Georgetown
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ref
Billionaires Are Bankrolling Judges’ Luxury Travel
In 2021 and 2022, two conservative, billionaire-funded legal interests sent more than 100 federal judges on 251 trips to conferences and seminars in cushy locations around the country and overseas, according to a Lever review of hundreds of federal financial disclosure forms.
billionaire-Backed Conservative Legal Groups Are Paying for Judges’ Luxury Vacations
Right-wing legal interests funded by the megawealthy are routinely feting lower-court judges and treating them to all-expenses-paid trips, which effectively function as a reward system for judges who espouse and maintain hard-line conservative legal views.
Guests in the audience during the Federalist Society Executive Branch Review Conference at the Mayflower Hotel, April 25, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)
In 2021 and 2022, two conservative, billionaire-funded legal interests sent more than one hundred federal judges on 251 trips to conferences and seminars in cushy locations around the country and overseas, according to a Lever review of hundreds of federal financial disclosure forms.
In all, George Mason University (GMU) and the Federalist Society, a conservative lawyers network, funded more than 40 percent of travel-related payments reported by federal judges in those years, far more than any other group.
The staggering number of junkets indicate that, as conservative Supreme Court justices face scrutiny for failing to disclose private luxury travel supplied by billionaire donors, right-wing legal interests funded by the megawealthy are routinely feting lower-court judges and treating them to all-expenses-paid trips to far-flung locales. As with the gifts to Supreme Court justices, the trips effectively function as a reward system for judges who espouse and maintain hard-line conservative legal views.
GMU — a Virginia-based public research university that’s home to the conservative Antonin Scalia Law School and its pro-business, anti-regulation Law and Economics program — paid for federal judges’ transportation, meals, or lodging at least 152 times from 2021–22. The Washington-based Federalist Society covered travel or food-related expenses on at least ninety-nine occasions during the same time period. The judges are not required to disclose how much the excursions cost.
The Federalist Society and GMU are both closely tied to the conservative legal movement and billionaire donors who have a financial interest in how the federal judiciary interprets laws. Both institutions also accept corporate donations.
“The data is really compelling,” said Caroline Fredrickson, a distinguished visiting professor from practice at Georgetown Law. “It confirms what we all knew intuitively: The Federalist Society and George Mason have a deep reach into the federal judiciary, and are using it to ensure that a very particular point of view about legal analysis is conveyed to judges and is done in luxury accommodations, so that judges are much more likely to attend.”
TheLever reviewed electronically available financial disclosure forms filed by more than 1,300 federal judges in 2021 and 2022, and identified at least 595 instances of judges disclosing reimbursements for travel-related expenses.
GMU and the Federalist Society were far and away the top sources of such payments, together accounting for 42 percent of all reimbursements listed by the federal judges. No other organizations came anywhere close to matching their generosity: The third-most common sources on the list — Notre Dame, Georgetown, and George Washington University — accounted for thirteen reimbursements apiece.
The Federalist Society is cochaired by former Donald Trump judicial adviser Leonard Leo, best known as the architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, and the organization receives significant funding from his dark money network. Last year, the Supreme Court that Leo helped build overturned decades of precedent and eliminated federal protections for abortion rights.
Leo, the beneficiary of a historic $1.6 billion dark money donation in 2021, previously brokered a $20 million anonymous gift to rename GMU’s law school after the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. As theLever and ProPublica have reported, that gift to GMU was apparently made by Barre Seid, a little-known Chicago industrialist who converted his electrical surge protector empire into funding for Leo’s unprecedented dark money operation.
GMU has separately received tens of millions in donations from foundations affiliated with the billionaire oil and gas titan Charles Koch, a libertarian activist and longtime opponent of environmental regulations. That included a $10 million contribution in support of renaming the law school. Koch’s foundations have also supported the Federalist Society.
“Right-wing efforts to legislate through our courts — led and bankrolled by conservative kingpin Leonard Leo — have seeped into all levels of the federal judiciary,” said Caroline Ciccone, president of the progressive watchdog group Accountable.US. “It’s no surprise that Leo’s Federalist Society and Scalia Law School are now key hubs for conservative judges to score free luxury trips and unusual perks, undermining judicial integrity and contributing to plummeting public trust in our courts.”
