American Constitution Society

On March 25, Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, came to Harvard Law School to discuss his experience as Edward Snowden's legal advisor at an event sponsored by the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, Harvard National Security Law Association, Harvard Law School National Security Journal, Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left, the HLS American Constitution Society and the HLS American Civil Liberties Union.

SCOTUS Blog co-founder and Tom Goldstein, visiting lecturer at Harvard Law School, joined HLS Professor Charles Fried last week in discussing the Court's current docket at an event co-sponsored by the Harvard Law chapters of the American Constitution Society (ACS) and the Federalist Society.

On April 19, Harvard Law School's American Constitution Society sponsored “A Progressive Vision of National Security,” a lecture delivered by Former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold ’79. The only member of the Senate to vote against the PATRIOT Act in 2001 and one of 23 to vote against the Iraq war in 2002, Feingold recently authored "While America Sleeps," a book that details his criticisms of American foreign policy since 9/11 and proposes a plan to correct the nation's course.

Despite its “essential” cloak of secrecy, the Central Intelligence Agency is committed to the rule of law, CIA general counsel Stephen W. Preston ’83 said in a speech at Harvard Law School on Tuesday, April 12, hosted by the HLS American Constitution Society.

At an event sponsored by the Harvard Law School American Constitution Society on October 18, Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) ’77 spoke about proposed legislation that would end the federal ban on marijuana, as well as the need for drug policy reform at the federal level and why marijuana policy is an issue better handled by the states.

At “Challenging and Litigating DOMA's Constitutionality”— an event that was co-sponsored by the Harvard Law School American Constitution Society, Lambda, and the Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Journal—Mary Bonauto, the Civil Rights Project Director at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), spoke about litigating the Defense of Marriage Act in federal courts in the wake of the Department of Justice's recent decision to stop defending the law.

The history of the death penalty in America has been racially inflected, yet the death penalty reforms and regulations that have taken place over the past 40 years have given very little mention to race. That was the core message delivered by Harvard Law School professor Carol Steiker in a talk sponsored by the Harvard Law School American Constitutional Society.

In a Harvard Law School lecture sponsored by the American Constitution Society, Linda Greenhouse, former Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times, discussed “the Roberts Court at Five.”

The American Constitution Society of HLS sponsored “The Constitution in 2020,” a panel discussion in November featuring Harvard Law School Professors Yochai Benkler ’94, Frank Michelman ’60, Mark Tushnet, and Noah Feldman, all contributors to a recently published book of the same title. The book’s goal is to contest the conservative idea that constitutional law should not be influenced by contemporary understandings of law and the political landscape.

Twenty years ago, the Federalist Society was founded to change the way people think about the law. It has done its job well, say members of a new HLS student organization that champions liberal values in the law.