciary Committee and the nature of this investigation.

Lunch Served.

The Wu'Tierney Factor II

2008-02-06T19:10:00.000-05:00

Due to the unfortunate absence of Professor Tierney (who is getting out the vote in Paris), the title was changed to the slightly less catchy “Wu’Persily Factor.” A panel consisting of Professors Wu and Persily, as well as students David Gringer (3L) and Steve Nadel (2L) dissected Super Tuesday and offered their opinions on the race.

Professor Wu started by noting that, “if you’re into politics, this is just a great time to be alive.” He found Super Tuesday very interesting and claimed that he didn’t understand what was going on with American politics this year. Why, for example, did Obama carry Alaska but not San Francisco? He thinks there are factors here people are missing, and he doesn’t know exactly what they are.

Professor Wu compared the upcoming dynamic to a cartoon grudge match, where each candidate gets one really good shot at the other. First, February seems to favor Obama, and he has a month to exploit that. Then, March, with Texas and Ohio, seems to shift the other way and give Clinton an advantage. The question is whether she can survive February in order to take the race back in March, and, if she does, whether she can win decisively then.

With regards to the delegate totals, Wu predicted that Clinton will have a total lead of about 100 after everything is tallied. Obama will be seeking to even up the score in February and try to gain an edge. If neither can knock the other out during their strongest month, then the election moves into uncharted territory, and perhaps all the way to the convention.

Professor Persily began by offering some generalizations that he said were “about 80% true.” He noted that, for the most part, Clinton is getting the larger share of the Latino vote (by about 2:1), less educated whites, older voters, and women. On the other hand, Obama is winning among African American, higher educated whites, and whites in red states. Professor Persily admitted that this oversimplified things. For example Obama did well in the southern states, but also managed to carry Connecticut and Delaware. Obama also seems to have a natural advantage in caucuses.

Persily personally thought Clinton did much better than expected on Tuesday, especially in California. To win that by such a significant margin bodes well for her.

Additionally, he’s very concerned about the way this race is going because he’s worried that this is going to end up depending on the most undemocratic aspects of the primary process. In a race this close, three things come into play that candidates can’t control. (1) Delegate apportionment. (2) Superdelegates. (3) The Florida/Michigan votes, which might be reinstated despite not really having contested elections.

On the Republican side, Persily thinks McCain wrapped it up last night.

Steve Nadel, who worked on the Romney campaign, had some insights into the Republican contest. First, he discussed Romney’s campaign strategy, which was to win the big states early and knock out McCain and Giuliani. It appeared over the summer that everyone who saw Romney liked him, so they aimed to increase his exposure. When other candidates starting coming to the fore, Romney basically fell off the map. Nadel thinks this speaks poorly of him as a candidate.

Nadel thinks the Republican primary is over, and that everyone except the CNN commentators realize this. He does not think Huckabee can win, but thinks the governor might still be relevant.

As for the Democrats, Nadel is “amazed at how long it’s going to take”. He expected like Clinton would walk away with the nomination early, like everyone else. Obama has really shown impressive staying power and ability to enlarge his natural constituency. He’d still give it to Clinton, though, because Obama now has to win big in places not suited to him.

David Gringer began by talking about the media. They are having a huge effect on this race, and he wanted to highlight just how badly they’ve done. He also pointed out that endorsements don’t seem to actually mean anything to voters, only to the media.

In Gringer’s view, perhaps the most important aspect of the campaign is organization. The strength of the candidate’s ground team in each state seems to have a huge effect on the outcome. Obama’s team in Iowa and Clinton’s in New Hampshire were particularly effective, and he is wondering where they will be sent next.

Attempting to explain the strange voting results noted by Professor Wu, Gringer hypothesized that there are two different kind of Democratic voters at issue here. What he calls the “machine” wing of the Democratic party dominates in places like New York and California, places where Democrats dominate and have established power structures. These states seem to favor Clinton. By contrast, states like Idaho and Kansas don’t have “machine” structures, and there have been recent grassroots organizing efforts to rebuild the Democratic Party in these states. These non-machine states favor Obama.

Gringer uses this model to suggest that we might see surprising results. For example, Louisana, thought to be an Obama stronghold, has a strong machine structure. On the other hand, Texas, which is thought to be likely Clinton territory, has more of a grassroots organization structure. He is excited to see how the next few months turn out.

A very interesting presentation from a great panel. Thanks to all who participated and attended. For those who missed out, it looks like we will soon need the Wu’Tierney Factor III.

A Toast to the Constitution: Temperance, A Benevolent Creator/Brewmaster, Happiness & Avoiding the Gout

2008-02-04T23:49:00.003-05:00

Here's the toast from the 222^nd Annual Constitutional Law Mixer, held at Columbia Law School on February 4, 2008. As in years past, the event was jointly hosted by the local chapters of the American Constitution Society, the Federalist Society, and the Constitution Law faculty here at Columbia.

First, I want to thank ACS & FedSoc for inviting me to give a toast at the 222nd Annual Constitutional Law Mixer. It's an honor to be a part of a tradition that predates both interchangeable parts and modern plumbing.

As Chancellor Kent was known to say: "Our annual Con Law Mixer? Yeah, that's kind of a big deal."

Back in May of last year, I stumbled across Robert Harris's review of the Barbara Holland book The Joy of Drinking. In Harris's review, he noted Holland's research into the role alcohol played in the creation of the United States Constitution. Harris writes that:

[I]n 1787, two days before their work was done, the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention “adjourned to a tavern for some rest, and according to the bill they drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, 8 of whiskey, 22 of port, 8 of hard cider and 7 bowls of punch so large that, it was said, ducks could swim around in them. Then they went back to work and finished founding the new Republic.” Note the 55 delegates and 54 bottles of Madeira. Which founder was slacking?

PG, a recent CLS graduate and the only person I know whose Constitutional leanings led her to be an active member of both ACS and the Federalist Society, speculated that Thomas Mifflin – at the time the sitting President of Pennsylvania and a Quaker prior to his expulsion for serving in the Continental Army – was the teetotaler; however, given the amount of drink involved, it's unsurprising that the identity of the true abstainer would be lost to history.
Perhaps it was the drink, but there's so much about the Constitution that's been lost to history, so much that the Founders forgot to tell us about the meaning and the crafting of this founding document:

Dear Founders, is that a comma, a semi-colon, or a fleck of dirt?

O Breech-pants-wearing Founders, is the office of the Vice President firmly seated within the executive branch, or is it an extra-constitutional floater, like the extra outfielder in a game of slow-pitch softball?

O Founders, did you really believe that human nature would permit the loser of the Presidential election to serve as a good Vice-President to the winner?

Founders, why-oh-why did you decide to capitalize nearly every noun in the Constitution? ...and what's the deal with the handful you didn't capitalize? (...and 1L's: That's a gangbuster note topic, by the way.)

O Founders, are there secret messages in your tortured and inconsistent spellings?

Ultimately, we just don't know the answers to any of these vital questions, so we're left to make like the founders and drink a little Madeira, claret, whiskey, port and hard cider — maybe that will bring some clarity. (Incidentally, I was told that this event would have a bowl of punch so large that ducks could swim in it. Maybe that's coming later.)

In finishing my toast and finally raising a glass, I want to end with a meditation.

Let's meditate upon how the Constitution would have looked if Ben Franklin had had more creative control over the text. After all, historians report that when Thomas Jefferson sent Franklin a draft of the Declaration of Independence containing the line "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable," Franklin returned it to him with the last three words crossed out and replaced by "self-evident." Surely the person responsible for this memorable and meaningful term into the Declaration of Independence could have helped us more with the Constitution. (By the way, for those of you who are measuring the productivity of your lives against the lives of the Founders or choosing your political candidates on the basis of age, please note that Thomas Jefferson was all of 33 years old when he helped draft the Declaration of Independence.)

Now, I happen to know what Franklin would have done if he'd had his way with our overly short & oft-confusing Constitution. He would have included two final clauses.

In fact, I know which clauses Franklin would have inserted.

Truth be told, I find the tension between these two clauses to be roughly analogous to the on-going dialogue that occurs between the Federalist Society & ACS.

The first clause is a quote of Franklin's, taken from Poor Richard's Almanack, 1734. To me, this is the Federalist Society clause: "Be temperate in wine, in eating, girls, and sloth, or the gout will seize you and plague you both."

The second clause does not appear in any published writing of Franklin's, but has been broadly attributed to him. Naturally, the lack of textual basis for this quote (and its feel-good character) makes it more appropriate for ACS. The clause is: "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

So please join me in raising a glass: Here's to Franklin, to the other Founders, to their strange and wondrous Constitution, to ACS, to the Federalist Society, to being happy, and – above all – to trying our best to avoid the gout.

CHEERS!

THIS WEEK @ ACS

2008-02-04T10:47:00.000-05:00

2/4 - 2/7

MONDAY February 4

222nd Annual Constitutional Law Mixer

Come join all of this spring's Constitutional Law professors and the 1L class for good food, drinks, and a toast to the founding fathers.

Co-sponsored by the Federalist Society.

Drinks and food served.

4:15 PM; JG Annex

TUESDAY February 5

Super Tuesday Watching Party @ 1020

Super Tuesday may very well mark the climax of this very exciting and important presidential primary season. Join the Law School's political groups in watching the results come in from 22 states, including New York.

Free Open Bar & Food

7:30 PM; 1020 (the bar), 110th & Amsterdam

WEDNESDAY February 6
The Wu'Tierney Factor II: Super Tuesday Recap
Campaign veterans David Gringer (3L) and Steve Nadel (2L) and Professor Nate Persily will join Professors Tierney and Wu in reviewing the results of Super Tuesday and assessing the state of both races.
Co-sponsored by the Federalist Society.
Lunch Served.
12:15 PM; JG 105

THURSDAY February 7

1L Planning Committee First Meeting

Members of the Committee will have the opportunity to work with the ACS Board on developing and running new events, choosing bars for happy hours and quizzo, and much more. The Committee is open to everyone, the time committment will be flexible. We encourage you all to come to our first meeting this Thursday and get involved!

Drinks and Snacks Served.

4:15 PM; WJH 304

Super Tuesday Post-Game!

2008-02-04T01:03:00.000-05:00

Is John McCain the anointed nominee? Or will Romney rally?

Will Clinton and Obama split the vote and take this thing to the convention? Or will one of them score a decisive victory?

Everything is on the line for these candidates, and to top things off, it's also Mardi Gras! (Could things possibly get more exciting?)

With all the hype surrounding Super Tuesday, chances are you'll be looking for a place to sort out the results the morning after. Come join Professors Wu and Tierney as they lead a panel discussion on the results of Tuesday's contest and what it means for the general election.

Wednesday, February 6, 12:15 PM, JG 105

Constance Baker Motley Moot Court Results

2008-01-28T13:14:00.000-05:00

The results from the internal Columbia ACS moot court competition are in. Congratulations to all the participants and thanks to all those who helped run this incredibly successful program!

The following four teams are advancing to Regionals at Georgetown
University Law Center on March 28 - 30 (in order of team number):

Team 4: Mina Nasseri and Vishal Agraharkar
Team 8: Corey Miller and Jennifer Sokolor
Team 9: Dan Butrymowicz and Amanda Hungerford
Team 10: Megan Crowley and Adriel Cepada

And Congratulations to this year's top individual oral advocates!

1) Renita Sharma
2) Megan Crowley
3) Corey Miller
4) Jennifer Sokolor
5) Amanda Hungerford
6) Dan Butrymowicz (tie)
6) Mina Nasseri (tie)
8) Femi Morohunfola
9) Brian Ward
10) Adriel Cepeda

Making Waves and Riding the Currents: A Conversation with Public Interest Pioneer Charles Halpern

2008-01-28T12:29:00.001-05:00

After an insightful and personal introduction from Professor Patricia Williams touching upon the achievements and influence of the CUNY Law School, former CUNY Law School Dean Charles Halpern addressed the Columbia ACS and ELS commuunity.

Public Interest Pioneer, Charles Halpern

Mr. Halpern began by recounting his early career at Arnold and Porter and in establishing the Center for Law and Social Policy, the first public interest law firm in the nation. The Center for Law and Social Policy began its efforts by expanding organizational standing for environmental interest groups, pointing to the emergence of modern environmental law as one of the most beneficent trends in contemporary legal history.

Of "making waves," Mr. Halpern discussed his early litigation experiences in pressing for more robust and accessible avenues for public input in environmental decision-making. He then contrasted his corporate work - crafting arguments against labeling requirements for the caffeine-content of Coca-Cola - with his early efforts in assisting those with mental handicaps. One case, in which Mr. Halpern argued that if the state held mentally ill individuals against their will, it was bound to provide treatment and respect their individual rights.

