Come to this year's first meeting of ACLU at HLS at 7:00 pm, Wednesday September 24, 2008. ACLU at HLS is affiliated with the Massachusetts ACLU and works with both the state and national offices of the American Civil Liberties Union to sponsor speakers and events at HLS, and to promote the civil liberties and rights of Americans in any way we can. This is a chance to meet current members, find out more about our organization, and learn how you can get involved. Location to be determined, food will be served.
Lynne Stewart, currently free while she appeals her October 2006 conviction for providing material support to terrorists in connection with her defense of Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind cleric serving life in prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, visited us to speak about her experience in that case and her civil rights work generally.
That video can be seen here.
The video shown at the beginning of Lynne's presentation can be seen here.
The following day we hosted an excellent panel discussing the limits of aggressive advocacy. Jim Baker from KSG, Laura Rotolo from ACLU-Mass, and Peter Murray from HLS, joined us to talk about professional responsibility in the Post-9/11 Era. James Flug from HLS and KSG moderated.
You can view streaming video of that evening's discussion here.
February 21, 2007
Ann Beeson, from the National ACLU office gave a talk about utilizing International Legal Standards in cases within the United States. Audio of that talk can be heard here.
November 14th
Professor Marty Lederman, visiting at Georgetown University, will be the guest of honor at a brown bag lunch on Tuesday, November 14th. The topic of conversation will be post-Hamdan legislation and pressing issues in detainee treatment.
The event will begin at noon, location TBA.
Reva Siegel, Nicholas deBelleville Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale Law School is a specialist in constitutional law and antidiscrimination law. She will be giving a talk the week of November 13. Details are still to come, but a dinner is likely to follow. Check back for updates.
The Threat to Free Speech in the Investment Business - a Talk with David Rocker
"If a man can be judged by the enemies he makes, short seller David Rocker might well be considered a hero...." Absolute Return Cover Story, March 30, 2006
David Rocker, a hedge fund short seller, is coming to HLS to discuss free speech issues in the capital markets and investment business. Short sellers, who face multiple regulations on their investing activities, often act as a voice of reason and counterbalance an overly-optimistic market where corporate executives, public relations firms, the media and most "independent" analysts have incentives to focus on the positive while minimizing the negative. Long before most research analysts downgraded the shares and before the SEC took action against executives for outright fraud, short sellers identified overvaluation or improprieties at companies including AOL, AremisSoft, Boston Chicken, Conseco, Enron, KrispyKreme, Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products, Overstock, and Tyco among a host of others. Many of these companies were ultimately prosecuted by the SEC, but not before countless investors lost their shirts. Should short sellers be allowed to share with the rest of us what they suspect or know, or is a short seller's interest in seeing a stock price fall so great that they should have their free speech right stymied? Should the interest of a short seller be viewed any differently than those who purchase a stock long and then proceed to tout why it is such a great investment?