The Supreme Court’s Campaign Finance Decision in Citizen’s United: Victory for Free Speech or Defeat for Good Government?

Connecticut Lawyers Chapter

Speakers:

  • Ira Glasser, Executive Director, ACLU (1978-2001)
  • Allan Taylor, local attorney
  • Prof. David Yalof, University of Connecticut (Moderator)

Speakers:

  • Ira Glasser, Executive Director, ACLU (1978-2001)
  • Allan Taylor, local attorney
  • Prof. David Yalof, University of Connecticut (Moderator)

Ira Glasser served as Executive Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union (1970-78) and the American Civil Liberties Union (1978-2001).  He is a current and founding member of the Board of Directors of the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, currently serves as President of the Board of Directors of the Drug Policy Alliance and on the Board of Advisors of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics.  He has appeared on numerous television and radio shows, spoken extensively in a wide range of public forums and his commentary, analysis and advocacy has been published in a wide variety of popular and professional journals.  He is the co-author of Doing Good: The Limits of Benevolence (1978) and the author of Visions of Liberty: The Bill of Rights For All Americans (1991).  He is also the recipient of numerous awards, including the Martin Luther King, Jr. Award (New York Association of Black School Supervisors, 1971); the Silver Gavel Award (American Bar Association, 1972); the Malcolm, Martin, Mandela Award (Greater Baptist Trinity Church, 1993); the Justice in Action Award (Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, 1999); and a variety of civil liberties awards, most recently the Lifetime Achievement Award (Massachusetts Civil Liberties Union, 2003).  A new Racial Justice Fellows Program has been established by the American Civil Liberties Union in his name. 

Allan Taylor, a former law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, represents clients at the trial and appellate level on matters involving complex questions of law, with an emphasis on issues of insurance coverage and regulated industries. He has briefed and argued appeals in the First, Second, Eleventh and D.C. Circuits as well as in state appellate courts in Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island. Mr. Taylor's ability to find answers to complex issues has also been recognized in the public sector, where he is currently chair of the Connecticut State Board of Education and is the 2010 president-elect of the National Association of State Boards of Education. He has in the past chaired committees to rewrite the charter and downtown zoning code for the city of Hartford.  Allan also served as judicial clerk to Judge J. Skelly Wright, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1975-76).  Most recently he was named as a top appellate litigator in the Super Lawyers Corporate Counsel Edition (2010).

David Yalof is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut, where he specializes in constitutional law, judicial politics and executive branch politics.  He is a 1984 graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, and received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.  He is widely published.  Books include Pursuit of Justices: Presidential Politics and the Selection of Supreme Court Nominees (1999), the winner of that year's American Political Science Association's Richard E. Neustadt Prize for the Best Book on the Presidency; The First Amendment and the Media in the Court of Public Opinion (2002) with Kenneth Dautrich; Constitutional Law: Civil Liberty and Individual Rights, 6th Edition (2007) with William Cohen and David Danelski; American Government: Historical, Popular and Global Perspectives (2008) with Kenneth Dautrich; and The Future of the First Amendment: The Digital Media, Civic Education and Free Expression Rights in America's High Schools (2008) with Kenneth Dautrich and Mark Hugo Lopez.

Directions: http://www.shipmangoodwin.com/offices/Office.aspx?office=1.  

Free and open to the public
Lunch will be available if desired ($5 charge for non-students)

RSVP: Brian Freeman, (860) 275-8310, [email protected].

Co-sponsored with The American Constitution Society.