FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 22, 2000
CONTACT: Chris Friesleben, (515) 271-2833
APPEALS COURT JUDGE TO GIVE TALK AT DRAKE UNIVERSITY ON LEGAL PROFESSIONALISM
Judge Laurence H. Silberman, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, will discuss how expanding legal processes and judicial activism affect the U.S. economy and policy on Thursday, March 30, at Drake Law School.
The speech, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 4:30 p.m. in room 206 Cartwright Hall, 27th Street and Carpenter Avenue. It is sponsored by the Law School's Constitutional Law Center.
The correlation between lawyering and democratic capitalism was first mentioned in an essay Silberman wrote over 20 years ago. He was not the first to note the rise of litigation, nor the first to decry an imperial judiciary. But his view was different in that he focused on all legal processes as an integrated whole. "The legal process has become a cancer which constitutes both a major drag on our economy as well as an interference with the scope of democratic choice," he said then, maintaining that too great an expansion of the legal process would do more harm than good.
In his March 30 lecture, Silberman will discuss whether his fears were justified, and how his theory has played out in the last two decades.
Silberman was appointed a circuit judge by President Ronald Reagan in 1985. His government service also includes positions as a lawyer for the National Labor Relations Board; a solicitor for the Department of Labor; an undersecretary of labor for three years; a deputy attorney general of the United States; and ambassador to Yugoslavia.
There will be a reception for Silberman after the lecture. For more information about the event, or the Constitutional Law Center's Speaker Series, call Thomas Baker, law professor and director of the center, at (515) 271-3354.