I am pleased to announced that I will be moderating the following panel during Netroots Nation 2008:
The Next President and the Law
A new Democratic president will take office on January 20, 2009, facing a federal judiciary stacked with Republican appointees in 20 of the last 28 years, and a Department of Justice that has been more tied to the President’s policy interests than the impartial enforcement of law. What should the next president do with the courts? What should the priorities be for his attorney general? What legislative initiatives are needed to restore fair access to the courts?
I cannot say enough about how thrilled I am as to who our panelists are:
- John Dean: Counsel to the President of the United States in July 1970 at age thirty-one, John Dean was Chief Minority Counsel to the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives, the Associate Director of the National Commission on the Reform of Federal Criminal Law, and Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States. He served as Richard Nixon's White House lawyer for a thousand days, and was the first administration official to accuse Nixon of direct involvement with Watergate and the resulting cover-up.
In 2001 he published The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment that Redefined the Supreme Court; in early 2004, Warren G. Harding, followed by a trilogy on the travesty of this Administration: Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush; Conservatives Without Conscience; and his latest, Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches. He regularly writes a column for Findlaw.
- Cass Sunstein: One of America's foremost legal scholars, Cass Sunstein is a professor at Harvard Law School and a visiting professor at The University of Chicago Law School, and serves as an occasional, informal advisor to Obama for America. Previously, Cass clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court, and served as an attorney-advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department. Sunstein is also a leading public intellectual, frequently providing expert testimony to Congress, and has worked on constitutional and law reform issues abroad as legal adviser for many nations, including Ukraine, Poland, China, South Africa, and Russia.
Sunstein is author or co-author of more than 15 books and hundreds of scholarly articles, and is the most cited law professor on any law faculty in the United States. His books include The Second Bill of Rights: FDR'S Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More than Ever and Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts are Wrong for America.
- Michael Waldman: Michael is the executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School. The Brennan Center is a non-partisan public policy and law institute that focuses on fundamental issues of democracy and justice, whose work ranges from voting rights to redistricting reform, from access to the courts to presidential power in the fight against terrorism. It's part think tank, part public interest law firm, part advocacy group, and they are making a big difference in our democracy.
Before that, Michael Waldman was Director of Speechwriting for President Bill Clinton from 1995-1999, serving as Assistant to the President. He was responsible for writing or editing nearly 2,000 speeches, including four State of the Union speeches and two Inaugural Addresses. Previously, he was Special Assistant to the President for Policy Coordination (1993-1995). Prior to his government service, Mr. Waldman was the director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch, then the capital's largest consumer lobbying office.
To say I'm humbled to be moderating such a panel is an understatement and these are the types of panels we're putting together up and down the agenda.
But you have to be there to experience it all. Have you registered to attend Netroots Nation 2008 yet? Register today, and join us in Austin.