Spokespeople for Leo, Koch’s charitable foundation, GMU’s Antonin Scalia Law School, and the Federalist Society did not respond to theLever’s requests for comment.
“Study Time”
The forty-nine-year-old Law and Economics Center, which promotes a pro-business, anti-regulatory legal perspective, has been housed at GMU since 1986. As the center noted in an event agenda last year, its purpose is to pull together “timely, relevant, and unassailable research on public policy issues” and share it with “those who are directly shaping our country’s public policy discussions.”
“With research divisions devoted to top-quality legal policy analysis and educational outreach to judges, attorneys general, and other policymakers, the [Law and Economics Center] is uniquely equipped to positively affect national policy outcomes,” the center wrote.
A 2022 review of rulings by judges who participated in an early version of this Law and Economics program decades ago by researchers at Columbia University, ETH Zurich, and the Toulouse School of Economics suggests that the core mission of the project has been highly successful.
“Economics-trained judges significantly shift legal outcomes in U.S. courts,” wrote the researchers. “They use economic analysis in their written opinions, render conservative votes and verdicts, rule against regulation, are somewhat more permissive on antitrust, and mete out harsher criminal sentences. When ideas move from economics into law, there are important policy consequences.”
The Law and Economics Center’s judicial educational programs tend to take place at uber-ritzy junkets. Between 2021 and 2022, GMU brought federal judges to destinations including the university’s homebase of Arlington, Virginia; the beaches of Naples and Destin, Florida, and Maui, Hawaii; the mountains of Colorado and Montana; and the United Kingdom and Italy. The program also hosted an event in Leo’s adopted home of Bar Harbor, Maine, right around the time that the Supreme Court overturned its landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision.
“Mostly these George Mason things are not held in, you know, Arlington, Virginia,” said Fredrickson, the Georgetown law professor. “They’re held in the Rockies or at Florida resorts, or in some other place where the judge doesn’t have to pay their own way, and it’s pretty nice to get a free ride like that.”
She continued, “If you look at their agendas, they work for an hour or two a day, and then they have ‘study time,’ where in the afternoon, they get to go and ‘study’ — while they also, no doubt, are hitting golf balls. . . . It ends up being a very slanted educational program, it’s the only one that’s going, and it’s awfully nice to hang out on the beach and think about antitrust law.”
Indeed, the agenda for an upcoming, weeklong “Economics Institute for Federal Judges & State Supreme Court Justices,” scheduled to be held in March next year at the Henderson Beach and Spa Resort in Destin, Florida, features ample “study time,” “afternoon breaks,” and free time. Educational programming effectively concludes at 12:15 p.m. each day.
“There’s nobody else who does this,” Fredrickson said of GMU’s Law and Economics program. “They are the ones who got in the business of offering these judicial educational seminars early on, and there’s been nobody with deep pockets who has stepped up to do the same. . . . The major donations that have come in from Barre Seid and from the Koch Brothers into George Mason have enabled them to put on these programs.”
The Federalist Society’s judicial reimbursements don’t sound quite as posh — or so conspicuously like vacations. Generally, the judges are there to give lectures or speak to local lawyers or law students.
Still, the group is constantly shipping judges all over the country. In 2021–22, the Federalist Society reimbursed judges’ travel to Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington state, and Washington, DC.
“The whole thing is really troubling,” said Fredrickson, who previously served as the president of the American Constitution Society (ACS), the much smaller, liberal counterweight to the Federalist Society.
While Fredrickson noted that ACS doesn’t have the budgetary resources for similar events, she said, “I don’t think that organizations like the Federalist Society — or maybe even like ACS, which is definitely less hard-edged than the Federalist Society — [should] be offering these kinds of junkets to judges. It’s not appropriate for the role that they are supposed to play in our judicial system.”
“When Do They Have Time to Be Judges?”
The federal judicial reimbursement data reviewed by theLever shows more than one hundred federal judges accepted paid travel-related expenses from GMU or the Federalist Society between 2021 and 2022.
