Alan M. Dershowitz is a Brooklyn native who has been called "the nation's most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer" and one of its "most distinguished defenders of individual rights," "the best-known criminal lawyer in the world," "the top lawyer of last resort," and "America's most public Jewish defender." He is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Dershowitz, a graduate of Brooklyn College and Yale Law School, joined the Harvard Law School faculty at age 25 after clerking for Judge David Bazelon and Justice Arthur Goldberg.
While he is known for defending clients such as Anatoly Sharansky, Claus von Bülow, O.J. Simpson, Michael Milken and Mike Tyson, he continues to represent numerous indigent defendants and takes half of his cases pro bono.
Dershowitz is the author of over 20 works of fiction and non-fiction, including 6 bestsellers. His writing has been praised by Truman Capote, Saul Bellow, David Mamet, William Styron, Aharon Appelfeld, A.B. Yehoshua and Elie Wiesel. More than a million of his books have been sold worldwide, in numerous languages, and more than a million people have heard him lecture around the world.
Sheila R. Foster is the Albert A. Walsh Professor of Real Estate, Land Use, and Property Law and Co-Director of the Stein Center for Law and Ethics at Fordham University. Professor Foster is the author of numerous publications on the intersection of race, civil rights law, and environmental law. She is most recognized for her work in the field of environmental justice. She is the coauthor of one of the leading texts in the field, From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement (NYU Press 2001). Professor Foster is also the author of numerous publications on antidiscrimination law and race and legal theory. Among her more recent works in this area are “Race, Agency and Equal Protection: A Retrospective on the Warren Court” in Earl Warren and the Warren Court: The Legacy in American and Foreign Law (2006) and “The Racial Subject in Legal Theory” (with R.A. Lenhardt) in Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics (forthcoming 2007)
The Nation's film critic Stuart Klawans is author of the books Film Follies: The Cinema Out of Order (a finalist for the 1999 National Book Critics Circle Awards) and Left in the Dark: Film Reviews and Essays, 1988-2001. His film criticism and reviews for The Nation won the 2007 National Magazine Award. When not on deadline for The Nation, he contributes articles to the New York Times and other publications.
Ronald L. Kuby was a longtime associate of radical lawyer William M. Kunstler. Mr. Kuby won a 43-million dollar judgment against subway gunman Bernhard Goetz. He was defense counsel to, among others, Black Rage gunman Colin Ferguson, the blind Muslim cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, Six Degrees of Separation imposter David Hampton, and former head of the Latin Kings Antonio Fernandez. He won an acquittal for Tawfiyq Abdul-Aziz who was charged with shooting a white police officer in the face. The jury found Mr. Abdul-Aziz not guilty of shooting a police officer and found him not guilty of possessing the weapon he did not use. Kuby won freedom for Anthony Faison and Charles Shepherd who spent 14 years in prison for a crime they did not commit and later won a $3.3 million dollar settlement in a wrongful conviction lawsuit for these same two men. Kuby got the conviction of Carmine Carini overturned based on newly-discovered evidence. Carini walked out of court with Kuby on June 12, 2007 after serving twenty-three years. Kuby successfully defended photographer Spencer Tunick when the Giuliani administration arrested him on several occasions to prevent him from taking pictures of naked participants in photo-shoots on the streets of the City of New York. Tunick went on to have two HBO movies made about his work and has become an internationally known and respected artist.
Mr. Kuby has represented dozens of defendants charged with leftist political violence from Puerto Rican independence fighters to members of American communist groups. He has successfully sued the City of New York in numerous civil rights cases involving police misconduct, including winning a half million dollars for the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. He is special counsel to the Uniformed Firefighters Association of NYC.
A former member of the Jewish Defense League, he responds to the criticism that he is a self-hating Jew by noting “except for Mom, there is hardly any Jew that I love more.” He has appeared on Nightline, Dateline, 20/20, and every other major television and radio program in the country. He has authored numerous law review articles and Op-ed pieces in the New York Times and New York Daily News. He is co-host of the WABC morning show, Curtis & Kuby, and guest-anchor on Court TV.
