The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC overturned
decades of settled law and unleashed a flood of corporate money into
our electoral process. Help us put the power in our democracy back
where it belongs: in the hands of voters.
The Supreme Court Citizens United Decision:
What does it mean for our Democracy?
Wednesday March 10
7:30 PM
Harmon Community Center
44 Main St
Hastings-on-Hudson
The
Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have the right to spend
freely on candidates. Our distinguished panel will review the law and
its implications for the issues we care about, like civil liberties,
environmental protection and health care. Democracy needs you! Join
the discussion about what we can do to restore government of the
people, by the people, and for the people.
Panelists:
Karl S. Coplan
Professor Coplanis co-director of the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic. Prior to joining the Pace faculty, he practiced land use and environmental litigation for eight years with the New York City firm of Berle, Kass & Case. Professor Coplan's career in private practice included numerous environmental and civil rights cases on behalf of citizens' groups and plaintiffs, including such cases as Houston v. City of Cocoa, which applied federal environmental review laws to federally financed municipal redevelopment activities designed to displace a minority community, and County of Westchester v. Town of Greenwich, which established that an airport could not cut trees on neighboring properties under a theory of prescriptive rights. Before entering private practice, he clerked for the Warren E. Burger, Chief Justice of the United States, and Leonard I. Garth, Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Randolph M. McLaughlin
Prior
to joining the Pace Law School faculty in 1988, Professor McLaughlin
was an attorney associated with Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein,
with whom he did litigation and labor law work. In 1978, he began his
legal career at the Center for Constitutional Rights, a civil
rights/civil liberties legal organization in New York City. For eight
years he worked side by side with the renowned civil rights attorney
William Kunstler fighting for the rights of activists and the
communities across the country. While there he was responsible for the
management and coordination of important civil rights/civil liberties
cases at the trial and appellate levels and he pioneered the
development of a legal strategy to redress incidents of
racially-motivated violence. In 1982, he won an award of $535,000 for
five black women who had been attacked by members of the Chattanooga Ku
Klux Klan.
Professor
McLaughlin specializes in voting rights litigation. In 1991, after he
filed a voting rights challenge to the election of New Rochelle 's City
Council, the city changed its method of electing council members.On
February 20, 1997, Professor McLaughlin won a landmark victory in a
voting rights case against the Town of Hempstead, NY. A federal judge
ruled that the town-wide method of electing the Town Council was
discriminatory and ordered that the system be dismantled.
In
1997, Professor McLaughlin agreed to represent the family of Charles
Campbell who had been killed during a dispute over a parking space in
Dobbs Ferry , N.Y. The shooter, an off-duty New York City police
officer, was subsequently convicted of second-degree murder and
sentenced to a prison term of twenty years to life. Professor
McLaughlin filed suit against the shooter, his alleged accomplices, and
won a $5 million dollar verdict in federal court.
In
2007, he intervened on behalf of an Hispanic political activist in a
voting rights lawsuit brought by the United States Department of
Justice against the Village of Port Chester .On January 17, 2008, the
district court issued an opinion and found that the Village's at-large
election system violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Ralph M. Stein
Professor Stein,
a founding member of the Pace Law School faculty, has published law
review articles in the fields of constitutional law, legal history,
criminal law, and torts and is a co-author of Comparative Negligence.
He is currently examining recent developments in state constitutional
law and first amendment law, the latter particularly with reference to
separation of church and state. Professor Stein was largely responsible
for uncovering military surveillance of civilian political activity in
the early '70s. He served for two years as a field investigator for the
U.S. Senate Sub-Committee on Constitutional Rights. His interest in
national security issues led him to develop a seminar on National
Security Law, which he is currently teaching, in addition to
Constitutional Law and a seminar on Legal History. Before entering
teaching at Syracuse University College of Law, he was associated with
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher, & Flom. He is on the legal committee
of the Anti-Defamation League, has been involved in various civil
liberties activities in both New York and Westchester, and frequently
speaks to and aids citizen and community groups.
For full bios, go to: http://www.pace.edu/page.cfm?doc_id=23155
