What’s Right (and Wrong) with the Confirmation Process . . . And Elena Kagan

New York City Lawyers Chapter

Speakers:

• M. Edward Whelan, III, President, Ethics and Public Policy Center
• Barry Friedman, Vice Dean and Jacob D. Fuchsberg Professor of Law, New York University School of Law and Author, The Will of the People: How Public Opinion has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009)
• AnneMarie P. McAvoy, Commentator for various media outlets, including Fox News, and Adjunct Professor at Fordham Law School (Moderator)

Speakers:

• M. Edward Whelan, III, President, Ethics and Public Policy Center
• Barry Friedman, Vice Dean and Jacob D. Fuchsberg Professor of Law, New York University School of Law and Author, The Will of the People: How Public Opinion has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009)
• AnneMarie P. McAvoy, Commentator for various media outlets, including Fox News, and Adjunct Professor at Fordham Law School (Moderator)

ANNEMARIE P. McAVOY
Ms. McAvoy is an attorney, a former federal prosecutor and former in-house counsel for financial institutions. She specializes in Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing issues. She is an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School and heads Fordham's Adjunct Faculty Committee. Ms. McAvoy has been politically active as well, including having run for the position of Comptroller of the City of New York as Rudy Giuliani's running mate. She also was on John McCain's NY Steering Committee and was Co-Chair of NY Women for McCain during his most recent presidential bid.

She obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from St. John's University in 1984, where she graduated summa cum laude as valedictorian and was NYS debate champion. Ms. McAvoy received a Juris Doctor degree from Fordham Law School in 1987 where she participated as a member of its National Moot Court team.

Ms. McAvoy began practicing law as a litigation associate at Mudge Rose Guthrie & Ferdon. After that she became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the EDNY's Civil and Criminal Divisions, where she received awards from both the U.S. Customs Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She practiced in US District Court, the US Court of Appeals for the 2d Circuit, Surrogate's Court and US Bankruptcy Court. Civil cases she handled included employment discrimination, forfeitures, medical malpractice, suits brought against government employees, Social Security disability, personal injury and tax cases. The criminal matters she handled included money laundering, bank robbery, mail fraud, illegal weapons sales, insurance fraud, credit card fraud, Food Stamp fraud, counterfeiting and narcotics violations.

After leaving the US Attorney's Office, Ms. McAvoy became Senior Attorney at Morgan Stanley, where she was in charge of anti-money laundering prevention efforts and the reporting of suspicious activity. She also handled insider trading matters, fraud issues, general securities litigation and criminal matters. She received an award from the U.S. Secret Service for her work and as a member of the Securities Industry Ad Hoc Bank Secrecy Act Group she assisted the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board in drafting suspicious activity regulations relating to the securities industry.

Ms. McAvoy thereafter joined Citigroup, where she was Senior Legal Counsel for Citigroup Corporate Security and Investigative Services, providing legal advice on fraud issues, corporate security, investigations and anti-money laundering compliance for Citigroup's businesses, including Citibank, Travelers Insurance, Salomon Smith Barney and Primerica Financial Services.

Since 2000 Ms. McAvoy has been doing private consulting work for the financial industry. She has conducted extensive training for banks, securities firms, the NASD and law enforcement. She has also participated in internal corporate investigations and look-backs at financial institutions, has helped institutions develop appropriate policies and procedures and has acted as an expert consulting witness for law firms. She also continues to teach at Fordham Law School as an adjunct professor and remains active in politics.

M. Edward Whelan III

M. Edward Whelan III is the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He directs EPPC's program on The Constitution, the Courts, and the Culture. His areas of expertise include constitutional law and the judicial confirmation process. As a contributor to National Review Online's Bench Memos blog on judicial nominations and constitutional law, he was a leading commentator on the nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Whelan, a lawyer and a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, has served in positions of responsibility in all three branches of the federal government. From just before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, until joining EPPC in 2004, Mr. Whelan was the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. In that capacity, he advised the White House Counsel's Office, the Attorney General and other senior DOJ officials, and Departments and agencies throughout the executive branch on difficult and sensitive legal questions. Mr. Whelan previously served on Capitol Hill as General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. In addition to clerking for Justice Scalia, he was a law clerk to Judge J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Mr. Whelan also previously worked as Senior Vice President and Counselor to the General Counsel for Verizon Corp. and as a lawyer in private practice.

In 1981 Mr. Whelan graduated with honors from Harvard College and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He received his J.D. magna cum laude in 1985 from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Board of Editors of the Harvard Law Review.


Barry Friedman

Barry Friedman is the Vice Dean and Jacob D. Fuchsberg Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. He has taught, written and litigated about the Constitution for twenty-five years.

Throughout his career, Friedman has had one foot in the academy and one foot in the world of law and legal practice. Following a clerkship with Judge Phyllis Kravitch on the Eleventh Circuit, Friedman taught for a year at the University of Alabama, where he also engaged in death penalty and prisoner litigation. He then moved to practice at Davis, Polk & Wardwell in Washington, DC, while teaching as an adjunct at Georgetown University Law Center. In 1986, Friedman joined the faculty of Vanderbilt University School of Law, where he taught until moving to New York in 1999. In the last twenty years, Friedman has represented pro bono and private clients at every level of the state and federal courts. His cases have dealt with abortion rights, free speech, interstate commerce and state authority.

He has published over fifty academic articles in some of the country's leading journals. Along with Professor Steven Burbank he co-edited Judicial Independence: An Interdisciplinary Approach. He also contributes regularly to the mainstream media, with articles or opinion pieces in The New Republic, The New York Times, The American Lawyer, and Forbes.com, among others. The Will of the People is his first book.

Friedman was the affiliate president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, and on the board of the State and Local Legal Center; he also served on the board and executive committee of the American Judicature Society for many years. He presently serves as the Vice Dean of NYU Law School, and co-director of the Furman Academic Scholars program, which prepares students for a career in the legal academy.

Reception 6:00 P.M.
Program 7:00 P.M.

Refreshments will be served.
The event is free of charge and open to the public.
No reservations are required.
For more information, telephone Mark Schuman at (212) 578-9043 or e-mail [email protected].