The Center for Law and Social Policy, once founded, immediately began institutionally expressing a shift in the mode of legal practice. More communitarian and cooperative values soon displaced the hierarchy and advesarialism of the traditional law firm. This approach - echoed explicitly at CUNY - emphasized "inner work" over billable hours, and the Center experimented with group meditation, nature expeditions, and other means of shattering the dominant legal paradigm of the day.

The CUNY Law School extended this approach, seeking to train entire individuals, rather than mechanical attorneys, and asked students to prize their own convictions. He went on to ironically note that grouping together the type of person drawn to the nascent CUNY Law School were exactly the sort of people who reflexively questioned any authority - especially academic authority embodied by a white male dean.

Mr. Halpern concluded by noting that the "novel and unprecedented problems" facing the current generation of public interest lawyers - notably that of global climate change - demands the integration of wisdom into the practice of law and policy.

Columbia ACS and ELS would like to thank Charles Halpern for his remarkable career and his valuable remarks today.

This Week @ ACS

2008-01-27T19:29:00.000-05:00

1/28 - 2/1

MONDAY January 28

Making Waves and Riding the Currents: A Conversation with Public Interest Pioneer Charles Halpern

Charlie Halpern is a social entrepreneur with a remarkable record of institutional innovation as the founder of the Center for Law and Social Policy, dean of the City University of New York School of Law, and president of The Nathan Cummings Foundation. He will discuss his book "Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom" and his career practicing law in the public interest.
Co-sponsored by the Environmental Law Society

Lunch Served.

12:20 PM; JG 105

MONDAY January 28

State of the Union Drinking Game

Not an ACS event, but should be fun. Details at http://columbia.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2225409257, and http://www.drinkinggame.us.

$1 drafts

8:30 PM; Lower room of the Gin Mill (Amsterdam between 81st and 82nd)

Worst in the Nation? The Primary Role of Iowa and New Hampshire

2008-01-16T12:09:00.000-05:00

A conversation with CLS Professors and campaigners Jim Tierney and Tim Wu.

Welcome back all from Winter break. As is customary when returning to school from time off, ACS asks "what did you do over vacation?"

Professors Tierney and Wu spent their winter recesses in both New Hampshire and Iowa, canvassing for their chosen candidates and observing the process. Professor Tierney described his trip as "political tourism." He presented his remarks as an invitation to begin an ongoing dialog on campus as to the current election season.

Professor Tierney went on to discuss the critical features of the caucus system: the social aspects and issues of representativeness. Ultimately, he finds value in the process, in the opportunity to deeply evaluate the candidates, for individual voters to air their concerns directly to the candidates and to robustly engage in policy discussions.

Professor Wu explained his motives in heading to Iowa as to see how preferences are formed as a student of politics. He similarly advocate for the caucus system due to its electoral transparency; he enjoyed the ability to really see and understand - on a generalized level - what type of person supported each candidate. Professor Wu especially enjoyed the looming prospect of physical altercations, as a signal for the overwhelming interest and intense passions. According to Professor Wu, "the entire national election should be done by caucus, its just entertaining!"

The Professors discussed several anecdotes from their trips and then invited an open discussion with students about the nature of these early political processes.

Stay tuned for future opportunities to discuss the ongoing elections with the CLS community.

ACS is a non-partisan organization that takes no position on the ongoing primary elections. ACS would like to thank Professors Tierney and Wu for sharing their experiences and sparking such a lively discussion.

Columbia Law School, ACS, to Lose Adviser, Scholar

2007-12-04T13:29:00.000-05:00

Renowned CLS Professor and ACS Chapter Adviser Michael Dorf has recently confirmed on his own blog Dorf On Law, that he, his wife and colleague Sherry Colb, and a "mysterious 'third senior scholar'" will be leaving the cozy confines of Morningside Heights for Ithaca, N.Y. and Cornell's Law School.

While I never had the pleasure of studying with either Professors Dorf or Colb, my peers have spoken effusively with regard to their academic prowess and personal grace. I do know first-hand how instrumental Professor Dorf has been to the development of the Columbia Chapter of ACS. Our ACS chapter would like to thank Professor Dorf for his unfailing guidance and support, and on behalf of the entire ACS community, I wish Professors Dorf and Colb the best of luck. Equally, I feel obliged to express out communal lament at the departure of such cornerstones of the CLS intellectual community.

Thanks to our departing teachers and advisers. And to Cornell: You're Welcome.

The Right to Bear Ye Olde Arms

2007-11-27T10:21:00.000-05:00

The ACS/Federalist Society-sponsored discussion/debate on DC v. Heller – the first SCOTUS case since 1939 to address the meaning of the Second Amendment – won't begin for another 2 hours, but I am prepared to upstage the speakers by offering a workable solution for Second Amendment jurisprudence in the 21^st Century.

Although the language of this amendment provides infinite grist for the mill of constitutional interpretation, my solution focuses exclusively on one word: arms.

My proposal: The Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms as such arms existed at the ratification.

Arms in 1791

Let's look at arms – specifically, guns – as they existed at the time of the ratification.

Guns in 1791 WOULD
...be made by a gunsmith.
...have rudimentary rifling.
...be single-shot weapons.
...be loaded through the muzzle.
...fire by means of a flintlock.

Guns in 1791 WOULD NOT
...have interchangeable parts. (Popularized in 1798)
...be revolvers. (Invented in 1835)
...be breachloaded. (Popularized in 1810)
...use smokeless powder. (Invented in 1885)
...use a percussion cap, necessary for modern cartridged bullets. (Invented in 1842)
...load bullets from a clip. (Invented in 1890)

Courts can't wish the Second Amendment away, but they can construe it in a manner that works in today's society.

Arthur Goldberg, the little-remembered Supreme Court Justice who sat on the bench from 1962 to 1965, has been long-derided by social and political conservatives as something of a fool due to his concurrence in Griswold v. Connecticut, where he found a right to privacy in the Ninth Amendment. Lately, these same conservatives have been quoting and paraphrasing Justice Goldberg when they say things like "while the Constitution protects against invasions of individual rights, it is not a suicide pact," a line Justice Goldberg included in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U.S. 144, 159-60 (1963). Applying an admittedly severe form of originalism to cabin the Second Amendment prevents the kind of suicide pact that Goldberg was worried about.

Michelle Obama created a bit of a stir earlier this week when she talked about how the need for guns might vary regionally within the United States. A backstop interpretation of the Second Amendment – one that only protects the individual right to bear arms as they stood in 1791 – permits states to develop right to bear arms appropriate to their circumstances.

This Week @ ACS

2007-11-26T10:09:00.000-05:00

11/26 - 11/30

TUESDAY November 27
12:15 PM; JG 104
Bringing Cert to a Gun Fight: The DC Handgun Ban Challenge
The Supreme Court just granted cert in DC v. Heller, setting up the first SCOTUS fight over the meaning of the Second Amendment since 1939. Come see our own Professor Michael Dorf debate Bob Levy, the lead counsel for the respondent and Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute.

Co-sponsored by the Federalist Society.

Lunch Served.

WEDNESDAY November 28
7:00 PM, Lenfest Cafe
Quizzo
Pizza. Beer. Questions. Prizes.

RSVP your teams of 6-8 to Quinn, qaa2101@columbia.edu. (It's really gonna happen this time)

Co-sponsored by the Federalist Society.
Pizza, Beer

THURSDAY November 29
8 PM, Location TBA

Bar tab with NYU ACS

They may not have gotten into Columbia, but they're still fun to drink with.

Free Alcohol

Reagan, States’ Rights, and the Mortgage Crisis

2007-11-14T17:06:00.000-05:00

The following is an essay drafted by CLS's very own Ethan Frechette (Class of 2009). Ethan is a friend of the ACS Blog and welcomes comments and criticisms.

In 1964, civil rights workers were being murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Then, in 1980, Ronald Reagan decided to kick off his Presidential campaign there. That’s a pretty ugly juxtaposition, and David Brooks is pretty upset about it. Well: he’s not so much upset about the actual juxtaposition; he’s upset that people keep bringing it up. (“People” here seems mainly to be Mr. Brooks’s fellow Times columnist Paul Krugman, whose new book re-tells the story.)

It comes up because, as Mr. Brooks says, Reagan was working on a strategy of picking up votes “where racial tensions had been strongest,” and Reagan traveled down to Mississippi to say, among other things, “I believe in states’ rights,” and some people think that all adds up to the Great Communicator’s deliberately sending a signal to white racists. That signal would be, “I’m with you.”

But these people—these “left-wing commentators”—are so eager to spread their calumnies and agitprop that they’ve overlooked the central fact, which is not a visit to a place famous for murder, not the invocation of racist code, and certainly not an electoral strategy of appealing to racism.

The key fact here is that the fair was in town. Not just any fair: the Neshoba County Fair, Mississippi’s Giant House Party (registered trademark; really). This is a fair that’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Reagan wasn’t going to miss a fair like that. And if, after hearing about this fair, you’re enough a paranoiac to imagine the visit was some kind of message, Mr. Brooks points out that Reagan and his staff decided to go to Mississippi before visiting the Urban League because “it would send the wrong message to go straight from the Urban League to Philadelphia, Miss.” Hm.

(In fairness to Mr. Brooks, I might be misrepresenting his argument a little bit. He’s very upset about some slur against Reagan, and it seems like the slur would be that Reagan was appealing to racism. But when Mr. Brooks actually pins the slur down in words and not implication, he says “[i]t posits that there was a master conspiracy to play on the alleged Klan-like prejudices of American voters.” So maybe Mr. Brooks actually concedes the appeal to racism and it didn’t amount to a “master conspiracy.” Or it could be that whatever racism was being played on didn’t quite rise to the “Klan-like” level of actual lynchings. That’s an argument he can win, but I’m not sure why he wants to.)

Anyway, it’s not actually very interesting to notice that David Brooks has made a silly argument. But the importance of “states’ rights” in all this is interesting--to me, at least. You don’t actually hear the phrase “states’ rights” these days, but it used to be popular with conservatives. It also used to be code for racism.

(Even Mr. Brooks says it was “callous, at least” to use the words in Philadelphia, Mississippi, although he cryptically notes that the phrase “didn’t spark any reaction in the crowd.” (What on earth can that mean? That it wasn’t so terrible to use the phrase because it didn’t spark some kind of bonfire of “Klan-like” behavior?) Also, Reagan said other things in the speech. He didn’t just stand up there repeating “states’ rights,” as you’d expect if he were appealing to racism. And he told some jokes. But there I go again. Enough with Mr. Brooks.)

Of course, “states’ rights” wasn’t just code for racism, and small-government conservatives had perfectly legitimate reasons for advocating them. As Reagan said, “I believe in states’ rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can at the community level and at the private level.”

And even if you believe government can be an okay thing, it’s easy to get behind the idea of local governance for reasons having nothing to do with limiting the size of the central government: for instance, you might think that local government is both more responsive to local issues and more accountable to voters. Or you might like the idea of lots of local governments trying various approaches to difficult problems, on the theory that diversity is a helpful precondition to innovation, as Columbia Law School Professors Michael Dorf and Charles Sabel have argued.

And as it happens, the issue of states’ rights is alive and well, although now it mainly goes around under the name of Federalism, or the New Federalism, or Democratic Experimentalism. But here’s the twist: conservatives aren’t so sure about states’ rights anymore.

I always perk up when this kind of thing happens—a political group grabs onto a principle and heavily invests itself in that principle as a matter of principle, only to back quietly away when the implications start to turn against their ideology. (My favorite example is judicial activism: now that the Supreme Court’s producing right wing opinions, judicial activism seems like it might be all right with a lot of conservatives.)

It’s not that I’m shocked by extreme hypocrisy: I’m just fascinated by it. For me, it’s like watching one of those contortionists fit herself into a box the size of a Chinese food takeout carton: I know perfectly well that it can happen, and I’ve seen it before, but it’s a phenomenon so alien to my innate sense how people work that I can’t stop watching. Even though it makes me a little queasy.

Also, less weirdly, I’m interested right now because the federal government’s in the midst of deciding how to respond to various predatory lending practices that have played a big part in the mortgage meltdown, and it’s entirely possible that the result will be less regulation of predatory lending. More on that later. First, a super-quick history of the evolution of states’ rights advocates:

Once upon a time, everyone pretty much assumed that a strong centralized government would impose more, and more stringent, regulations than a lot of states would. So even if you didn’t care about the size of the central government, an opposition to regulations would get you to the same place. (As in Reagan’s “I believe in people doing as much as they can at the community level and at the private level.” The private level bit only fits with states’ rights if they’re equated with less regulation.) The paradigmatic example is civil rights, of course, which is how “states’ rights” turned into a code phrase. But the assumption held across the board.