Some judges stand out for the frequency with which they are traveling on those institutions’ dime — specifically, judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. These judges disclosed receiving at least fifty-four reimbursements provided by the Federalist Society or GMU.
Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton, appointed by George W. Bush, listed forty-two reimbursements in 2021 and 2022, more than any other federal judge whose financial disclosure forms were available online. GMU and the Federalist Society accounted for twenty of Sutton’s reimbursements.
Last year, the records show, the National Security Institute at GMU’s Antonin Scalia Law School sent Sutton to Padua, Italy, to teach and meet with students, according to his annual disclosure. The Federalist Society sent Sutton to Alabama, Arizona, California, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Utah, Virginia, and Washington, DC, to present lectures and participate in conference panels.
Judge Chad Readler, who was appointed by Trump in 2019, listed twenty-four reimbursements, twenty of which were provided by GMU and the Federalist Society.
Judge Amul Thapar, appointed by Trump in 2017, listed 14 reimbursements in 2021. Eight of those travel-related expenses were paid by the Federalist Society. Thapar and Sutton are both known as top “feeder judges”; many of their law clerks go on to work for Supreme Court justices.
Asked about the judges’ travel, Fredrickson joked: “Sounds pretty nice. When do they have time to be judges?”
The Sixth Circuit did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Earlier this year, Sutton issued an opinion striking down a buffer zone law designed to prohibit antiabortion activists from harassing patients and blocking the sidewalk in front of an abortion clinic in Louisville, Kentucky.
This fall, Sutton and Thapar issued a decision allowing Tennessee and Kentucky to enforce laws banning gender-affirming care for minors, meaning that doctors must stop using puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries to treat transgender youths. The ruling acceded to the demands from Tennessee’s Republican attorney general and twenty-one other GOP state attorneys general who filed an amicus brief in the case.
Leo’s dark money network has long been the top financier of the Republican Attorneys General Association, which elects GOP law enforcement chiefs and helps coordinate their efforts to influence policy and shape judicial decisions. The Leo network donated $1 million to the association earlier this year and $6.5 million in the 2022 election cycle, according to data from Political MoneyLine.
The Sixth Circuit case on gender-affirming care could soon come before the Supreme Court and its conservative supermajority, as the families and physician involved in the case have petitioned justices to review the lower court’s decision.
You can subscribe to David Sirota’s investigative journalism project, theLever, here.
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no lnx many pix
Inside the bizarre Las Vegas conference where Trump-loving sheriffs, felons and conspiracy theorists vowed to form militias to patrol polling places and seize voting machines to stop Biden
A recent CSPOA conference in Las Vegas drew attention for its controversial mix of attendees, including felons, disgraced politicians and sheriffs
The event aimed to address extremism allegations within the group and outline plans for upcoming elections, such as investigating alleged voter fraud
Critics raised concerns about potential election interference and misinformation
By JAMES GORDON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED:, 21 April 2024
View comments
A right-wing sheriffs' group that challenges federal law held a bizarre rally in Las Vegas last week featuring felons and conspiracy theorists as the country's presidential election is just months away.
The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, founded in 2011 by former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, held its annual conference in Las Vegas last week at the Ahern Luxury Boutique Hotel conference center.
The group, known as CSPOA, teaches that elected sheriffs must 'protect their citizens from the overreach of an out-of-control federal government' by refusing to enforce any law they deem unconstitutional or 'unjust.'
The right-wing 'constitutional sheriffs,' claim legal power in their jurisdictions that exceeds U.S. federal government and state authorities.
In particular, this time around, the organization is urging its members to seize voting machines while investigating claims of 'rampant voter fraud' that during the 2020 election proved to be baseless.
Last week's Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association conference in Las Vegas drew attention for its controversial mix of attendees, including felons, disgraced politicians and sheriffs. It's founder Richard Mack is seen speaking on the stand
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Last week's Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association conference in Las Vegas drew attention for its controversial mix of attendees, including felons, disgraced politicians and sheriffs. It's founder Richard Mack is seen speaking on the stand
Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser and retired three-star general who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI but was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump, was a speaker at the conference
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Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser and retired three-star general who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI but was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump, was a speaker at the conference
Trump's friend and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell also spoke as he pushed his election denial theories
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Trump's friend and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell also spoke as he pushed his election denial theories
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This time around, the group want to form a group that will patrol polling places and have the power to seize voting machines while investigating Democrats and other countries that are sending immigrants to the the U.S. in order to vote illegally, they claim and reported by NBC News.
