The First Amendment and Related Current Issues: A Panel Discussion

Date: Apr 29th

The First Amendment and Related Current Issues panel will discuss the current state of our discourse and of First Amendment doctrine. Five distinguished speakers will converse about such topics as “the fairness doctrine”, “the fate of NY Times vs Sullivan and Libel Law”, “Campus related Tensions, Title VI and the Freedom of Speech”, and the “Much Noted Contemporary Tendency to ‘Silo' : we only want to get Messages that Confirm our Own pre-existing beliefs and that Don't Upset Us.” Following the panel, there will be an afternoon book launch, connecting the panel topics with central themes in the book, Law, Literature, and History: A Fateful Rendezvous with the Shoah by Professor Emeritus Richard Weisberg.

Panelists:

• Floyd Abrams-Floyd Abrams is senior counsel at Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP. He has argued 13 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and been involved in many more. He is the author of three books, the most recent of which is The Soul of the First Amendment (Yale University Press, 2017).


• Arthur Eisenberg-Arthur Eisenberg currently serves as Executive Counsel to the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU). Prior to assuming his current position, he was Legal Director of the NYCLU for twenty-five years. For an equally long period, he has also taught Constitutional Litigation as an Adjunct Professor at Cardozo Law School.


• Peter Goodrich-Professor of Law and Director of the Program in Law and Humanities, Cardozo School of Law. He was the founding dean of the Department of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London, where he also held the position of Corporation of London Professor of Law. An authority on Contracts, Film and the Law, Gender and the Law, and Jurisprudence, Professor Goodrich has written extensively on legal history and theory, law and literature, and semiotics. He is the author of 12 books and serves as managing editor of Law and Literature. He was also the founding editor of Law and Critique.


• Daniel Kornstein-Daniel Kornstein is a partner in the Manhattan law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel. A graduate of Yale Law School, he has handled a number of First Amendment cases and has represented Shakespearean characters in moot courts, including one at Cardozo Law School.


• Richard Weisberg-Richard Weisberg has written on Times v Sullivan and its progeny and received a Guggenheim grant to research the common law roots in England of the law of libel. He is an Emeritus at Cardozo and currently teaches in the English Department at Carnegie Mellon University.


• Additional guests TBD