Now might not be the time for an extensive exploration of the ideas propping up that assumption, but my simplified theory is that its core was two different but convergent ideological notions of what a strong central government actually meant. (N.Y.U. Law School Dean Richard Revesz has a great chapter on this topic in the catchingly titled Regulatory Competition and Economic Integration, Daniel Esty & Damien Gerardin, eds.) The Left, I think, assumed the central government was more enlightened than a lot of state governments were, while the Right assumed that the central government was greedy by nature—that it would instinctively aggrandize itself, even at the expense of good policy. (It’s worth remembering the Democratic hegemony at the level of national government during this time.)

So both sides assumed a strong central government would regulate more extensively than a lot of state governments. The Left saw this as a good thing, because the more enlightened central government would stop states from racing each other to the bottom in areas like social services and environmental regulations. The Right saw it as a bad thing, because the greedy central government would inexorably extend its grasping tentacles, strangling the preferences of individuals who might be able to muster local but not national majorities—even when the locals knew best.

There’s more to it than this, but I’m not sure how much it matters, because if the assumption made sense once, it doesn’t anymore. The Right, while not doing anything at all to dispel anyone’s notion of rapacious central government, has done a superb job of inverting the assumption that a strong central government favors regulation.

And it’s not just that deregulation proponents are taking power and using it to back off regulations, although that’s happened, too. What’s striking is the extent to which deregulators have been able to use the central government to stop states from enforcing their own regulations.

The power comes from the Supremacy Clause, which you can find in Article VI of the Constitution, and which says that where state and federal laws conflict, the federal law is the one that counts. There are a lot of good reasons to have a Supremacy Clause, and if you’re a fan of deregulation, here’s a really good one: the central government can prohibit states from enforcing their own regulations.

For instance, a Clean Air Act, which Congress passed in 1966, sounds good if you’re worried about air pollution. But the Clean Air Act prohibited all the states but California from enforcing any standards stricter than the federal ones. (Here’s a great line from a case resulting from Massachusetts’ trying to raise its standards: “The frustration felt by the EPA and Massachusetts likely stems in part from the fact that Massachusetts’ aim . . . was to reduce air pollution, a laudable goal in its own right and, more importantly, the central purpose of the Clean Air Act. However . . .” the Clean Air Act forbid Massachusetts from trying to fulfill its own “central purpose.” Or maybe the court was wrong about what that central purpose really was?

Now there are some good arguments for uniform regulations, but there are also some good arguments against them. They’re exactly the ones conservatives used to make in favor of states’ rights. Conservatives don’t make those arguments anymore.

One of the areas where deregulators have had some nice success is predatory lending. A charitable view of the failure of federal agencies to address the problem is that the agencies are overwhelmed—it’s not that they’re uninterested in protecting consumers, just that they don’t have the capacity to do it. But then you’d imagine the federal government would be eager for the help states would love to provide. Instead, in 2004, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency decided that federal law preempts state regulation of national banks, a decision the Supreme Court approved in Watters v. Wachovia. Federal agency to state regulators: take a hike.

In light of the states’ eagerness to regulate predatory lending on the one hand and the federal reluctance on the other, the quick pace of predatory lending “innovations,” and the regional variation of real estate practices, predatory lending should be an area where conservatives speak up for states’ rights to protect their own citizens. Or at least those conservatives whose entire ideology doesn’t consist of rooting for profit statements.

Congress is deciding right now how to respond to the sub-prime lending crisis—a crisis largely precipitated by predatory lending practices. Maybe the result will be something like the 1994 Home Ownership Equity Protection Act, which established federal law as the regulatory floor, rather than the ceiling. And maybe conservatives will speak up for the values of local responsiveness and accountability.

Maybe.

THIS WEEK @ ACS

2007-11-12T09:18:00.000-05:00

11/12 - 11/16

MONDAY November 12
12:00 PM, JG 105
Can America still be a melting pot?
Professor Hiroshi Motomura is a professor of law at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the author of leading casebooks on immigration law and the award-winning Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States. Join him for a discussion of the current state of US immigration policy, the history of immigration law, and possible reforms for the future.
Co-sponsored by The Society for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
Lunch served.

WEDNESDAY November 14

7:00 PM, Lenfest Cafe.

Quizzo.

Pizza. Beer. Questions. Prizes.

Harder. Better. Faster. Stronger.

RSVP your teams of 6-8 to Quinn, qaa2101@columbia.edu. Co-sponsored by the Federalist Society.

We Are the Champions

2007-11-09T10:55:00.000-05:00

Columbia ACS named ACS Chapter of the Week!

Look how happy the board is:

Quinn is especially happy.

Eat that, Regent University Law School ACS Chapter!

Check out how awesome we are at the ACS National website.

Let's all face the facts. Columbia's ACS is clearly the best ACS chapter in the world. I mean, what other chapter can claim the national ACS moot court champions AND a terrorism-related-event-to-student ratio of 1.7?

So please, take a moment this weekend and congratulate yourself for being part of an unstoppable team of progressive law students. You deserve it. Watch this video, think about paying your dues, and just imagine President Jake Honigman with that 'stache in that outfit.

Signing off,
Your proud ACS Media Papa

Prosecuting the War on Terror...Literally

2007-11-06T18:13:00.000-05:00

Tonight, the Columbia ACS, FedSoc, and CSIL hosted a discussion with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kelly Currie and Todd Harrison (E.D.N.Y.) and Andrew McCarthy (S.D.N.Y.) on the role of the federal prosecutor in fighting terrorism.

The attorneys began with a chronological overview beginning with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. That event challenged American legal ideas - international terrorism was unknown to U.S. prosecutors. Since that plot had been completed, the proseuctorial structures could address it. Later, inchoate plots stressed our legal doctrines of conspiracy and attempt. Furthermore, racketeering statutes were ill-suited to the task as well because they were aimed at organizations with financial purposes.

In 1996, the statutory landscape changed. The provision of material support to terrorist organizations became a cognizable charge, which provided a highly effective new tool to prosecutors.

After 9/11, the focus shifted dramatically to prevention of terrorist activities. This muddied the task before U.S. Attorneys. Prosecutors bring a substantial set of useful skills to this intelligence endeavor. Focusing on issues of evidence, corroboration, and their own high burden of proof allowed U.S. Attorneys to provide a valuable contribution to intelligence and law enforcement efforts.

The attorneys also discussed the internal procedural changes that have been made to better integrate intelligence, enforcement, and legal offices. The Patriot Act also implemented laws that permitted broader options for prosecutors seeking charges that better fit international terrorism issues. For example, extraterritorial jurisdiction for U.S. Attorneys has been expanded. There has also been an attitudinal change - the D.O.J. has naturally become more proactive and aggressive in using laws not directly terrorism-related in order to squash nascent terrorist activity.

A rousing and intriguing round of student questions ensued in which the attorneys gave candid and insightful responses. One interesting theme was that the "War on Terror" is distinct from both traditional criminal issues and traditional warfare. The most difficult challenge, ultimately, implicated by this observation is that it may be impossible to imagine a world after the War on Terror - unlike imagining the world after a conventional war or without crime.

As a side note: Tonight, Columbia ACS President Jake Honigman earned the distinct honor of having asked the longest question in a CLS event on record. His 3 minute, 36 second statement touched on intriguing issues of politics and policy, raising serious concerns as to the future of the Department of Justice. His question culminated with "Alright go with that." Jake is to be commended for his big-picture perspective and ever-present desire to put speakers in the awkward position of evading questions about their bosses.

Columbia ACS would like to thank its co-sponsors and guests for the interesting and enlightening discussion.

THIS WEEK @ ACS

2007-11-05T11:01:00.000-05:00

11/5 - 11/9

TUESDAY November 6
6:30 PM, JG 106

Prosecuting the War on Terror...Literally
A discussion with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kelly Currie and Todd Harrison ( E.D.N.Y.) and Andrew McCarthy (S.D.N.Y.) on the role of the federal prosecutor in fighting terrorism.

Co-sponsored by the Columbia Society of International Law and the Federalist Society.

Dinner Served

THIS WEEK @ ACS

2007-10-29T11:05:00.000-04:00

10/29 - 11/2

TUESDAY October 30
12:20 PM, JG 101

Human Rights Institute event with Martin Scheinin

Martin Scheinin is the UN Special Rapporteur on the protection and promotion of Human Rights. Mr. Scheinin is a Finnish Law professor who has conducted investigations in the Philippines, South Africa, the United States and Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and will be speaking about his work in this increasingly relevant field of law.
Co-sponsored by Rightslink.

Lunch served

SUING GOD: The Religion Causes and the Roberts Court

2007-10-22T10:21:00.000-04:00

Last Wednesday, Professor Steven Gey of the Florida State University School of Law and Professor Marci Hamilton of the Cardozo School of Law discussed the future of establishment clause rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Professor Gey spoke first, discussing recent Supreme Court decisions that indicate the court’s tendency to favor religion in establishment clause cases. One of the better-known recent cases is Hein v. Freedom of Religion, in which the majority ruled that taxpayers cannot challenge the use of money allocated to the executive branch for promotion of religion. Five of the current justices (Scalia, Alito, Kennedy, Roberts and Thomas), Gey argued, generally favor allowing the government to facilitate religion as long as it does not favor a certain sect.

Gey then outlined the differences between the “old” and “new” views of the establishment clause. He stated that there are five important differences. The first is that, under the old view, the government basically ignored religion. Under the new, the Court says that politics are infused with and defined by religion, that the U.S. is a Christian nation that is defined by its values. Secondly, under the old paradigm, the Constitution protects all religions, while under the new, majority religions prevail over minority religious groups.

The third difference is that under the old paradigm, religious beliefs were irrelevant to whether one could obtain citizenship. Under the new paradigm, de facto religious tests are allowed for some aspects of democratic participation. To illustrate, Gey cited the impossibility of being elected to public office in certain areas as an avowed atheist. The fourth difference he cited is that under the old paradigm, the Court enforced one national theory of religious freedom, while the new paradigm has the Court stepping aside and allowing religious battles to be fought on the local level. The fifth and final significant difference between the old and new paradigms, Gey posited, was that under the old system, the government was agnostic and neutral. Now, the government advocates for certain “truths.”

However, Gey offered some hope for those who oppose the new direction of establishment clause doctrine. There are three reasons the new paradigm won’t stand, he said. The first is that the position by the majority is not historical. The writers of the Constitution supported a secular government. Secondly, the U.S. is no longer a Christian country; the two most rapidly growing religious groups are secularists and Muslims. Finally, local demographics are changing so that single religious groups are not so dominant in any given area, and elections will begin to reflect this change.

Professor Marci Hamilton spoke second. She clarified that the historic purpose of the establishment clause was to protect religion and government from one another, as one often has a tendency to overlap and overpower the other. But the separation of church and state is naturally fuzzy because there is no way the two can be totally separated.

Hamilton made the point that there is an idea that the U.S. has a set of shared beliefs and those beliefs are unavoidable. These beliefs are generally equated with Christian beliefs. However, the idea of the “Christian nation” is flawed, she argues, because the U.S. was not founded by an ecumenical Christian group. The various Christian sects that founded our country hated each other, so to say that there was a single unified “Christianity” in our country is inaccurate.

Despite the historical inaccuracy of the “Christian nation founded on Christian values” idea, the effects of the eroding barrier between church and state will be felt for at least the next 20 years, Hamilton said. In the Court’s next term, there will be more Ten Commandment cases, she predicts, in which the Court will clarify that they can be posted on public property.

However, if the country becomes opposed to the direction the court is taking the separation of church and state, there will be a response from the people through the legislature, she predicted. Hamilton ended her portion of the presentation with the question: Will the Court become irrelevant if there’s a backlash in favor of separation?

ACS sincerely thanks both professors for their time and presentations.

THIS WEEK @ ACS

2007-10-22T10:16:00.000-04:00

10/22-10/26

WEDNESDAY October 24
6:30 PM, JG 106
Crack/Cocaine Sentencing Panel
In Kimbrough v. United States, the Supreme Court is considering the dramatic 100-to-1 disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentencing.

Panelists include: Professor Jeffrey Fagan; Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project and Professor Harlan Protass of Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, criminal defense attorney and creator of the Second Circuit Sentencing Blog. Moderated by Professor Gerard Lynch '75, U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York.
Co-sponsored by the Criminal Justice Action Network (CJAN), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Civil Rights Law Society (CRLS).
Dinner served.

The ACS 2008 National Student Writing Competition: "Liberty, Security and Democracy in Our Evolving Society"

ACS invites you to submit any paper that falls within the above topic. Submissions must be 25-50 pages in length and are due February 8, 2008. The winner will receive $3,000 and have her paper published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law. The two runners-up will receive $1,000 each. See here for details.

THIS WEEK @ ACS

2007-10-15T10:00:00.000-04:00

10/15-10/19

WEDNESDAY October 17
12:15 PM, JG 105
Suing God: The Religion Clauses in the Roberts Court
Professor Marci Hamilton of the Cardozo School of Law, and Professor Steven Gey of the Florida State University College of Law, will discuss the future of the separation of church and state in light of recent Supreme Court decisions, such as Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Professor Kent Greenawalt will be moderating.