In 2022, the group continued to promote baseless conspiracy theories that the last presidential election was stolen from Trump are have recently been pushing a dubious theory that county sheriffs can access voting machines and intervene in how elections are run - and also have virtually unchecked power in their counties.
Voting-rights advocates and election experts said any attempts by law enforcement to interfere in elections would be alarming and an extension of the threat posed by the continued circulation of Trump's claims about the 2020 election.
'The safest way to actually achieve that is to have local law enforcement understand that they have no obligation to enforce such laws,' Mack said during a recent interview. 'They're not laws at all anyway. If they're unjust laws, they are laws of tyranny.'
Mike Gannuscio (left) is running to be a sheriff in Mohave County, Nevada
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Mike Gannuscio (left) is running to be a sheriff in Mohave County, Nevada
In 2022, the group continued to promote baseless conspiracy theories that the last presidential election was stolen from Trump are have recently been pushing a dubious theory that county sheriffs can access voting machines and intervene in how elections are run. Zapata County, Texas, Sheriff Raymundo Del Bosque holds his hat over his heart during the national anthem
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In 2022, the group continued to promote baseless conspiracy theories that the last presidential election was stolen from Trump are have recently been pushing a dubious theory that county sheriffs can access voting machines and intervene in how elections are run. Zapata County, Texas, Sheriff Raymundo Del Bosque holds his hat over his heart during the national anthem
'The sheriff is supposed to be protecting the public from evil,' Dar Leaf, the chief law enforcement officer for Barry County, Michigan, said during last year's conference. 'When your government is evil or out of line, that's what the sheriff is there for, protecting them from that.'
The sheriffs' group has railed against gun control laws, COVID-19 mask mandates and public health restrictions, as well as the alleged election fraud.
It has also quietly spread its ideology across the country, seeking to become more mainstream in part by securing state approval for taxpayer-funded law enforcement training.
The public-facing image of the sheriffs group, prominently features the American flag and the experiences of black civil rights icons who pushed back against unjust laws.
But details of its operations are closely held, and its finances are shielded from public scrutiny.
It was briefly registered as a nonprofit in Arizona, but internal records indicate it is now a private company.
The group does not release its list of dues-paying members, nor does it publicize information about where or how it conducts trainings.
The sympathies of the group's leaders for right-wing, white-nationalist extremist causes, however, are well documented.
The CSPOA is also unequivocal about gun rights and supports the right of criminals and the mentally ill to carry firearms, opposing gun registration or background checks.
About 100 people attended the day-long conference in Las Vegas last Wednesday
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About 100 people attended the day-long conference in Las Vegas last Wednesday
Attendees of the conference milled around and mingled with one another in the lobby
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Attendees of the conference milled around and mingled with one another in the lobby
Various speakers from the 'law enforcement' community were on the stand and able to speak
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Various speakers from the 'law enforcement' community were on the stand and able to speak
Mack was an early board member of the Oath Keepers, the group involved in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Although he said he split with the group several years ago when it became a militia, Mack still speaks at Oath Keeper-affiliated rallies.
Leaf was investigated, but not charged, in connection with the Michigan attorney general's investigation into the alleged illegal seizure and breach of vote-counting machines in 2020.
He also appeared at an election-denier rally with two men later charged in the conspiracy to kidnap Michigan's Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
Over the last six years, the group has hosted trainings, rallies, speeches and meetings in at least 30 states for law enforcement officers, political figures, private organizations and members of the public.
The group has held formal trainings on its 'constitutional' curriculum for law enforcement officers in at least 13 of those states. In six states, the training was approved for officers´ continuing education credits.
The group also has supporters who sit on three state boards in charge of law enforcement training standards.
Legal experts warn that such training - especially when it's approved for state credit - can undermine the democratic processes enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and is part of what Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor and executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University, called a 'broader insurrectionist ideology' that has gripped the nation since the 2020 presidential election.
