A SUPREME COURT PREVIEW: CHANGING COURT, NEW CONTROVERSY
MONDAY, September 28, 2009, 6:30 p.m.
$9 members, $15 non-members, $7 students and teachers.
Reservations Required. Please call 215.409.6700 or order online.
Annenberg Center for Education and Outreach
F.M. Kirby Auditorium
National Constitution Center
Independence Mall
525 Arch Street
Philadelphia, PA
Each new term of the Supreme Court brings fresh controversy to the Justices, and that pattern will be followed when the Justices return this Fall from a summer recess. Already, the Court has agreed to resolve nearly four-dozen significant legal disputes. The Court that reassembles will itself be "new;" it will likely be joined by Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic Justice and the third woman to sit on the Court. The National Constitution Center presents a discussion of the changing Court, and the major disputes already awaiting the Court's attention when it reconvenes on the first Monday in October with Paul D. Clement, John Payton and Lyle Denniston.
Cases on the docket so far include the future of campaign finance regulation, the constitutionality of life prison terms for juveniles who commit crimes, the authority of government to accept religious monuments in public parks, a new look at police officers' duty to provide "Miranda warnings" to suspects and a test of the government's power to monitor business scandals like the one that brought down Enron Corporation. This program is being presented as part of the Knight Constitutional Conversations series.
Paul D. Clement is a partner at King & Spalding. Clement served as the 43rd Solicitor General of the United States and his more than seven years of service in the Office of Solicitor General is the longest period of continuous service in the Office by a Solicitor General since the Nineteenth Century. He has argued 49 cases before the United States Supreme Court, including Rumsfeld v. Padilla. Clement clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Mr. Clement went on to serve as Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights.
John Payton is President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund. While a partner at the Washington firm of Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Dorr, Payton was the lead counsel for the University of Michigan in successfully defending before the Supreme Court the use of race in the admissions process at its undergraduate college and at its law school. He is a member of the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates, and a former Corporation Counsel of the District of Columbia. Payton has taught at Harvard Law School, the Georgetown Law Center and Howard University Law School. He is a member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. In addition, he is a Master in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court.
The program will be moderated by Lyle Denniston. Now in his 61st year as a journalist, Denniston has reported on the Supreme Court for 51 years and covered one fourth of the Justices ever to sit on the Supreme Court bench. He is currently covering the Court for SCOTUSblog, an online clearing house of information about the Supreme Court’s work. He is the author of The Reporter and The Law: Techniques of Covering the Courts (Columbia University Press, 1992) and contributed two chapters to 100 Americans Making Constitutional History (CQ Press, 2004).
The Knight Constitutional Conversation series has been generously underwritten by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes excellence in journalism worldwide and invests in the vitality of the U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Knight Foundation focuses on projects with the potential to create transformational change. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.
Parking for this event is available for $7.00 at the National Constitution Center garage located at the rear of the building on Race Street between 5th and 6th Streets. Parking availability is subject to change, so please call the Constitution Center on the day of the program or check our web site for more information. Please also see our directions by public transportation.
For reservations please call 215.409.6700 or order online. Programs at the National Constitution Center begin promptly and latecomers may not be admitted to the program. Please note that this program is subject to change.
Related Links:
SCOTUSblog