Lunch served.

Top Gun: A Conversation with Jeh Johnson, CLS '82

2007-10-11T12:16:00.000-04:00

Today, Jeh Johnson, CLS '82, joined the Columbia Chapter of the ACS and BLSA for a conversation about his time as General Counsel of the Air Force and the rule of law in the military.

Mr. Johnson focused on the balance between a mainstream legal career and a commitment to public service. Using his own biography as a touchstone, Mr. Johnson related a story all too familiar to law students: his first days of legal methods with Professor Peter Strauss. His career path - as a competitor in the Stone moot court, an associate at multiple New York firms, an assistant U.S. Attorney, partner at Paul Weiss, and general counsel of the Air Force - represents an evolution into a complete attorney: a socially conscious, efficient, and compelling advocate. The two most important pieces of career advice Mr. Johnson offered were: 1. never us a script; 2. be a U.S. Attorney. His war stories were not only entertaining, but demonstrative of the processes, tactics, and characteristics that constitute elite advocacy.

Mr. Johnson cites his experience at the Air Force and working with presidential candidates as the heart of why he originally came to CLS: to be a public servant.

He left us with the succinct words of wisdom: "Never lose your public interest interest."

Columbia ACS and BLSA would like to thank Mr. Johnson for his entertaining and enlightening visit.

Clive Stafford Smith Book Talk

2007-10-10T19:19:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, ACS and a slew of other campus group welcomed Columbia Law alum Clive Stafford Smith to discuss his book, Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in Guantanamo Bay. After graduating from Columbia, Smith began defending capital cases, and quickly became appalled by the state of criminal justice in the United States. He has since broadened his focus to include the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay without legal representation, of whom he has now represented more than fifty.

Referring to his time at Columbia as a "complete waste," the irreverently charming Smith urged Columbia grads to avoid the straight subway line to Wall Street and do something meaningful with their lives. He described how, over the course of working on death penalty cases, he came to recognize the serious flaws in our justice system. As an example, he cited the "beyond reasonable doubt standard." In a survey of judges, Smith alleged that, when asked to quantify how sure they had to be in order to meet this standard, the average response was 83%, with some going as low as 75%. The logical conclusion is therefore that the average American judge expects almost 1 in 5 people convicted to be innocent.

Smith identified one of the major elements of false convictions as "snitches," or people who are willing to give the authorities names to save themselves jail time. These people, unsurprisingly, are not always truthful, but their confessions are given significant weight by police officers, prosecutors, and eventually juries.

Turning his attention to Gitmo, Smith pointed out that, if an open and transparent system like our criminal justice process has such serious flaws, things are bound to be exponentially worse in a closed, secret prison. In order to illustrate this, he offered examples of the appallingly low standard required to detain someone in Gitmo or one of its analogues. The enemy combatant label, by the admission of the U.S. Government, can extend to anyone who hears someone speaking kindly of a known terrorist and does not then report that person to the CIA.

Additionally, the United States offers a $5,000 bounty to anyone providing the identity of a terrorist. In countries like Afghanistan, this bounty is the equivalent of $250,000, and all that is required to receive it is the identity of a terrorist. Like snitches in the criminal justice system, there are no provisions for verifying the credibility of those who report "terrorists."

Once detained, Smith described, "enemy combatants" are abused in shocking ways. He recalled being appalled when he first heard his clients relate stories of the physical and psychological torture they were subjected to. Additionally, they are detained on unbelievably flimsy evidence. One of his clients is currently being held because, as a camera man for Al-Jazeera, he received camera training, which they qualify as "terrorist training."

Perhaps most disturbingly, Smith pointed out that Guantanamo is only a well-publicized example of the many secret prisons the U.S. currently runs throughout the world. In fact, it accounts for only 2.5% of such prisoners. Smith concluded his talk by taking questions and encouraging everyone in the audience to get involved, and to come "be exploited" by him in helping to represent the Guantanamo prisoners.

This Week @ ACS

2007-10-07T22:10:00.000-04:00

10/8-10/12

WEDNESDAY October 10
5:30 PM, JG 102
Book Talk: Seeking Justice in Guantanamo Bay

Clive Stafford Smith '84 discusses his upcoming work, The Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in Guantanamo Bay - an extraordinary, first-hand account of the US detention facility, written by one of the few individuals in the world who has had independent access to it.

Co-sponsored by Social Justice Initiatives, CPIL, and CLS's Human Rights Institute.

Reception to Follow.

THURSDAY October 11
12:15 PM, JG 107

Top Gun: Practicing in BigLaw and the Air Force

With Jeh Johnson '82

Jeh Johnson is a partner at Paul, Weiss and was General Counsel of the Department of the Air Force during the Clinton Administration. He has
been named one of the top black lawyers in New York City. He will speak about the rule of law in the military and other aspects of his career.

Co-sponsored by BLSA.

Lunch Served.

THURSDAY October 11
8:30 PM, Tim Abbott's Apartment, 415 W. 115th St., #41

ACS Membership Houseparty

Mama ain't home. Join ACS National ($10) and the drinks are on us!

School Desegregation

2007-10-06T01:34:00.000-04:00

On Friday, ACS welcomed Goodwin Liu, a Professor at Boalt Hall, to discuss the recent Seattle and Louisville desegregation cases, the lessons of Brown and Plessy and the Supreme Court’s performance as a protector of civil rights.

Professor Liu began with an overview of the Seattle and Louisville cases, which considered to what extent, if at all, school districts can use race as a factor to achieve diverse schools. Writing for the plurality, Chief Justice Roberts held that race cannot be used for this purpose. For the dissent, Justice Breyer found that not only would such use of race be acceptable, it is not even deserving of strict scrutiny. Justice Kennedy staked out a middle ground, noting that while school districts have a very important interest in racially diverse schools, school districts may not use race to classify individual students.

Liu examined these cases through the lens of Plessy. Justice Harlan’s lonely and famous dissent includes the often-quoted line “our constitution is colorblind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among its citizens.” However, Harlan wrote this sentence as only part of a broader paragraph and, Liu suggested, without context it has lost its intended meaning. In fact, Harlan’s words indicated a belief that the constitution does not permit a system of “racial caste” and that the 14^th amendment guarantees membership in American society.

The Plessy majority denied the social facts of the effects of segregation, claiming that if minorities felt slighted by “separate but equal,” it was a choice that they made, not something inherent in the doctrine. Roberts also denies social facts when he equates the white Louisville children denied the opportunity to attend their first choice school to the African American children of Brown. Liu noted that in detaching his reasoning from social meaning, Roberts has arrived at an interpretation of Brown that no members of the Brown Court would have accepted.

Professor Liu remarked that he was not surprised by the Court’s recent decision, due in part to the Court’s current membership but also due to the Court's history of failing to advance civil rights. Indeed, Liu argued, Congress has usually led this charge, with the Court often signing on after the fact. It is not that the Court has been unimportant to civil rights, Liu contended, but that Congress has traditionally led the way and that as a result most civil rights’ victories have had a basis in a majoritatarian process, which provides an authority the Court never could.

Liu used these lessons of history to argue for a specific model of civil rights advocacy which emphasizes not simply getting cases to the Supreme Court, but allowing issues to “percolate” through the legislature such that when they reach the Court, the Court need not lead so much as follow. Specifically for school district diversity, Liu suggested an approach in which Congress incentivizes intra-district diversity through requirements on federal funds.

And Thou Shalt Not File Frivolous Lawsuits

2007-09-25T22:33:00.002-04:00

In a bizarre attempt at combining law and religion in order to make a point about frivolous lawsuits, Nebraska state senator Ernie Chambers is suing God.

More surprisingly, God has responded. According to District Clerk John Fiend, the answer "miraculously appeared on the counter." Oh, those law clerks.

After only a month of law school, I can already sense that the myriad jurisdictional and enforcement issues involved in this case make it unlikely to succeed. On the off chance that Chambers is granted his injunction, the court obviously has no way to enforce its ruling.

Civ Pro Mini Quiz- Does this qualify as sufficient service of process?

But this case is an effort to make a statement about a much bigger issue than whether God is a terrorist: tort reform.

Chambers is using this lawsuit, which he admit is absurd, to make the point that anyone can sue anyone. But is that necessarily bad?

In our legal system, tort legislation (ideally) acts as a form of social insurance. It allows people a remedy when they are injured, and in many cases prevents people from bearing an undue financial burden. Additionally, the knowledge that anyone can be sued (theoretically) encourages people to be more careful in their interactions.

As a society we have consistently supported this idea. Congress, for example, has explicitly recognized the value of litigating relief by passing statues that allow victorious plaintiffs to claim attorneys' fees from defendants in certain kinds of cases. These laws are specifically designed to encourage lawsuits (and thereby discourage particular kinds of undesirable conduct).

On the other hand, the tort system does not appear to be working properly. Tort costs in the U.S. each year reportedly exceed $200 billion. According to Bureau of Justice statistics, less than half of all tort plaintiffs succeed at trial. For medical malpractice, the figure is closer to one quarter. Worse, the right people usually don't sue. According to a Harvard Study, less than 1 in 7 injuries caused by medical malpractice are ever litigated.

The issue is obviously far more complicated than this post can begin to cover, but it boils down to a fundamental question. Are we willing to pay the huge procedural costs of often frivolous lawsuits in order to protect the right of every American to sue when he or she is wronged?

The truth of the matter is, if we're willing to stomach the costs, the legal system seems to do a fine job of filtering out frivolous lawsuit. In fact, in the lawsuit Chambers is protesting, the Judge is considering sanctions for the plaintiff's counsel.

Chambers, however, prefers to demonstrate how frivolous lawsuits waste taxpayer dollars by, well, wasting taxpayer dollars. God has yet to weigh in on the issue.

John Roberts: Restrained Judicial Conservative or Conservative Judicial Activist

2007-09-25T11:21:00.000-04:00

Today, the Columbia ACS and Federalist Society hosted a conversation between Emily Bazelon (Senior Editor of slate.com) and M. Edward Whelan III (President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center) focusing on what to expect from the Roberts Court.

Mr. Whelan opened by noting his initial uncertainty as to Chief Justice Robert's attitudes, and then declared his satisfaction with the Chief Justice thus far. Interestingly, Mr. Whelan defended the term "judicial activism," noting it is inherently apolitical, but involves the overriding of political decision-making. He also noted that judges can affect similar error through "judicial passivism" in refusing to enforce politically-created rights. Further, Mr. Whelan distinguished judicial restraint from stare decisis because judicial restraint involves deference to the political branches. Returning to Chief Justice Roberts in conclusion, Mr. Whelan expressed his approval.

Ms. Bazelon dove right into an analysis of Chief Justice Roberts emphasis on unanimity in his first term. Moving into the recently elapsed term, Justice Kennedy's role in the numerous 5-4 decisions places him, and rather than Chief Justice Roberts, as the driving mind on the Court. This leaves Chief Justice Robert's role as one of timing and pacing. Ms. Bazelon pointed to a deeper understanding of restraint, noting the Justice Scalia's frequent criticisms of his Chief for "faux judicial modesty." Robert's emphasis on "modesty" bespeaks a preference for incremental change in the Court's decisions and calls for a delicate respect for precedent. Returning to the issue of pacing and timing, Ms. Bazelon pointed out the conservatives on the Court are just younger than the liberals and thus have time on the court to be patient and can build a number of decisions to cut away at important precedents. She asserted that Chief Justice Roberts will ultimately be an activist judge because he will drive the law toward an end-state that he desires.

Professor Peter Strauss, our moderator, opened the question period with a detailed query as to the current Court's approach toward the rule of law and respect to precedents in the context of a "common law" statute. What ensued was a wide-ranging and considered discussion of a number of jurisprudential points. Student questions focused on the terminology and evolved-meaning of the term "judicial activism," and the interpersonal dynamics among the Justices on the Court.

In the midst of answering a question, Ms. Bazelon expressed her anxiety in relying upon Justice Kennedy for her hopes for the court. "Me, too," enjoined Mr. Whelan. Regardless of their position on the alleged activism of Chief Justice Roberts, both speakers agree that Justice Kennedy is the linchpin of the Court and it is that dynamic which will be the prime driver of the Court in the near future.

Columbia ACS would like to thank Emily Bazelon, Edward Whelan, and Professor Peter Strauss for joining us today and offering their important and interesting remarks.

Ahmadinejad on Campus

2007-09-24T11:18:00.000-04:00

These remarks are entirely my own and I do not speak for ACS or the Columbia chapter thereof. I offer my responses to President Ahmadinejad's appearance with the sincere hope that this may be the beginning of a robust discussion here on columbiaacs.blogspot.com.

Today, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, spoke and answered questions here at Columbia upon the invitation to join in the World Leaders' Forum. News vans, police, and passionate discourse all followed him here, and I - for one - cannot imagine a better use of the University's resources and good name.