'They have no authority, not under their state constitutions or implementing statutes to decide what's constitutional and what's not constitutional. That's what courts have the authority to do, not sheriffs,' McCord said.
'There's another sort of evil lurking there,' McCord added, 'because CSPOA is now essentially part of a broader movement in the United States to think it's OK to use political violence if we disagree with some sort of government policy.'
Mach, who founded was an early board member of the Oath Keepers, the group involved in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, pictured above
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Mach, who founded was an early board member of the Oath Keepers, the group involved in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, pictured above
Mack, seen here, said he split with the Oath Keepers group several years ago when it became a militia, although he still speaks at Oath Keeper-affiliated rallies
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Mack, seen here, said he split with the Oath Keepers group several years ago when it became a militia, although he still speaks at Oath Keeper-affiliated rallies
At least one state, Texas, canceled credit for the sheriffs´ training after determining the course content - which it said included a reference to 'this is a war' - was more political than educational. But other states, such as Tennessee, have approved the training, in part because it was hosted by a local law enforcement agency.
Unlike other law enforcement continuing education, such as firearms training, the sheriffs' curriculum is largely focused on the alleged constitutional underpinnings of sheriffs' absolute authority to both interpret and refuse to enforce certain laws.
One brochure advertising the group's seminars states: 'The County Sheriff is the one who can say to the feds, `Beyond these bounds you shall not pass.´'
Nationwide, there are some 3,000 sheriffs, whose salaries are funded by taxpayers. Mack has claimed about 10 per cent of those are members of CSPOA together with a further 10,000 regular citizens. About 100 people attended the Vegas conference.
They sheriffs serve as the chief law enforcement officers in their counties and are the only elected peace officers in the country.
They appoint deputy sheriffs and jailers and service the courts in their jurisdictions.
Especially in rural areas, sheriffs hold immense sway over what happens in their county.
Amy Cooter, research director at the Middlebury Institute Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism, said many sheriffs join the group from 'a misinformed but well-meaning perspective.' But, she added, it also allows some sheriffs to 'potentially engage in extremism by not enforcing legal, lawful, legitimate orders.'
Some states have pushed back against the group's training efforts, and not all sheriffs subscribe to the group´s ideology.
Many at the National Sheriffs' Association conference distanced themselves from the constitutional sheriffs or claimed not to know what they were about.
'When I took an oath 17 years ago as sheriff, I took the oath to uphold the Constitution, not overstep it,' said Troy Wellman, sheriff of Moody County, South Dakota, and a vice president of the National Sheriffs' Association.
And there has been public pushback in some counties led by 'constitutional sheriffs.' In Klickitat County, Washington, residents alleged Sheriff Bob Songer, a board member of the sheriffs group, engaged in fearmongering and intimidation.
He was the target of a formal complaint in 2022 that the state's law enforcement standards agency ultimately dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.
Michael Peroutka, another sheriffs group board member and former candidate for Maryland's attorney general, was once affiliated with the League of the South, which supports 'a free and independent Southern republic.'
At a 2019 sheriffs´ training event, he said, 'There is a creator God. Our rights come from him. The purpose of civil government is to secure and defend God-given rights.'
Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University's Program on Extremism, described the sheriffs group as 'insidious' and said it had become 'mainstream standard-bearers for entrance into more violent forms of extremism.'
'Just because it's not as overt in their subversion of the democratic system, just because it's quieter about how it does it and what it's calling for, doesn't make the ideas any less dangerous,' said Lewis.
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omg georgetown (not wacko?)