Honorable John F. Keenan was appointed United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York in 1983. He received a B.B.A degree from Manhattan College in 1951 and his LL.B. from Fordham University Law School in 1954, having received the award on graduation for excellence in inter-law school moot court competition. He served as an Assistant District Attorney (New York County) from 1956 to 1976; as Administrative Assistant District Attorney (1974); Chief Assistant District Attorney (1974-1976); Chief Assistant District Attorney (Queens County) (1973); Deputy Attorney General, Special Prosecutor for investigation into Corruption in the Criminal Justice System of New York City (1976-1976); Chairman and President, New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation (1979-1982) and Criminal Justice Coordinator for the City of New York (1982-1983).
He was a member of the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules from 1987-1993. In 1994, he was appointed by Chief Justice Rehnquist to a seven-year term on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington, D.C. and, in 1998, he was also appointed by Chief Justice Rehnquist to the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation.
He has received honorary degrees of Doctor of Laws from Manhattan College and Mount St. Vincent’s College in 1989, is the 1992 Recipient of the Medal of Achievement from the New York County lawyers’ Association; is the 1993 Recipient of the Emory R. Buckner Award from the Federal bar Council for Outstanding Public Service; is the 1994 Recipient of The Charles Carroll Award from The Guild of Catholic Lawyers and is also the 1998 recipient of The Ellis Island Medal of Honor from The National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations Foundation, Inc.
Judge Keenan has lectured extensively on law and related subjects. Among the institutions at which he has spoken are the law schools of the following universities: Harvard, Yale, Michigan, Northwestern, Columbia, St. John’s, New York University and Fordham.
Judge Keenan was an Adjunct Professor at Fordham Law School teaching Trial Advocacy (1992-1993).
Adam Liptak is the national legal correspondent at The New York Times. A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, Liptak practiced law at a large New York City law firm and in the legal department of The New York Times Company before joining the paper’s news staff in 2002.
He was a member of the reporting teams that examined the Jayson Blair and Judith Miller scandals. He has covered the Supreme Court nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito; the investigation into the disclosure of the identity of Valerie Wilson, an undercover C.I.A. operative; judicial ethics; and various aspects of the criminal justice system.
Mr. Liptak’s column on legal affairs, “Sidebar,” appears on Mondays; in addition to The Times, his work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and several law reviews.
Prof. Maria L. Marcus , a graduate of Yale Law School, is the author of "Learning Together: Justice Marshall's Desegregation Opinions" and other articles in professional journals. She has served as an Assistant Attorney General of New York State and Chief of its Litigation Bureau, arguing cases in federal courts including several in the United States Supreme Court. Prior to this, she was Associate Counsel at the N.A.A.C.P.'s national office and participated in Supreme Court cases that dismantled segregation statutes throughout the South. She has been on the Executive Committee of both the New York State Bar Association and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and was elected as Vice President of the latter. She is coach to Fordham's inter-school Moot Court program, and teaches Criminal Justice, Corporate and White Collar Crime and Discovery.
David Margolick is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where he has worked since 1996. He covers culture and politics, and his recent subjects have included the retired generals who called for Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation; profiles of both Jack Abramoff and Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case; and an examination of Hamas in Gaza. He has also written on Ariel Sharon and Tony Blair. Prior to coming to Vanity Fair, he was the National Legal Affairs Editor at the New York Times, where he wrote the weekly At the Bar column and covered the trials of O.J. Simpson, Lorena Bobbitt, and William Kennedy Smith.
Mr. Margolick, a graduate of the University of Michigan and Stanford Law School, is the author, most recently, of Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink, published by Knopf in 2005. His prior books are Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song (2001); At the Bar: The Passions and Peccadillos of American Lawyers (1995); and Undue Influence: The Epic Battle for the Johnson & Johnson Fortune (1993). He lives in New York City.
Cecilia Peck recently directed and produced, with Barbara Kopple, the feature-length documentary “Shut Up & Sing”, which chronicles the political backlash against the Dixie Chicks following their criticism of President Bush just prior to the invasion of Iraq. The film, shortlisted for the 2007 Academy Awards, was awarded Best Documentary by the Boston Society of Film Critics and the San Diego Film Critics. It won Best Documentary at the Aspen and Woodstock Film Festivals and Jury Prize at the Toronto and the Chicago Film Festivals. It received the Courage in Film Award from the Women Film Critics Circle, the Wyatt Award from the Southeastern Film Critics Circle, and was nominated for a Broadcast Critics Award and a National Film Critics Award.