Ahmadinejad is an indisputable threat to global security of the highest magnitude. He is also a genuinely bad person, a "petty and cruel dictator," in the words of University President Lee Bollinger. I join President Bollinger's condemnation without qualification. Ahmadinejad is, however, undeniably a "world leader," and it is, as noted by President Bollinger, the duty of the academy to host and critically engage with all viewpoints, ridiculous or otherwise.

Deeply embedded in the American conception of free speech is the idea that society benefits from a free trade of ideas in an open and diverse 'marketplace' of thought. It is only when juxtaposed with considered and rational ideas that the absurd and evil are revealed convincingly as such. Ahmadinejad began by dismissing Bollinger's criticisms as impolite as coming from a host, and moved to discuss the importance of scholarship as advancing civilization.

It was tactful of the Iranian President to frame his remarks as focused on the advance of knowledge. By entrenching his discussion in religious scripture, Ahmadinejad implied his fundamental and ultimately problematic thesis: truth is bestowed by God, and my God bestows my truth.

Predictably, Ahmadinejad used this platform as an opportunity to criticize the "big powers" of geopolitics. He pointed to American hypocrisy in preaching freedom abroad while denying privacy to its own citizens. A point well taken. He argued that the West uses science and scholarship to suppress indigenous cultures and the scientific advance of periphery nations, like his own. The intellectual leaders of the West, are divorced from human and cultural values, he argued, and this divorce renders Western science impure and unholy.

Ahmadinejad ended with two questions. First, he asked why more diverse scholarship investigating the Holocaust has not been produced. In a way, he turned President Bollinger's criticism of his government's stance toward the academic community back against the West. In that, he revealed an important and overlooked common ground: we must all observe and respect divergent viewpoints and secure safe spaces for such discourse.

Without phrasing it as a question, Ahmadinejad next asked why Iran should be denied the right enjoyed by other nations to develop a peaceful, civil nuclear program.

To me, Ahmadinejad's visit was an incredible intellectual opportunity and reminded me that the academy, and Columbia in particular, serves as an important and volatile center of international discourse. Ahmadinejad himself comes across as evasive, obfuscating, and an entertainer; ever playing the victim and avoiding any discussion of the magnitude of his inflammatory remarks.

In the end, President Bollinger's scathing introduction seemed, to me, to capture today's event aptly. Ahmadinejad cannot, with reason, refute the malevolence and irrationality of his publicly-expressed views. This is the lesson of the day: all views must be considered, but all must also be supported with reason and evidence. President Ahmadinejad's evasion and selective use of Western ideas are unpersuasive and uselessly polemical.

The President's Pen: Negating Congressional Initiative and Hampering Effective Policy

2007-09-13T13:01:00.000-04:00

The presidential signing statement is not new. Its been around for a long, long time, but the frequency with which this President has employed it is staggering. Between 1817 and 1981, only 75 such statements were issued from the White House. As of June 2006, President Bush had issued over 600. (For an excellent overview of Bush's use of signing statements, www.beyondpartisan.org). It is true that Presidents Reagan and Clinton issued signing statements at a far greater rate than their predecessors, this executive has implemented the form for the purposes of participating in a purely legislative process: the determination of what issues federal legislation should address.

This is what bothers me most about President Bush's use of the signing statement. He is effectively telling Congress, "I understand that you have identified a social problem, but I disagree with the means you chose to address is (or perhaps that it is a problem at all). Thus, I will abandon my Constitutional duty of implementation, because you, vox populi, are talking jive."

It's fun to eviscerate democracy!

The first signing statement issued by President Bush is illustrative of this point. Congress, in passing the Animal Disease Risk Assessment, Prevention, and Control Act, instructed the Secretary of Agriculture to provide reports including legislative recommendations on various issues of animal disease prevention. President Bush's signing statement objected to Congress' temerity in telling his employee what to do. The merit of the administration's fundamental separation of powers argument here is beyond my capacity or present interest to assess, but this example is telling on a more basic level.

Here, Congress has responded to widespread public apprehension about diseases carried by animals and their potential communicability to humans or impact on the food supply. (Remember Avian Flu?) The President - whether or not he agreed that this was an important problem with a role for the federal government in tackling it (it looks like he did, given that his CDC has been training to deal with a potential Avian Flu pandemic) - squelched a useful avenue for the provision of valuable scientific expertise to the Legislature for reasons boiling down to a juvenile bureaucratic turf war. Congress saw a problem, realized it needed expert assistance to effectively legislate against it, and asked for that aid. President Bush ignored the public good, legislative and popular mandate, and the quest for effective policy solutions.

Perusing the index of signing statements published by ACS (pdf) is an interesting and frustrating endeavor. The exercise also reveals that President Bush has used signing statement to usurp judicial - in addition to legislative - powers. In many cases, the administration's reason for issuing a signing statement is that the particular provision at issue contravenes a constitutional provision or the Supreme Court's interpretation thereof. (Very often the signing statements invoke INS v. Chadha as prohibiting post-enactment participation of Congress in implementation decision-making).

While all government actors should consider the constitutionality of their actions at all times, the supreme arbiter of constitutionality is the Supreme Court (see e.g. Marbury v. Madison). This is especially true when applied to interpreting the Court's own precedents.

In the end, my overwhelming reaction to this important documentation of a little-known presidential tactic is quite blunt: I implore you Mr. President, KNOW YOUR ROLE. Let the Court and Congress to their respective jobs and you stick to the enduring inept execution of your own.

6 Years at Gitmo: A Travesty, or A Good Start?

2007-09-11T11:33:00.000-04:00

Today, the Columbia's chapters of the Federalist Society and ACS welcomed Professor George Fletcher, of Columbia Law School, and David Rivkin, of Baker Hostetler. Mr. Rivkin and Professor Fletcher debated the merits of the Military Commissions Act, and discussed other issues relating to the detention, treatment, and trial of detainees since 9/11.

After a brief introduction by Federalist Society President Nate Berry touching upon the solemnity of the day and importance of vibrant political debate, the debate began with Mr. Rivkin's remarks.

Mr. Rivkin opened his allotted time by rejecting the varied criticisms of the Bush administration's legal policy as an unprecedented assault on Constitutional protections. In great detail, Mr. Rivkin discussed the procedures under the Detainee Treatment Act as essentially fair.

Mr. Rivkin historically linked the current policies as to unlawful combatants with longstanding legal traditions and emphasized that the news-making cases were marginal and atypical.

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals is the relevant reviewing appellate court, and its scope of review is limited to procedural and constitutional questions. This scope of review has been upheld during World War II by the Supreme Court. Discussing habeas corpus, Mr. Rivkin dismissed the criticism that appellate courts would be unable to review questions of fact (i.e. if a petitioner is actually an enemy of combatant) by pointing to case law that would permit a review of pertinent facts.

In closing, Mr. Rivkin admitted that these procedures are limited when contrasted with domestic criminal law. However, he emphasized that the "laws of war" paradigm should be the basis of comparison because "if this isn't a state of armed conflict, I don't know what is," and in that contrast, the procedures relating to War on Terror detainees are "far more austere," in his words.

Professor Fletcher began his remarks with a professorial introduction, laying out in plain terms the academic points of the current habeas corpus debate. His focus was on fundamental questions: does the Constitution authorize the military commissions? They are operated by the executive branch, but, unlike similar court martial proceedings, their jurisdiction is over non-U.S. soliders. However, court martials are different because they are constitutionally designed as tools for managing the armed forces. Without a specific constitutional grant over the power to adjudicate cases involving enemy combatants, these military tribunals exist outside of the Constitution.

Professor Fletcher then offered an historical survey of the growth of these military tribunals. He emphasized that these tribunals had never received legislative consent. One 1920 statutory reference indicated that these tribunals were an expression of the international law of war. This proposition was only tested in Hamdan in 2005. Hamdan decided two issues: conspiracy (the central charge) was not part of the "law of war" and thus could not be charged in a military tribunal. The second central issue was Hamdan's inability to be present during testimony against him in the military tribunals. The court rejected this as a violation of the Geneva Conventions Common Article III. Five Justices applied the Geneva Conventions, but avoided making a constitutional decision.

Congress responded to Hamdan by creating a detailed set of military courts, however Article I of the Constitution does not grant Congress such a power. This deeply troubles Professor Fletcher.

Moving to address the "law of war, " accepting Mr. Rivkin's assertion that we are in the midst of war. His problem is that soldiers are not guilty of a crime in making a attack. Prisoners of war are not subject to prosecution. He views the problem as the Bush administration's attempt to pick and choose their favored attributes from both civil and wartime adjudicative procedures. This is the extraordinary development that merits critical attention.

Mr. Rivkin's brief response addressed some jurisdictional issues that Professor Fletcher discussed. Then Mr. Rivkin confronted a few "questions of fact." Military tribunals are not Article II courts, but rather under Article I. He then assured us that there are plenty of Supreme Court cases that upheld Article I bodies are appropriate for criminal adjudication, provided there is opportunity for judicial review. He also distinguished between the prosecutorial immunity for lawful enemy combatants to the lack of protection afforded to those labeled with the stigma of "unlawful enemy combatant."

Unfortunately, time did not permit Professor Fletcher's full response. His brief reply was to reject Mr. Rivkin's argument that the legacy of "unlawful enemy combatants" is longstanding, by describing the relevant WWII case initiating the doctrine. Professor Fletcher concluded by imploring the prosecution of actual and existing war crimes.

The exchange was observed and enjoyed by an over-flowing crowd of students and Columbia ACS would like to thank both Professor Fletcher and Mr. Rivkin for their lively debate and insights.

Tom Goldstein: Bloodbath & Beyond: The Coming Supreme Court Term

2007-09-10T14:20:00.000-04:00

Columbia ACS Events Chair Quinn Arnsten reports on Tom Goldstein's visit to CLS:

"Tom Goldstein is the head of Akin Gump's Supreme Court practice and one of the foremost Supreme Court litigators in the country. He also runs SCOTUSblog.com which is an interesting blog that covers the day-to-day happenings of the Supreme Court.

"Right now, Mr. Goldstein is working on a second amendment case that will be going before the Supreme Court this term; it should be one of the most interesting cases they hear, so keep a look out. The D.C. Court of Appeals recently overturned D.C. gun legislation on the ground that it violated the 2nd Amendment.

"According to Mr. Goldstein, the current court is very conservative. Last term most of the close cases were decided 5-4 on ideological grounds. This fact has been used to rally progressives against republicans and created a loud cry for a democratic president.

"First, Mr. Goldstein discussed his personal background, outlining his experiences as a clerk and his early pro bono work in the Supreme Court. As a piece of professional advice, Mr. Goldstein noted that there is often a small circle of really smart people in any field; it is important to know and be cordial with them.

"Then, he moved on to discuss the recently elapsed term. Last year the court heard 72 cases—this is not very many for a Supreme Court term. Right now it is Justice Kennedy’s world and we just live in it. In every 5-4 case Kennedy was in the majority. In 70 out of 72 cases Kennedy was in the majority. This is extraordinary.

"A side note: most Supreme Court cases are decided on the briefs. Thus, oral advocacy isn’t really that important. However, to get to the position where you will do Supreme Court litigation you need to be a great oral advocate.

"Returning to the term, the Supreme Court treated business very kindly. The chamber of commerce won every case: “they had the best week ever for 52 weeks in a row.” Ledbetter is a case that clearly demonstrates this.

"The school desegregation cases from last term demonstrate the schism between liberals and conservatives on this issue. The two sides come nowhere near seeing where the other side is coming from. The plurality opinion took a completely unrealistic approach to what is feasible for elementary school admissions.

"Finally, Mr. Goldstein offered a brief look at exciting issues pending for the upcoming term, including gun control, Guantanamo Bay, the sentencing of a convicted child rapist, child pornography, and the disparity in sentences for crimes involving crack versus those involving cocaine.

"Goldstein predicts that the court will probably decide a number of these cases with opinions amenable to liberals. This will make it appear as though the court is shifting. However, this is not the case and it just happens that there is a freak set of cases this term.

"Goldstein's bottom line: the Supreme Court will act as a mobilizer for the right in the upcoming election. This is because the left will have won the majority of cases from the previous term."

Columbia ACS would like to sincerely thank Tom Goldstein for his candid and interesting remarks as well as his legal and advocacy work.

A Catalogue of Passed-But-Unenforced Legislation

2007-09-05T17:46:00.001-04:00

Today, the national ACS website posted an interesting 229-page .pdf file. It's an index of all the Presidential Signing Statements issued between 2001-2007.

Although not specifically permitted or prohibited by the Constitution, signing statements provide notice how a President intends to enforce a law. According to the file on the ACS website, President Bush has used signing statements to lodge 1,047 objections to legislation signed into law.