The White Helmets have been criticized for working in areas held by the Nusra Front, a terrorist organization linked to al-Qaeda, in some instances residing next door to jihadists. In May 2017, the deputy Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, Petr Ilichev, submitted a paper entitled “Information on the Work of the White Helmets in Syria” to the UN Security Council, which questioned the White Helmet’s neutrality. [vii] In July 2017, eight countries on the Security Council rejected Iliichev’s submission, upholding the view that “Syria Civil Defense is an impartial, neutral group.” [viii] In December 2018, Russia again presented evidence to the UN that alleged the White Helmets are a terrorist organization. Maxim Grigoriev, director of the Russia-based Foundation for the Study of Democracy, claimed that the White Helmets were supplying terrorists with water and food,engaging in human organ trafficking, and carrying out chemical attacks.[ix] Additionally, Grigoriev alleged that social media accounts of White Helmets’ members provide ample evidence connecting some of them with ISIS and al-Qaeda. [x]
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fed law clinic
http://www.law.georgetown.edu/academics/academic-programs/clinical-programs/our-clinics/Federal-Legislation-and-Administrative-Clinic.cfm
===
rivkin:
:{:{M.A., Soviet Affairs, Georgetown University, 1984,}: with high honors
}:==
http://www.law.georgetown.edu/academics/academic-programs/clinical-programs/our-clinics/IPR/environmental-projects.cfm
"Law ctr"a soundy shakey but seems legit, red food and water watc
also seems to be big on public defender for poor?
==
Kirkpatrick was the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey University Professor at Georgetown University between 1967 and 1978, when she left to join the American Enterprise Institute.[2] Kirkpatrick was a fierce anti-communist whose writings on dictatorships for Commentary magazine in the late 1970s caught the eye of Ronald Reagan, prompting him to nominate her to the UN ambassador post. Kirkpatrick went on to become a proponent of the post-Cold War neoconservative agenda, which emerged in the 1990s and helped shape the preemptive and antiterror foreign policies of the George W. Bush administration.
===
Lev E. Dobriansky (born November 9, 1918, in New York City; died January 2008) was a professor of economics at Georgetown University.
Life and Career
"Dobriansky graduated from New York University (B.S., 1941; M.A., 1943; Ph. D., 1951). He is the author of numerous books and articles. His foreign languages are French, Ukrainian, Russian, and German."[1]
"In 1942-1948, Dr. Dobriansky was an instructor in economics at New York University. Since 1948 he has been with Georgetown University as assistant professor of economics (1948-1952), associate professor of economics (1952-1960), and professor of economics (1960-present). He has also been director of the Institute on Comparative Economic and Political Systems since 1970. He was a faculty member at the National War College in 1957-1958. He has served as a consultant with the Department of State, the International Communication Agency, and the United States House of Representatives. In 1974-1975, he was a member of the National Commission for the Observance of World Population Year."[1]
In addition to his work with the United States government, Dobriansky also worked in an official capacity in Chile from 1975 to 1976[citation needed]
On October 25, 1982, Dr. Dobriansky was nominated by President Ronald Reagan as United States Ambassador to the Bahamas; he succeeded William B. Schwartz.[1] Dobriansky maintained this position until August 30, 1986[2]
Dobriansky was a right-wing activist and ideologue, though he taught "The Economics of Socialism" at Georgetown University[citation needed]. He was a fervent Cold-Warrior who was heavily involved in Ukrainian matters and active in Ukrainian/White Russian emigree circles[citation needed]. He is responsible for a statue to a Ukrainian patriot placed near Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C.[citation needed]
His daughter, Paula Dobriansky, is a senior officer in the U.S. State Dept. (since 2000), and one of the early neo-conservatives, signatory of the PNAC[citation needed]. His other daughter, Larisa Dobriansky, is a lawyer specializing in "environmental issues" who has worked at the U.S. Department of Energy and has also been party to the undermining of the adoption of the Kyoto Environmental treaty[citation needed]. She also was an environmental lawyer at Akin Gump.
