THE ROBERTS COURT: ONE YEAR OUT — EXPERTS REFLECT
Panel discussion at The New School moderated by Bob Kerrey
Wednesday, September 27 at 7:30 p.m.
Has the replacement of William H. Rehnquist and Sandra Day O’Connor with John Roberts and Samuel Alito changed the direction of the Supreme Court? On Wednesday, September 27 at 7:30 p.m. The Wolfson Center for National Affairs at The New School will present The Roberts Court: One Year Out featuring a panel of experts who will examine this issue and grapple with the question of what the specific power and the appropriate role of the court are and ought to be. The panel will be moderated by Bob Kerrey, president of The New School and former U.S. Senator, and takes place at The New School’s Theresa Lang Center, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor. The panel will be webcast.
Admission is $8 for the general public, and free to students and faculty of any school, as well as New School alumni, with ID. In-person purchases can be made at The New School Box Office at 66 West 12th Street, Monday—Friday, 1–7 p.m. Advance reservations: 212.229.5488 or email.
“The Supreme Court directly affects the hot-buttons of today: abortion, separation of church and state, gay rights, executive power post 9/11,” said Sondra Farganis, Director of the Rose & Erwin Wolfson Center for
National Affairs, which was established at The New School in 1986 to encourage examination and debate of issues that concern citizens of a democracy. “These are huge questions, without easy answers. Some of the
country’s leading voices on constitutional issues will discuss the ramifications of the court dealing with these issues.”
Panelists:
- Joan Biskupic is author of Sandra Day O’Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice, published by HarperCollins in 2005. She has covered the Supreme Court since 1989. Before joining USA TODAY in June 2000, she was the Supreme Court reporter for the Washington Post (1992-2000) and legal affairs writer for Congressional Quarterly (1989-1992). Biskupic holds a law degree from Georgetown University. She is the author of several legal reference books, including Congressional Quarterly’s two-volume encyclopedia on the Supreme Court (3rd Ed., 1997, with co-author Elder Witt). She won the 1991 Everett McKinley Dirksen award for distinguished reporting of Congress for her coverage of the Clarence Thomas nomination. She is a regular panelist on PBS’s Washington Week.
- Jeffrey Rosen is author of The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious Age, legal affairs editor of The New Republic, and a professor of law at George Washington University. He is the author of The Most Democratic Branch, The Naked Crowd, and The Unwanted Gaze. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, summa cum laude; Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School. His essays and commentaries have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, on National Public Radio, and in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer. The L.A. Times called him “the nation’s most widely read and influential legal commentator.”
- Sanford Levinson is author of Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It), published by Oxford U. Press in 2006, and is Garwood Centennial Professor, University of Texas School of Law. He is currently visiting the Harvard and Yale law schools.
- Stephen Wermiel is adjunct professor and associate director, Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project American University Washington College of Law. He currently teaches constitutional law and seminars on the Supreme Court and on education and the Constitution. From 1979 to 1991, he was the Supreme Court correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. From 1972 to 1979, he was a reporter for The Boston Globe, and covered stories in Boston before moving to the Globe Washington Bureau in 1974. Since 1991, he has been teaching law, first as a fellow at William and Mary Law School, then at Georgia State University Law School in Atlanta from 1992 to 1997, and now at American. As administrator of the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project, he supervises 60 law students who teach constitutional law in the D.C. public high schools for a year. He is currently writing a biography of the late Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr.
Located in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village, The New School is a comprehensive university composed of eight distinct schools. When The New School was founded in 1919, its mission was to create a place where global peace and justice were more than theoretical ideals. New School students participate in programs to this day that strive for academic excellence, technical mastery, and engaged world citizenship.