2008 GOP Candidates: U.S. Founded as Christian Nation.1797 Congress: No It Wasn't.

2007-08-29T13:45:00.000-04:00

In Conroy v. Aniskoff, 507 U.S. 511, 520 (1993), Antonin Scalia includes a comment that he repeated here at Columbia Law School in 2006 — that the use of legislative history to bolster one's own position is "the equivalent of entering a crowded cocktail party and looking over the heads of the guests for one's friends." As much as I agree with Scalia here, I find it heartening to stumble across this bit of congressionally approved language from the 5^th Congress:

Treaty of Peace and Friendship, signed at Tripoli November 4, 1796 (3 Ramada I, A. H. 1211), and at Algiers January 3, 1797 (4 Rajab, A. H. 1211). Original in Arabic. Submitted to the Senate May 29, 1797. (Message of May 26, 1797.) Resolution of advice and consent June 7, 1797. Ratified by the United States June 10, 1797. As to the ratification generally, see the notes. Proclaimed Jane 10, 1797.

ARTICLE 11

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

ACS National Convention 2007 - Days 2 and 3

2007-08-06T14:43:00.000-04:00

ACS National Convention 2007: Toward a Just Future

The overall focus of the convention seemed to be the government and the balance of power in the Roberts court era. Discussion covered topics such as the role of the courts v. Congress, constitutional interpretation, and the effect of social values, public opinion and culture.

Day 2 of the convention began with a panel on race and the Constitution. Professor Goodwin Liu (who will be coming to Columbia in early October) got the discussion started with a quick rundown of the meaning of the equal protection clause ("EPC") within the framework of the 14th Amendment. According to Professor Liu, the EPC was originally intended to help establish a "national citizenship," where every citizen of each state and the nation as a whole had equal status and the same substantive rights. It was an anti-hierarchy, not an anti-classification, measure.

Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III (US AC, 4th Circuit) took the opposing view by advocating a race-neutral application of the EPC. The 14th Amendment should transcend race by viewing all Americans as equal "citizens," Judge Wilkinson said, avoiding the tendency of race to divide rather than join. In Judge Wilkinson's view, by rejecting racial categorization in the recent Seattle and Louisville school desegration cases, the Supreme Court was taking an important step towards a race-neutral America. School districts should be focusing on gaps in socio-economic class, not race.

The other panelists staunchly disagreed with Judge Wilkinson's approach. John Trasviña, President of MALDEF, and Ted Shaw, President of the NAACP-LDF, emphasized the difference between aspiration and reality. As Professor Liu pointed out, the United States is far from being a colorblind society. Until there is a true social consensus on racial equality, it would be dangerous to pretend that race is irrelevant.

The question, then, is whether the courts are the best way to push for social change. In the breakout session on "backlash" and attacks on landmark Supreme Court decisions, the panelists debated whether "activist" judges cause a backlash of public opinion. Professor Jeffrey Rosen defined "backlash" as social movement driven by counter-majoritarian judicial decisions. However, Professors Reva Siegel and Robert Post argued that so-called "backlash" is a normal and necessary part of the constitutional order. By making decisions that lead to democratic deliberation, courts help reaffirm the authority of the Constitution. Professor Scott Lemieux suggested that judicial minimalism is actually more dangerous, especially with the recent hollowing-out of precedents by the Roberts court. It is more important than ever for the nation to debate topics such as education and abortion.

Other breakout sessions considered hot-button issues like climate change, federal sentencing, the justice department, and voting access.

The final day of the convention continued the discussion on a diverse range of topics including civil unions, racial profiling, labor organizing, immigration reform, the balance of power, the role of local government, the Military Commissions Act, the Establishment Clause, and reproductive rights.

One highlight was the luncheon panel featuring Supreme Court journalists from Slate, NY Times, National Journal, and NBC News. Asked to predict the future of the nation in this new Supreme Court era, Pete Williams said what everyone was thinking: "Who knows? And it depends..."

ACS National Convention 2007 - Day 1

2007-08-06T12:00:00.000-04:00

ACS National Convention 2007: Toward a Just Future

The 5th Annual ACS Convention kicked off with a student leadership retreat on July 26. Two career-oriented panels, one on clerkships and one on careers on Capitol Hill, brought in an amazing array of panelists. The judges all made great comments on the clerkship application process, and the Hill staffers made me wish I wanted to work on the Hill myself (maybe someday...).

The student-led breakout panels followed, with our very own Dana Green leading the Privacy session. With so much current discussion of governmental violations of privacy, it was jarring to realize how few protections are in place against private employer surveillance. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1968 (18 U.S.C. §§ 2510-2521) is the only federal statute addressing worker communication privacy, and its terms are so narrowly interpreted that it offers almost no protection at all.

The retreat wrapped up with a small networking fair and an organizing best practices discussion for student chapter leaders. Finally, the evening wound down with the official opening reception of the convention.

Moot Court Victory!

2007-07-30T01:10:00.000-04:00

Left to right: Ben Garry, Judge Susan Graber (US AC 9th Circuit), Judge M. Blane Michael (US AC 4th Circuit), Chief Judge Robert Pratt, US DC for SD IA), Laird Nelson

And it's official! A team of Columbia 1Ls has gone to the finals of this year's ACS Constance Baker Motley Moot Court Competition and come home with the grand prize...

Congrats to Ben Garry and Laird Nelson for their spectacular performance in the final round of the competition last Friday!

No doubt the entire competition has been a great experience for all those involved as participants and organizers...may this year's victory inspire the new teams this fall!

Stay tuned for more on the rest of this year's ACS National Convention in Washington, DC...(with fewer exclamation points but no less exciting I hope)

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Contempt of Congress (But Were Afraid to Ask)

2007-07-25T11:02:00.000-04:00

The good folks at the Congressional Research Service—the nonpartisan, public policy research arm of the United States Congress—have put together a comprehensive report on Congress’s contempt power.

Preliminary Thoughts on the Schools Cases

2007-06-28T14:30:00.000-04:00

This morning, the Supreme Court issued its expected decisions in Parents Involved v. Seattle School District (05-908) & Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education (05-915). The basic holding isn’t a shock to any follower of the Court. Five justices say the integration plans were unconstitutional, four disagree.

But what’s been missing from the popular media coverage is that this case is hardly a landmark, for a number of reasons. (These are very preliminary thoughts since I'm actually at work and read the opinion over my morning coffee here on the West Coast).

1) It’s a 4-1-4 opinion. Justice Kennedy’s opinion is thus the controlling one, and it hardly shuts down the use of race, but rather uses a lot of ambiguous language about how and when race can be used. Further, diversity remains a compelling interest the Roberts, Kennedy, AND Stevens/Breyer opinions. Roberts’ opinion pretty much says “balance” is not a compelling interest, but

2) The majority did not hold that a school cannot consider race at all in any of these opinions, despite the headlines going around. It held that these two school systems’ programs were impermissible. Don’t get me wrong, I have no idea what would be permissible, but there’s room to remain.

3) We’re basically in a stricter Gratz/Grutter paradigm. Gratz/Grutter was an incomprehensible combination, that basically held that diversity was a compelling interest, but had a tougher narrow tailoring requirement. We were in strict scrutiny already. Remove Justice O’Connor from Gratz/Grutter, and Kennedy, who was against both of those programs, becomes the center of the Court. I actually think he moved closer to the center in his opinion than he was in the Michigan cases.

I defer to SCOTUS Blog, but reading the reactions of some of the “winning” parties, I think you can see how narrow the decision was.

I’d also note the unusual circumstance that essentially all 3 of todays opinions were controlled by Justice Kennedy’s opinions. We kind of knew Kennedy would control the fate of the Court, but it’s still very unusual.

I’m not going to pretend this is a “good” decision for those embracing a progressive view of civil rights and the constitution. But I didn’t expect a good decision from this Court. I think on the range of outcomes that were likely, this is “less bad” than it could’ve been. It also indicates a slowing down of the Rehnquist Era. True, there’s one more conservative seat in play, but the wishy-washiness of this opinion is a product of Roberts, in my mind.

Drama Chipmunks/Prairie Dogs & the DMCA

2007-06-25T02:48:00.000-04:00

I've divided this post into two parts for the benefit of those of us whose love of the internet does not translate into an appreciation of US internet law. Part I discusses a dramatic rodent capturing the attention of the internet. Part II discusses the law surrounding this rodent.

Part I: Dramatic Rodents on the Internet

The 5-second video below was originally titled "Drama Chipmunk" (I guess it's actually a prairie dog) and appeared on YouTube a little over five days ago:

(In case you're reading this post sometime after, say, July 1, 2007, I suspect that the clip will be removed — for reasons that are described in the law section below. If the video link doesn't work, Google the title of the clip you will find it.)

Since then, this dramatic little beast's performance has been viewed by more than 500,000 people. It has inspired a t-shirt. It has spawned numerous imitations and parodies, many of which are hilarious.

...it may or may not be on YouTube illegally.

Part II: The Law of Dramatic Rodents on the Internet (5-minute version)

When I first saw the Drama Chipmunk/Prairie Dog, I suspected that it was one of the few videos posted to YouTube where the person posting the video actually had done so legally.

There are 2 kinds of videos that can be legally posted on YouTube. For all the other kinds of videos on YouTube – where the posting of the video is illegal under U.S. copyright law – there is a specific law designed to keep the YouTubes of the world out of trouble (even if the people actually posting the videos may themselves get in a little trouble).

Legal YouTube Video #1 — The Person Publishing the Video Has the Right Set of Sticks: In every property law course taught in America during the past 100 years, the professor has at some point said, "property is a bundle of sticks." Although the rights underlying U.S. copyright law differ slightly from the rights underlying property ownership, the sticks metaphor holds up: Depending on the circumstances, you might have the right set of sticks, you might not.

Some of the videos you see on YouTube are legal because the person publishing the video is the copyright owner with the right to display and/or distribute the video. When you see guys destroying an old car with a 500-lb ball of rubber bands or free running through the streets of Russia, you're watching a video where the person who shot the video is probably the same person who edited the video for web-distribution, and is probably the same person who uploaded it to YouTube. In this case, it's extremely likely that the person has the right to post the video online.

Legal YouTube Video #2 — The Person Publishing the Video is a Fair User: Under the U.S. Constitution, copyright law protects original works "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts," not to make content creators rich. As such, the rights protected by copyright can be limited for a variety of purposes.

The largest limit on an owner's copyright in the United States is something called Fair Use. This doctrine permits an unauthorized person to use someone else's work in a manner that is fair, usually a use that contributes to society in some (modestly) beneficial way without taking too much money out of the original author's pocket through a lost market. In 1976, the Congress formally enacted a statute governing fair use (17 U.S.C. § 107), adopting judge-created language that had been in use since the 1840's:

. . . the fair use of a copyrighted work . . . for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching . . . , scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—
the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work;
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Fair use is a tricky one. It lets 2 Live Crew perform Pretty Woman without Roy Orbison's permission, but it doesn't permit a magazine to print (without authorization) a book's bombshells about Nixon before that book has been published, nor does it let a television show display an artistic poster on TV without permission from the poster's creator.

Well, the creator of Drama Chipmunk/Prairie Dog (which I'm going to abbreviate as DCPD) probably doesn't own the rights to post it online. Earlier today, I learned that DCPD was taken from a Japanese TV show, almost certainly without the permission of the copyright holder. (Foreign copyright holders have a U.S. copyright to their works at the moment of creation. There's no registration required.) Taking a current TV show without permission and displaying it on the internet? That's a prima facie case of copyright violation, and the creator of DCPD will be on the hook for copyright violation unless DCPD constitutes a fair use.

This armchair judge is certain that DCPD is a fair use. Under the statutory test quoted above, it will win the battle of the prongs (Under the purpose and character test it will be considered transformative, although the TV show owner will win the second prong, the third and fourth prongs will lean heavily in Drama Chipmunk/Prairie Dog's favor). Still, it's a close call, and it's a call that internet remix artists are not aware of when they remix culture online.

How YouTube Stays in Business with People Posting Videos that Violate U.S. Copyright: Since even something as short, innocent, and – in the language of fair use – transformative as DCPD is a close call, it should be obvious that violating videos are posted to YouTube all the time. Here's how the law of posting copyright-violating videos to YouTube works.

Congress passed a wide-ranging law in 1998 called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (which everybody calls the "DMCA"). If you talk to people who share online music, you've probably heard them complain about the DMCA — but the section of the DMCA that they're complaining about, Title I, has literally nothing to do with the section we're going to talk about, Title II. Title II is kinda cool.

Without Title II, YouTube would not be in business. Before Title II, YouTube would be contributorily and/or vicariously liable every time a user posted a video that violated copyright and a lawsuit was filed against that user and YouTube. Title II (which is now 17 U.S.C. § 512) creates a "safe harbor" for services like YouTube. Paragraph 512(c) eliminates YouTube's liability — unless a user's content is obviously a violation of copyright (DCPD is not an obvious violation) and as long as YouTube cooperates with copyright owners who demand that YouTube remove content violating their rights, YouTube can wait until those copyright owners complain before they remove content that violates copyright.