Cecilia produced and directed Justice For All, an examination of the capital punishment system, which was awarded the Silver Gavel Award. She was Associate Producer on Defending Our Daughters, a non-fiction film about women’s human rights for Lifetime Television, which was honored with the Voices of Courage Award by the Women’s Refugee Committee. Her documentary credits as producer include A Conversation with Gregory Peck, a Special Selection in the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, as well as a special presentation for TCM and PBS American Masters, and Once Upon A Time in the Hamptons, a four hour documentary series for ABC primetime, both directed by Barbara Kopple.
Currently Ms. Peck is executive producing the HBO feature film, “An American Love Story”, which she co-wrote with husband Daniel Voll.
As an actress, she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her performance in “The Portrait”. She also studied dance with Martha Graham and performed in “American Document,” the last ballet choreographed by Miss Graham.
She has been contributing editor at Premiere Magazine, French edition, and Moving Pictures Magazine.
A graduate of Princeton University, she lives with her husband and two children in Los Angeles.
Ron Rosenbaum is the author of seven books most recently The Shakespeare Wars (Electrifying. A spectacular book."--Cynthia Ozick), and Explaining Hitler ("A remarkable journey by one of the most original journalists and writers of our time."—David Remnick). He also was editor of a recent anthology of essays on contemporary anti-semitism, Those Who Forget the Past.
A graduate of Yale, he left Yale Graduate School to write and his essays and journalism have appeared in Harper's, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Observer among other periodicals. The most recent of four collections of his work is The Secret Parts of Fortune. He currently writes a column on cultural issues for Slate, the online magazine, while working on his next book.
Norman Siegel was born in New York City and raised in Brooklyn and is a proud product of the public school system: P.S. 131, Pershing Jr. High, New Utrecht High School, Brooklyn College and NYU School of Law. Norman began his civil rights career with the American Civil Rights Union’s Southern Justice and Voter Project in 1968, following his graduation from Brooklyn College and NYU Law School. There, he was co-counsel in numerous lawsuits challenging the systemic exclusion of blacks and women from juries in various counties in South Carolina, Florida, Virginia and Alabama: voting rights cases such as Hadnott v. Amos (U.S. Supreme Court case allowing 89 mainly black candidates to run for political office in Alabama); in re: Herndon (civil and criminal contempt conviction under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 of Probate Judge of Greene County, Alabama for not placing black candidates on the ballot).
As co-counsel in Levy v. Parker, he challenged the constitutionality of the court martial of Dr. Howard B. Levy. In 1972, as Executive Director of the Youth Citizenship Fund Inc., he led an effort to register thousands of young, newly eligible voters. From 1973-76 as the New York Civil Liberties union (NYCLU) Field Director, he spearheaded the New York campaigns for the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon and the New York State Equal Rights Amendment. He was also co-counsel in the historic Holtzman v. Schlesinger United States Supreme Court case, an effort to halt the bombing of Cambodia. In 1978, he became Project Director for MFY Legal Services, inc., which provides legal assistance to poor people in neighborhoods in Manhattan.
As Executive Director of the NYCLU (1985-2000), Norman was involved in some of the City’s most critical civil rights and civil liberties struggles, including: the creation of an independent Civilian Complaint Review Board, the successful defense of the Brooklyn Museum’s right to exhibit controversial art, and the fight for citizens’ access to the steps of City Hall for protesting. In the last four years of private practice, Normal has advocated for and represented myriad groups: the newly created Association of New York City Education Councils; the Williamsburg community’s right to keep its local firehouse open; Prospect Heights, Brooklyn and West Harlem communities working to stop the government from using eminent domain to take their businesses and homes for the enrichment of private development (co-counsel); The Skyscraper Safety Campaign and Firefighters Families who seek the implementation of a skyscraper safety program and provision for our firefighters to guarantee they have proper working communications equipment; Republican National Convention arrestees held for more than 24 hours – filed habeas corpus petition (co-counsel); Critical Mass bicycle riders (co-counsel); and the World Trade Center Families For A Proper Burial (co-cousel).
As a contributor to the City’s major papers – The New York Times, Newsday, The Daily News, and the Amsterdam News – Norman has enriched the public debate on civil rights, race relations, and civil liberties. Demonstrating his commitment to engage NYC’s youth in public affairs, he co-taught a class – “Civil Rights and Race Relations” – at his alma mater New Utrecht High School, from 1989 to 2002. For more than 25 years he has served on the board of directors of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, and he is a board member and Treasurer of the Amadou Diallo Foundation.
Norman lives with his wife, Saralee Evans, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He is a proud grandfather.