Other activities
- Ukrainian National Information Service (UNIS), first director[3]
- Office of Strategic Services (OSS), officer during WWII (OSS was the forerunner of the CIA)
- American Council for World Freedom (ACWF), board member
- National Captive Nations Committee, Chairman
- United States Council for World Freedom, Director
- Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation Chairman Emeritus[4]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
- ↑ U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian
- ↑ The Ukrainian Weekly
- ↑ Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Principal Officers & Directors, organizational website
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law:
===
Using Scientists
During the $280 billion U.S. federal lawsuit against big tobacco, Georgetown University professor and former tobacco industry consultant Sorell Schwartz testified that the Tobacco Institute had pressured him and other researchers to "take a more advocative position" about such issues as secondhand smoke. In particular, "Schwartz blamed the advocacy pressure on the Tobacco Institute's public relations team, 'who felt that we were not being cooperative enough.'"[2]
Tobacco Institute and tobacco company lawyer from 1981 to 1995 John Rupp (now a partner at the Covington & Burling law and lobbying firm) countered Schwartz's charges at the federal trial. He said "the industry sought out scientists and paid them to make an 'objective appraisal' of whether secondhand smoke was harmful to non-smokers, a move they hoped would dispel the 'extreme views' of some anti-smoking activists." He claimed that "the scientists, who came from prestigious institutions such as Georgetown University and the University of Massachusetts, did not consider themselves to be working 'on behalf' of cigarette makers even though they were being paid by the industry." But government lawyers showed documents "that described the research initiative as a 'weapon' to be used in a 'battle' with anti-smoking groups, and that part of Rupp's job was to 'horse-shed' scientists to make sure they stuck to the tobacco industry line," according to Reuters. [3]
In a February 1989 speech to the Executive Committee of the now-defunct Tobacco Institute, the group's Senior Vice President, Charles Powers, sought to save the industry's covert "Scientific Witness Program" from impending budget cuts. The program, he said, featured experts "who are our front line of defense in tax, public smoking and advertising hearings every day." [4]
Powers complained that "scientists will not buck for love" the scientific consensus on the link between environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and health impacts. "It takes money," he said. "The Institute can't do it and be taken seriously. We need people who have earned reputations as serious researchers...who can review and critique articles, publish and act as peer reviewers," he said. Powers estimated that it cost an average of $40,000 and took six weeks to identify and train a single expert. [5]
The Tobacco Institute was parodied as the Academy of Tobacco Studies in the 1994 Christopher Buckley novel and 2006 film "Thank You For Smoking." [6]
==
Georgetown Law's J.D. program can be completed over three years of full-time day study or four years of part-time evening study. The school offers LL.M. programs in Taxation, Securities and Financial Regulation, and Global Health Law, as well as a general LL.M. curriculum for lawyers educated outside the United States. Georgetown launched a Master of Studies in Law (M.S.L.) degree program for professional journalists in the 2007–08 academic year. It also offers the highest doctoral degree in law (J.S.D.).
Students are offered the choice of two tracks for their first year of study. "Curriculum A" is a traditional law curriculum similar to that taught at most schools, including courses in contracts, constitutional law, torts, property, criminal procedure, civil procedure, and legal research and writing. Four-fifths of the day students at Georgetown receive instruction under the standard program (sections 1, 2, 4, and 5).
"Curriculum B" is a more interdisciplinary, theoretical approach to legal study, covering an equal or wider scope of material but heavily influenced by the critical legal studies movement. The Curriculum B courses are Bargain, Exchange and Liability (contracts and torts), Democracy and Coercion (constitutional law and criminal procedure), Government Processes (administrative law), Legal Justice (jurisprudence), Legal Practice (legal research and writing), Legal Process and Society (civil procedure), and Property in Time (property). One-fifth of the full-time JD students receive instruction in the alternative Curriculum B program (Section 3).
Students in both curricula participate in a week-long introduction to international law between the fall and spring semesters.
Academic programs
Juris Doctor Programs
| Graduate Programs
|
Faculty
Notable current faculty include (the following is a non-exhaustive list):
- James V. Feinerman, James M. Morita Professor of Asian Legal Studies; Co-Director, Georgetown Law - Asia
- Charles F. Abernathy
- Rosa Brooks
- Randy Barnett, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory and Guggenheim Fellow in Constitutional Studies, author of Restoring the Lost Constitution, The Structure of Liberty, and a constitutional law casebook.
- Jeffrey Bauman, professor of corporate law and author of several casebooks on the subject
- Paul Clement, former Solicitor General
- David D. Cole
- Anthony E. Cook, professor of, and noted authority on, constitutional and civil rights law
- Richard Diamond, former partner at Steptoe & Johnson, former Supreme Court clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger.