Under the current interpretation of 512(c), YouTube is in the clear; however, as more and more copyright owners see their rights violated on YouTube, they'll continue to exert pressure on the U.S. court system to tweak the interpretation of 512(c) into one that is less favorable to YouTube and other Web 2.0 businesses.

Under paragraph 512(c)(1)(a)(ii), YouTube would get in trouble if it let a user post content that was clearly violative of copyright. Previous courts have stated that user-posted content would need to set off bells and whistles to meet the obviously illegal standard: Something titled HERE'S AN ILLEGAL VIDEO THAT I STOLE FROM THE RIGHTFUL COPYRIGHT OWNER would probably meet the standard. However, earlier this month the 9^th Circuit Court found that two websites — one entitled illegal.net and the other named stolencelebritypics.com — did not meet the standard whereby the company hosting the sites should have known that "infringing activity [was] apparent." I strongly suspect we'll see what the Supreme Court says about that assumption.

Until then, YouTube's business plan is safe, video remix artists will continue to remix culture and post it online, and a certain Drama Chipmunk/Prairie Dog will continue to captivate us with his/her penetrating gaze.

Love's Anniversary

2007-06-11T21:01:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow is the 40^th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the 9-0 SCOTUS decision that eliminated anti-miscegenation laws within the United States. NPR has a remembrance of this opinion, the people behind it, and the status of interracial relationships in America today.

2006-07 ACS Board Bids You Adieu!

2007-06-06T00:56:00.001-04:00

The outgoing 2006-07 ACS Board & Faculty Advisers thank you for a successful year. See you in 2007-08!

Back row: Amos Blackman, Jake Honigman, Matt Dunne, Prof. Michael Dorf, Andy Bradley
Front row: Nina Yadava, Alicia Washington, Katie Brandes, Zahra Egal, Jon Sherman, Prof. Gillian Metzger

Pictured separately: Whitney Dougherty, Tim Abbott

Drinking Like It's a Dentist Convention

2007-05-05T10:05:00.000-04:00

In Robert Harris's review of Barbara Holland's The Joy of Drinking, Harris quotes Holland's research into the role alcohol played in the creation of our founding document:

[I]n 1787, two days before their work was done, the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention "adjourned to a tavern for some rest, and according to the bill they drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, 8 of whiskey, 22 of port, 8 of hard cider and 7 bowls of punch so large that, it was said, ducks could swim around in them. Then they went back to work and finished founding the new Republic." Note the 55 delegates and 54 bottles of Madiera. Which founder was slacking?

Finally, a fitting explanation for the strange spellings, ranDom CapitalizatioNs, and odd powers included in the Constitution.

ACS Speaker in the News

2007-04-23T19:47:00.000-04:00

ACS guest-speaker of January 31st and world-class litigator Martin Garbus is slated to represent beleaguered DJ Don Imus. From winning Goldberg v. Kelly, to representing Public Enemy and telling outrageous stories about his brush with court martial, Garbus never fails to entertain. The Columbia ACS blog would like to wish Mr. Garbus the best with his newest client.

The Blog Remains the Same

2007-04-22T15:07:00.000-04:00

Hey All,

I wanted to throw up a quick end-of-semester post for a few reasons. First, an immense debt of gratitude is owed to our outgoing ACS Media Chair, the incomparable Andy Bradley. Andy's management of this blog and endless energy and optimism have created a truly remarkable space for discussion and reflection and a world-class student blog.

Next, I wanted to point everyone to an instance of Columbia ACS in the news. Check out the article in the New York Sun and on Above the Law. Our very own ACS member Tim Abbott is quoted in The Sun discussing the offer of a faculty position to Matthew Waxman, a very well-credentialed and highly regarded official in the Bush State Department.

Finally, I invite you all to continue the wonderful dialogue housed on this blog throughout your summer exploits. Please feel free to blog about your experiences or any thoughts you may have in the coming months. Also, if you have any thoughts or suggestions for improving the blog, please don't hesitate to let me know. As next year's Media Chair, it is my sincere hope that this site will continue to be the "intellectual drumbeat" (as Andy likes to say) for the Columbia ACS community. With your help, I think we can do just that.

Good luck to all on finals and have a great summer. See you in the Fall.

Your Friendly Neighborhood ACS Media Chair,

Rob Weinstock

2nd Amendment Basis or Objective Basis for Firearm Ownership?

2007-04-16T23:05:00.000-04:00

Although I do not agree with people who find a right to privately own firearms in the 2^nd Amendment to the Constitution, I see their point. This amendment — along with a Congressional Commerce Power limited only by prudence and a 9^th Amendment that either does nothing or everything — represents some of the most ambiguous, sloppy drafting in the entire Constitution. Although I don't think you have the constitutional right to buy one gun per month (a limit Virginia has placed on individual gun ownership), I see how people can seize upon the 2^nd Amendment's sloppy drafting to claim that they do have such a right.

On the other hand, the people whom I do not understand are those people who ignore the historical accident of the 2^nd Amendment and attempt to argue from first principles that a universally armed society is preferable to a less-than-fully-armed one.

When Kathryn Lopez, conservative blogger at The Corner on National Review Online, says:

If you want domestic tranquillity, an armed and responsible citizenry ready and able to protect life and property is not a bad way to start.

...she is calling for a type of Wild West society that has been rejected by the rest of the developed world.

Argue from the Constitution that you have a 2^nd Amendment right to private gun ownership and I'll begrudgingly admit that you have a textual leg to stand on. Argue from first principles that the best society is one where we're all armed and I'll remind you that you stand in sharp disagreement with the rest of the developed world.

Neal Katyal: Lead Counsel for Hamdan

2007-04-16T21:57:00.000-04:00

This evening, ACS along with SALSA, welcomed Neal Katyal to discuss the Supreme Courts’ 2006 decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Prof. Katyal was not only the lead counsel in Hamdan, he was co-counsel in Bush v. Gore, he clerked for Justice Breyer and Judge Calabresi, he served as National Security Adviser in the U.S. Justice Department, and he is currently the John Carroll Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center.

Prof. Katyal first spoke about how he became involved in the case. He noted that as part of his job at the Justice Department and in his academic work, he has argued for a strong “Unitary Executive.” He distinguished this from the view of President Bush’s Administration which believes that when Congress has passed a law, through secret memos, the President can ignore that law when he feels that it unconstitutionally inhibits his power as Commander and Chief. For him, Hamdan is all about rejecting this view. “Congress calls the shots, not the President.” He cannot undo laws and treaties when he disagrees with them. There is some limited authority of the president in time of emergency, but this rarely happens in real life (only to Jack Bauer). There is some “residual emergency power” reserved by the President, but the question is how much and when—and the President’s answer has been as much as he wants and whenever.

In November of 2001, the President issued a military trial order and Katyal’s first impression was that it had to be a joke. The President was saying that he was going to set up a new trial system. He would define the offenses, the procedural rules, the rights (none), and the Federal Courts could not review it. Even as a person who favored a strong presidency, Katyal felt this went too far. The Administration argued that these trials where necessary and needed right away and there was no time to go to Congress. What if Osama bin Laden was caught before Congress acted? (He noted that Congress had passed by this time the Authorization for Use of Military Force and the Patriot Act).

It was for these reasons that Katyal began searching for a test case to challenge the President’s order. Charlie Swift (LCDR U.S. Navy) recommended Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who was the captured driver of bin Laden. Hamdan agreed to be represented by Katyal and Swift, and his case was filed. They argued that the trials violated the separation of powers, the Uniform Code of Military Justice ("UCMJ") which says how to conduct trials, and the Geneva Convention. The District Court agreed that this trial violated the separation of powers because it did not follow the UCMJ—specifically because Hamdan was kicked out of his own criminal trial. This apparently has not been allowed since the Star Chamber in England. At the D.C. Circuit they lost on appeal unanimously. Judge Williams, in his concurrence, did give some hope in rejecting the District Court’s decision that Common Article III of the Geneva Convention did not apply. Common Article III says that in all conflicts, the rights indispensable to all civilized people must be granted, but the Administration argued the since al-Qaeda did not sign the convention they do not get this protection. Katyal response was, “Whales didn’t sign the Whaling Convention.”

The Supreme Court granted cert, but Congress passed a bill to strip the case off of the Court’s docket. There was, however, an argument that the bill could be read to “grandfather” in Hamdan’s appeal. On 29 June 29th, 2006 the Court sided with Hamdan on all arguments. Katyal first impression upon leaving the court house was that the Court in a time of armed conflict told the President “No.” This guy with no financial means, who was accused of conspiring with one of this nation's worst enemies in its history, sued the President of the United States in the highest court in this land, and won. This is unique in this world. In many places, Hamdan would have been shot for doing this. Katyal quoted then Judge Roberts: “If the little guy’s argument is right, he wins.”

He then spoke about the Military Commissions Act (“MCA”) and his amazement that it was proposed by the President and passed by Congress in only three weeks. He believes it passed so fast because “it literally only effects people who cannot vote.” It only applies to green card holders and other non-citizens. American citizens, he said, “get the Cadillac of justice,” but if you are not a citizen “you get the beat up Chevy version of justice.” The first time Katyal met Hamdan, Hamdan asked Katyal why he was representing him when his last client was the Vice-President? Katyal thought of his parents, who came to the U.S. from India because of its commitment to equality and fairness. The MCA was violating this vision of America. Equal Protection of the laws under the 14th Amendment says “all persons” not “citizens.” This was done to overrule Dread Scott which limited constitutional rights to citizens only. Under the MCA, a separate trial system for foreigners has been set up, and it says that they only get a limited set of rights, while we get everything. That is why Katyal believes it is “doomed to fail.”

After the decision was handed down, the President and others in the Administration said that this would be a chance to paint Democrats as soft on the war on terror. Katyal expressed his shock that this was the President’s response. The first thing the President ever does is take an oath of office in which he swears to uphold the Constitution. The Supreme Court of the United States had just told the President that he violated the Constitution. The President, however, looked for the political gain that could be made from the decision. Since the war on terror has begun, no one has been brought to trial, and for Katyal “that is not a way to run a justice system.”

Katyal last spoke of a quote that was sent to him after the decision came out. It was the words written by Justice Rutledge in his dissent in the 1946 Supreme Court decision Yamashita v. Styer:

More is at stake than General Yamashita's fate. There could be no possible sympathy for him if he is guilty of the atrocities for which his death is sought. But there can be and should be justice administered according to law. In this stage of war's aftermath it is too early for Lincoln's great spirit, best lighted in the second inaugural, to have wide hold for the treatment of foes. It is not too early, it is never too early, for the nation steadfastly to follow its great constitutional traditions, none older or more universally protective against unbridled power than due process of law in the trial and punishment of men, that is, of all men, whether citizens, aliens, alien enemies or enemy belligerents. It can become too late.

This long-held attachment marks the great divide between our enemies and ourselves. Theirs was a philosophy of universal force. Ours is one of universal law, albeit imperfectly made flesh of our system and so dwelling among us. Every departure weakens the tradition, whether it touches the high or the low, the powerful or the weak, the triumphant or the conquered.

The person who sent it was not quoting the case. Rather, it was from a chapter on Rutledge written by one of the Justice’s former law clerks. That clerk, now Justice John Paul Stevens, made good on his boss’s promise fifty years later.

A good discussion followed Katyal’s remarks as well as a “delightful” reception. We would like to thank Professor Katyal for speaking with us this evening. We would also like to express thanks to Dechert LLP, Paul Weiss, Perkins Coie, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, and Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP for their generous support which made the evening possible.

Gone Are the Brethren

2007-04-07T23:57:00.000-04:00

In my* 3½ semesters in law school, I’ve noticed a funny expression in old Supreme Court opinions. Justices would often use the phrase “my brethren” to refer to their fellow justices.

As one might expect, the appointment of a woman to the Supreme Court marked the end of this practice. A Westlaw search of the phrase “my brethren” in Supreme Court opinions yielded some 284 Supreme Court cases, from 1795 to 1981, in which the phrase appeared. The last time “my brethren” was used to refer to fellow justices was in Justice Rehnquist’s dissent from a denial of certiorari in Jeffries v. Barksdale, 453 U.S. 914 (1981). The Jeffries dissent was handed down on June 29, 1981; President Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’Connor on July 7, 1981.

^* Although I have been a Columbia ACS freerider for some time now, this is my first post on this eminent blog. Thank you to outgoing media chair Andy Bradley for allowing me to share this nugget of wisdom with the Columbia ACS community. Like what you read? There’s more of this on Sauntering, the blog that Andy and I run.

