Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent
Chicago Lawyers Chapter
Speakers:
- Harvey Silverglate, author, Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent
- Steven M. Biskupic, Former United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin
- Arthur Gollwitzer, Michael Best & Friedrich (Introduction)
Speakers:
- Harvey Silverglate, author, Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent
- Steven M. Biskupic, Former United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin
- Arthur Gollwitzer, Michael Best & Friedrich (Introduction)
The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, even for the most seemingly innocuous behavior.
The volume of federal crimes in recent decades has increased well beyond the statute books and into the morass of the Code of Federal Regulations, handing federal prosecutors an additional trove of vague and exceedingly complex and technical prohibitions to stick on their hapless targets. The dangers spelled out in Three Felonies a Day do not apply solely to "white collar criminals," state and local politicians, and professionals. No social class or profession is safe from this troubling form of social control by the executive branch, and nothing less than the integrity of our constitutional democracy hangs in the balance.
In September 2009, Harvey Silverglate published Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (Encounter Books). Mr. Silverglate describes how the United States Department of Justice targets all segments of civil society by means of abusive prosecutions based upon unacceptably vague federal criminal statutes and regulations. The book chronicles the federal prosecutions of members of various professions, including doctors, lawyers, public officials, scholars, artists, journalists, accountants and accounting firms, and pharmaceutical industry companies and representatives.
About the speakers:
HARVEY SILVERGLATE, counsel to the Boston law firm of Zalkind, Rodriguez, Lunt & Duncan LLP, specializes in criminal defense, civil liberties, and academic freedom and student rights law. He is a long-time member of the American Civil Liberties Union and has served the Massachusetts state affiliate as a member of its Board of Directors for some three decades, serving two terms in the 1980s as its Board president. Silverglate is co-founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Inc. (F.I.R.E.), a non-profit, tax-exempt foundation dedicated to preserving and enlarging academic freedom, due process, freedom of speech, and freedom of conscience on American college campuses. Mr. Silverglate has lectured at dozens of colleges and universities throughout the country and has appeared on local and national radio and television programs discussing campus freedom issues, as well as civil liberties issues in other areas such as the enforcement of the criminal law.
ARTHUR GOLLWITZER is a partner in the White Collar Criminal Defense and Corporate Investigations Group in the Chicago office of Michael Best & Friedrich. Mr. Gollwitzer also is a member of the firm's Intellectual Property Litigation Practice Group. Prior to joining Michael Best, Mr. Gollwitzer served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he was the lead prosecutor in criminal trials, including federal intellectual property crimes, and argued federal criminal appeals. Mr. Gollwitzer combines trial and appellate experience gained as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York with fifteen years of experience, including jury trials and appeals, handling patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret litigation.
Comments by
Steven M. Biskupic
Former United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, offering his perspective based on more than twenty years service as a federal prosecutor and his work as a defense attorney.
11:30 check-in
12 noon lunch and discussion
Cost: $30 (students $10)
RSVP to chicagofederalistsociety@yahoo.com.