- Viet D. Dinh, former Assistant Attorney General of the United States, chief architect of the USA PATRIOT Act, Supreme Court clerk for Sandra Day O'Connor.
- Kenneth Feinberg, "compensation czar" or "pay czar" for the Obama Administration
- Michael Gottesman
- Charles H. Gustafson
- Vicki C. Jackson, constitutional scholar and former Supreme Court clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall.
- Neal Katyal, Former Acting Solicitor General, lead counsel in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, former Special Assistant to U.S. Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder and Counsel to Mr. Holder on National Security Affairs, law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
- Marty Lederman, former Attorney Advisor in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel
- Robert Long, former Deputy Solicitor General, partner at Covington & Burling
- David Jay Luban, Frederick J. Haas Professor of Law and Philosophy,
- John Mikhail, Associate Dean and Professor of Law and Philosophy
- Glen Nager, head of Jones Day's appellate practice, general counsel to the United States Golf Association (USGA), former Supreme Court clerk for Sandra Day O'Connor.
- Eleanor Holmes Norton, delegate to the United States House of Representatives
- Julie O'Sullivan, former assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, former Supreme Court clerk to Sandra Day O'Connor.
- John Podesta, former Clinton chief of staff, head of the Obama transition team.
- Robert Pitofsky, former Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission
- Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, former attorney-advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice, former Supreme Court clerk for Justice Kennedy.
- Milton Regan, Jr., former law clerk to Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, while sitting on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr.
- Paul Rothstein, noted authority on evidence.
- Laurence H. Silberman, Circuit Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
- Louis Michael Seidman, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, constitutional law theorist, author of Our Unsettled Constitution and co-author of a widely used constitutional law casebook; former Supreme Court clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall.
- Ronald Pearlman, former Chief of Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation.
- Colonel Samuel C. Mahaney, Former National Security Fellow, Harvard University and Capitol Hill Fellow, Georgetown University.
- Seth Waxman, former Solicitor General
The roster of current professors also includes former Supreme Court clerks and other legal academics and professionals.[citation needed]
Former professors include:
- William Brennan, Supreme Court Associate Justice
- Father Robert Drinan, U.S. Congressman
- Martin D. Ginsburg, prominent tax attorney and late husband of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- John G. Roberts, Jr., Chief Justice of the United States
- Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court Associate Justice
- Mark Tushnet, prominent critical legal studies proponent, constitutional law scholar, and author of many books.
- Mari Matsuda, prominent critical race theory scholar. (continues to teach a short course at Georgetown Law)
- Charles R. Lawrence, III, prominent critical race theory scholar. (continues to teach a short course at Georgetown Law)
Publication
Georgetown University Law Center has eleven student-run law journals and a weekly student-run newspaper, the Georgetown Law Weekly. The journals are:
- Georgetown Law Journal
- American Criminal Law Review
- Annual Review of Criminal Procedure
- Georgetown Immigration Law Journal
- Georgetown International Environmental Law Review
- Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law
- Georgetown Journal of International Law
- Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy
- Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics
- Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy
- The Tax Lawyer
- Georgetown Journal of Law and Modern Critical Race Perspectives
Most of these journals are available on both LexisNexis and Westlaw, but several are available only on LexisNexis.
Notable alumni
Also attended
- Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States, in 1934[23]
- Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, in 1957
Notes
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www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_J._Danzig
Feb 8, 2011 – Learn more at our new SourceWatch resource: PetersonPyramid.org ... Danzig has taught contracts at Georgetown Law School, was a Trustee ...
www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Carrie_Menkel-Meadow
Nov 26, 2007 – She also received the Georgetown Law Center's staff appreciation award for ... Retrieved from "http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title= ...
www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Elaine_D._Kaplan
Aug 10, 2008 – Ms. Kaplan received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Binghamton, and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center." [3] ...
www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Steven_J._Milloy
This article is part of the Atrazine Exposed portal on SourceWatch. ... University of Baltimore, and a Master of Laws from the Georgetown University Law Center.
216.92.66.74/index.php/Karl_Blanke
From SourceWatch. Jump to: navigation, search. Karl Blanke was a Georgetown University Law Student and a 2005-2006 staff member on the Georgetown ...