Jonathan Hutcheson, president of the American Constitution Society at MU, said the debate was held in part because of the upcoming election but also for the sake of intellectual curiosity.

“It’s always healthy to discuss these issues openly in a way that’s structured and well informed,” Hutcheson said. “Instead of just getting snapshots here and there on these issues, it’s a little bit more of a focused discourse on the subject matter.”

Carolyn Hamilton, president of The Federalist Society at MU, said the goal was to represent different views and foster discussion.  

“Something that both of our groups strive to do is just open up everything for discussion,” she said. “Neither of us are political organizations. We just like to open up current topics.”

For more on this event, feel free to follow the link below to read the article online. 

Speakers discuss impact of presidential election on Supreme Court (Missourian)

For more background on our two distinguished speakers, please visit the following links:

For David C. Frederick, see http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/profile.php?id=dcf232
http://www.khhte.com/attorneys_view.php?id=88

For Stephen McAllister, see http://www.law.ku.edu/faculty/faculty/mcallister.shtml

Civil rights advocate William L. Taylor will speak on the increasingly important topic of judicial selection at the University of Missouri School of Law. Taylor’s talk, which will take place on Sept. 4 at 6 PM in the Hulston Hall courtroom, is hosted by the MU Chapter of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy.

Taylor is Director of the Washington, D.C.-based Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, a bipartisan organization that monitors the civil rights practices of the federal government. A long-time advocate for civil rights, he was selected as the first recipient of the D.C. Bar’s Thurgood Marshall Award and is considered a “Legend in the Law” by the same organization. Taylor is also an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, where he has been teaching since 1986.

A Yale Law School graduate, Taylor’s career began in 1954, when he served as a staff member of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. During the 1960s, he became general counsel and then staff director of the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

Among his many accomplishments, Taylor helped to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988, the Civil Rights Act of 1991 and the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994. Additionally, as a private attorney, he has helped minority and economically disadvantaged children to obtain an equal education by taking on the issue of school segregation. In his work on educational rights, Taylor represented minority children of St. Louis, and obtained for them the largest voluntary school desegregation plan in the nation.

Taylor has authored many articles on public policy and legal issues, as well as the 1971 book, Hanging Together: Equality in an Urban Nation. His memoirs, The Passion of My Times: An Advocate’s Fifty-Year Journey in the Civil Rights Movement, were published in 2004.

The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy is one of the nation’s leading progressive legal organization, comprised of lawyers, judges, students and policy makers committed to promoting the vitality of the Constitution and the fundamental values it expresses.  The views of the speaker are his own and should not be attributed to ACS.

“So Let’s Say Justice Scalia Writes D.C. v. Heller …” by Mike O’Shea (Concurring Opinions)

UPDATE: He did.  Scalia wrote the majority opinion and the result very in line with O’Shea’s analysis. There’s been a ton of coverage, but here are a few good articles that cover a lot of the bases.

Court: A constitutional right to a gun by Lyle Denniston (SCOTUSBlog)
Justices Rule for Individual Gun Rights by David Stout (NYT)
and see the Volokh Conspiracy generally for a ton of discussion/analysis

After Indiana enacted an election law (SEA 483) requiring citizens voting in person to present government-issued photo identification, petitioners filed separate suits challenging the law’s constitutionality.

Following discovery, the District Court granted respondents summary judgment, finding the evidence in the record insufficient to support a facial attack on the statute’s validity. In affirming, the Seventh Circuit declined to judge the law by the strict standard set for poll taxes in Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U. S. 663, finding the burden on voters offset by the benefit of reducing the risk of fraud.

Held: The judgment is affirmed.

Update: See Court rejects voter ID challenge; no new grants (SCOTUSblog) for a quick rundown of the opinion and Supreme Court Upholds Voter ID Law in Indiana (AP via NYT) for the earliest news coverage.

Update #2: See MU Professor Says U.S. Supreme Court’s Decision to Uphold Voter ID Law Should Not Revive Stricken Missouri State Law (MU News Bureau) for analysis on the potential Missouri impact by MU Law Professor Reuben, Initial Thoughts on the Supreme Court’s Opinion in Crawford, the Indiana Voter Identification Case (Election Law Blog) for a general breakdown by Loyola (LA) Professor Rick Hansen, In a 6-to-3 Vote, Justices Uphold a Voter ID Law (NYT) for more detailed news coverage by Linda Greenhouse, and the New York Times’ Editorial (from 4/29/08) The Court Fumbles on Voting Rights (NYT).