Summer Funding Restrictions Courtesy the Catholic Church

2007-04-06T20:00:00.000-04:00

A very distressing story has been developing at Georgetown University Law Center over the past week or so. Like many other law schools, Georgetown does not guarantee summer funding for public interest work by 1L students, but has a competitive process for awarding some grants to some students led by its Equal Justice Foundation (similar to Columbia’s PILF). Some of the funds are directly raised by the student group, and some kicked in through the administration’s fundraising efforts. When a 1L student sought funding for work at Planned Parenthood, the student group selected her to receive funding, but Dean Alex Alenikoff vetoed that decision, saying (full story here: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/06/georgetown)

There are a number of highly troubling issues here. One basic one is that it seems pretty unfair to spring this policy decision on a student in the spring, when most employment decisions are made. (Though, presumably the Public Interest office was able to help the student in question receive outside funding.) It also seems to come completely and entirely out of the blue. Like many avowed pro-choice liberals, I applied to Georgetown Law, and strongly considered attending it. One of the reasons was that it actually is a place where liberal ideals of public service are actively fostered. The Law Center employs some top progressive legal thinkers, including Lawrence Gostin, David Vladeck and Chai Feldblum (and until his recent passing, Father Robert Drinan- former Congressman, Roman Catholic priest, and pro-choice). At no point would a student have any reason to think that their career options would be vetted by the “Jesuit heritage” of the school. I was actually just at Georgetown Law last week, where the school’s Outlaws group hosted a luncheon for law students lobbying against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. This school does not give the impression of one concerned with adhering to the Catholic Church’s teachings as much as supporting a new generation of lawyers in their pursuit of justice.

The second major concern is how far does this seemingly new “policy” go. If GULC prohibits its students from funding work in reproductive rights, will it prohibit funding of gay rights work as well? Though Alenikoff refers to abortion as part of the institutions “core identity”, abortion is mentioned fewer times in the bible than homosexuality is. Further, Georgetown hosts several outstanding clinical programs. Will the school force them to turn down all cases not in line with Catholic Church teachings? The school employs some very passionate pro-choice scholars- will they be limited in what they can say in the classroom? In their scholarship?

In the end, I can’t think that this decision would do anything to help Georgetown Law in the long-run. When career choices are effectively censored because of religious dogma, that censorship permeates the entire academic institution. The majority of Georgetown Law students, from my own informal but detailed knowledge, are pro-choice, and pro- a lot of other things the Catholic Church might disagree with. Georgetown Law’s reputation as a top law school has little to do with dogma, and a lot to do with its historical emphasis on public service. Actions like this may deprive Georgetown of dedicated, bright students with an eye on changing the world. Hopefully, they will be supported elsewhere.

SCOTUS Haiku with Professor Michael Dorf

2007-04-03T07:33:00.000-04:00

A few months back, we twisted Professor Dorf's arm until he agreed to generate a haiku or two in quick response to notable SCOTUS opinions. His first haiku concerns yesterday's Massachusetts v. EPA (.pdf link):

The Earth gets hotter.
Massachusetts can complain.
EPA comply.

Climate Change, Public Goods, and Standing

2007-04-02T18:57:00.000-04:00

DISCLAIMER: The following represents the uninformed reaction of a CLS 1L, utterly befuddled by constitutional law and lacking anything approaching the appropriate level of background knowledge or research. Although when has insufficient knowledge or research ever hindered anyone from posting something on the internet? So here we go.

     Climate change is a different kind of litigation. Legal scholars examined it through the lens of traditional causes of action (notably Professor Merrill’s Global Warming as Public Nuisance) and found it a problematic fit. The inability to project climate change into a conventional law suit derives primarily from the fact that a stable climate is not a private right that may be infringed upon. A stable climate is a public good.
     Economists define "public good," as anything with two main characteristics: public goods are nonrival in consumption and nonexcludable. The benefits of a stable climate are enjoyed by all of us simultaneously, though perhaps to varying degrees. A stable climate is nonexcludable in that those who pay for its maintenance cannot withhold the benefits of a preserved planet from those who shirk their contribution. The global climate is a public good, and the definitive characteristics of public goods are at odds with the traditional requirements for standing.
     Chief Justice Roberts rightly critiques any claim of the petitioners to conventional standing. The demand that a plaintiff’s injury be “particularized” and different in kind (as opposed to in degree) from others suffering due to the defendants’ conduct is clearly at odds with the global nature of climate change. The requirement of redressibility demands that the court be able to alleviate the injury suffered by the plaintiff through forcing the defendant to do something or pay some amount in damages. Any amelioration of climate change affected by an agency regulation on automobile emissions would be enjoyed by everyone world-wide. Certainly not a bad thing, but because the public good of climactic stability cannot be partitioned: the court cannot direct the benefits from reduced carbon dioxide emissions. The traditional requirements of standing cannot be neatly applied to an injury to a public good. This sends Justice Stevens upon a jurisprudential obstacle course in an attempt to draw standing from provisions of the Clean Air Act and case law dealing with procedural rights conferred by Congress. In that task, Stevens succeeds admirably, upon my reading at least.
     Chief Justice Roberts assuages the fears of environmentalists and rational actors alike by assuring us all that the political branches are an apt and appropriate forum for dealing with climate change. There are two practical problems with labeling climate change a “political question” and booting these petitioners out of court. First, environmental policy in general and climate change legislation in particular, suffers from an utter and acute failure of our political system. Presenting a classic problem of collective action, the beneficiaries of a stable climate are diffuse, unorganized, and susceptible to free-rider problems. Opponents of climate change regulation are, on the contrary, exceptionally well-organized, well-funded, and – until recently – highly motivated to fight regulatory change tooth and nail. In a very real sense, a Congress dependent upon campaign contributions is absolutely institutionally incompetent to deal with the problem of climate change in an independent and effective manner.
     While our adversarial judicial system may be equally ill-suited to adjudicate threats to public goods, the court is armed with an immutable weapon. The Supreme Court may, as it did yesterday, send a clear message to the “political branches” and their delegates in administrative agencies. The Court can say, in effect: “while we cannot complete the political tasks before you, we can, we must, and we do demand that you face common challenges rather than obfuscate them.” If the EPA, in response to the Court’s decision, or Congress, to supersede independent agency action pursuant to the decision, effectively addresses climate change, then the court will have redressed to the petitioners’ injuries. That is not a dismissive “political question” opinion. That is one co-equal branch checking another. That is the judiciary providing relief to the injured party before it. Though it faces an unfamiliar type of problem, that is the judiciary resolving a controversy. That is the role of the Court.

Environmental Roll Call in Massachusetts vs. EPA?

2007-04-02T15:57:00.000-04:00

Nearly half the states joined the landmark Massachusetts v. EPA (.pdf link), decided today by the Supreme Court.

The plaintiff side featured Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

Amici curiae supporting the EPA were Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Texas, and Utah.

PROPERTY RIGHTS POST-KELO

2007-04-02T12:22:00.000-04:00

     Today, the Environmental Law Society, ACS, and Federalist Society welcomed John Echeverria of the Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute, and Timothy Sandefur, of the Pacific Legal Foundation, to discuss the implications of the Supreme Court's 2005 decision in Kelo v. New London. The event began with Professor Tom Merrill offering a broad legal, political, and historical explication of the tension between property rights and government management of land use.
     Mr. Echeverria spoke first, beginning with a flat-out condemnation of the "regulatory takings agenda." He characterized this agenda as an effort to sabotage the workings of government in responsible management of land. The Takings Clause, Mr. Echeverria argues, should be applied narrowly to actual takings and invasions of property, citing an opinion written by Justice Scalia asserting such an interpretation. Mr. Echeverria traced the development of the "regulatory takings agenda" to the academic work of Richard Epstein, however declared it a "flop" given consistent Supreme Court holdings restricting the doctrine of regulatory takings to those situations in which regulation effectively constitutes an actual taking of the property. Turning to considerations of public policy, about half of the states have some sort of regulatory takings legislation. Aside from a referendum in Oregon (Measure 37), which Mr. Echeverria chalks up to electoral manipulation, the state policies are largely symbolic. Analyzing the slate of over 20 referendums at issue in the 2004 election, Mr. Echeverria optimistically points out that those propositions focused narrowly on eminent domain were successful, while those confounding that issue with regulatory takings failed. Concluding with an observation on the experience in Oregon, Mr. Echeverria notes that the regulatory takings argument for land-owner compensation fails because the regulation applies to all in the community, and therefore protects a complaining land-owner while inhibiting them. Therefore, those who seek compensation under the theory of regulatory takings really seek an individual exception to a mutually beneficial land-use regulation.
     Mr. Sandefur began his comments with a rejection of Mr. Echeverria's presentation and a plug for his recent book. Beginning at the beginning, Mr. Sandefur parsed the language of the 5th Amendment and sought to demonstrate the blurry line between physical takings and an outright and absolute restriction of the uses of a given property. Mr. Sandefur equated the post-Kelo world with Hobbes' nasty and brutish state of nature. The theories of John Locke informed the founders' thinking, and as such, the government is limited by theories of natural rights: the government cannot wrongfully abridge one's natural property right. Mr. Sandefur argued that "liberty trumps democracy," and that the Constitution created a government that should serve as a "bank guard" and restricted that guard from robbing the bank himself.
Attacking the tenets of progressive political thought, Mr. Sandefur generally criticized progressives' willingness to submit to majority views on the meaning rights. Mr. Sandefur went on to criticize the "rational basis" standard of review as a crippling and irrational judicial standard as the product of the progressive view. Coming around to the effects of Kelo, Mr. Sandefur points out that eminent domain reform has no natural constituency, while regulatory takings reform does have strong and financially-capable support. Mr. Sandefur characterized the argument against regulatory takings as "we can't afford it, so we should get it for free." He noted that forcing the government to pay for regulatory takings would compel more rational policy-making by forcing the government to bear the costs of their choices. Mr. Sandefur ended with his opening question: "what is a legitimate government interest." In crescendo, he asks: "If we don't know what a legitimate government interest is, what business do we have determining what a rational basis for one is?"
     Compelling argument throughout the hour, the issue of regulatory takings taps into deep philosophical questions about the purpose and powers of the federal government. The ACS, ELS, and FedSoc would like to thank both Mr. Echeverria and Mr. Sandefur for their dynamic, adversarial, entertaining, and genuinely thought-provoking comments.

Candidate Statement: Laird Nelson

2007-03-31T12:30:00.000-04:00

Position: Vice President

As a participant this year in the ACS moot court competition and member of the 1L Planning Committee, I’ve had a chance to appreciate ACS and the role it plays here at CLS. Not only do I know more about the NSA and the Espionage Act then I ever imagined I would as a 1L, but I’ve also seen an amazing selection of speakers on a range of issues from religious freedom to the gossip on the 9th Circuit. As Vice President next year, I think I can help keep this trend going.

In particular, I’d like to focus on getting the membership active and encouraging people, in addition to simply attending our events, to become members and bring their own contributions to the table. The proud winner of the chocolate prize for recruiting 3 new members while tabling, I realize this isn’t an easy task, but there are definitely some options we can pursue – in addition to drafting our friends/roommates/strangers walking past. More quizzo nights, happy hours, and social events in general would go a long way to letting people know what ACS is actually about and how they can get involved. In addition, the 1L moot court program is a great way to bring ACS to the forefront, and I’d like to focus on encouraging all the 1Ls to join and take part in our events. Also to this end, ensuring that we schedule events that are related to the 1L curriculum, like Professor Cole’s recent lecture, would be a positive development. And everyone, not just 1Ls, would be attracted by an even greater expansion of our efforts at co-sponsoring events and bringing in a wide variety of speakers from academia, government, and the legal world to demonstrate the breadth of ACS’ commitment to the intersection of law and progressive policy.

Although I haven’t done a lot of work on the logistical side of ACS, in the past I’ve held leadership roles in a number of organizations, including running an inner-city tutoring program in Baltimore as an undergraduate. In this role I managed outreach events to encourage students to volunteer, planned activities during freshmen orientation to attract incoming students, and generally assisted with the project’s organizational aspects. In sum, I think my skills are a great match for the Vice President position, and I’d love to help make sure that next year ACS is an even more dynamic organization than it has been in the past.

Candidate Statement: Jake Honigman

2007-03-31T12:27:00.000-04:00

Position: President

ACS, as I see it, serves two main purposes: 1) to provide our school at large with high quality programming on Constitution-related subject matter (speaker events, debates with the Federalist Society and whomever else wants some, blog); and 2) to run events that foster and strengthen a community of students who share a certain basic vision of the Constitution and the country (Quizzo, drinking heavily and trashing board members' apartments). This past year, I have run and helped with speaker events (one of which had Koronet's Pizza), DJed a party, and recovered the ACS banner when NYU stole it. Through it all, I have become attached to the organization. Next year I hope to serve it, and you, faithfully. Thank you for your vote.