event Archives - Home Safety Tech Pros

Outreach Event Sparks Dialogue on Disability Rights

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 20:52:41 +0000

Hundreds of lawyers and community members joined Minnesota federal judges in a recent courthouse event fostering awareness of disability rights.

The March event called, “The Unfinished Journey: Civil Rights for People with Developmental Disabilities and the Role of the Federal Courts,” was held at the Diana E. Murphy U.S. Courthouse in Minneapolis. It included a free continuing legal education (CLE) class for attorneys, followed by a public reception with an educational exhibit and art show of works created by artists with developmental disabilities.

“The true measure of a civilized and democratic society is the way we treat those individuals most in need and the most vulnerable amongst us,” said Judge Donovan W. Frank, of the District of Minnesota, who participated in the event. “A significant reason why disability discrimination continues, and why so many individuals continue to stereotype people with disabilities, is that they have not met individuals with disabilities, and they have not gotten to know people with disabilities, as I have had the privilege to do. When that happens, the stereotypes fall away, and then we all benefit.

“We are hopeful that our Unfinished Journey project will end the silence of so many and remind people that disability rights are civil rights. When that happens, the discrimination and stereotyping will end, and individuals with disabilities will receive ‘equal justice under law.’”

The evening reception unveiled a set of 20 educational banner displays on the history of disability rights in Minnesota, and the opening of “I AM,” the court’s newest juried public art exhibit. The juried installation includes 15 pieces selected by federal judges and artists from the disability arts community. The evening also included spoken-word and musical performances.

Visitors learn about the history of disability rights in Minnesota through a series of educational banners on display in the lobby of the Diana E. Murphy U.S. Courthouse in Minneapolis. Credit: Stan Waldhauser

“This event told the story of how well the United States government, including its courts, and the government of the State of Minnesota, including its courts, have fulfilled their moral obligations to our citizens with cognitive impairments,” said Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz, of the District of Minnesota, who spoke at the reception. “It is a story of triumph and tragedy, and a story whose ending has not yet been written.”

The court event was co-sponsored by the Minnesota Chapter of the Federal Bar Association, the Minnesota Governor’s Council on Developmental Disabilities, the Minnesota Disability Bar Association, and MSS, a nonprofit organization supporting individuals with disabilities.

The educational banners will be on display in the lobby of the Murphy Courthouse until July 17, after which it will move to the Warren E. Burger Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in St. Paul. The art exhibit will be displayed at the federal courthouse in St. Paul from May 16 to July 18.

“Sadly, people with developmental disabilities have been subject to unfair labels, stereotypes, institutionalization, mistreatment, and abuse, well into the 20th century,” said retired U.S. Magistrate Judge Becky R. Thorson, who was instrumental in planning the event. “Though progress has been made, the journey is unfinished. The goal of the exhibit is to educate and inspire others to help complete the journey, so that people with developmental disabilities can thrive as vital and equal members of the community.”

Related Topics: Public Education

Source link

The post Outreach Event Sparks Dialogue on Disability Rights appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.

Law professor Jonathan Turley discusses free speech at ABA Crossroads Caucus event

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 10:26:35 +0000

In a scoop any journalist would envy, the ABA Crossroads Caucus welcomed professor Jonathan Turley to the first-ever public event to discuss his new book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, just ahead of its planned release by Simon & Schuster. The program, held Aug. 3 at the ABA Annual Meeting, drew a broad audience, including then-ABA President Mary Smith, past ABA President Deborah Enix-Ross, numerous members of the ABA Board of Governors and at least one retired judge.

Turley, who is the J.B. & Maurice C. Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University, opened his talk by putting the concept of rage in our nation in historical context.

“I have called this an age of rage, but it is not our first. This country was born in rage … that is what the Boston Tea Party was. While celebrated as the moment a free people rose up to reject tyrannical rule, it was actually an economic protest that went from rage rhetoric to rioting.”

For Turley, we are living in arguably the most dangerous anti-free speech period in our history. In our universities, we find students educated in a highly orthodox environment where speech is described as the threat facing our system, rather than the thing that defines us as a people.

So what is it about free speech that makes it “indispensable”? Looking at our country’s legal history, Turley identified Louis Brandeis as one of the greatest civil libertarians to sit on our Supreme Court, a towering figure who (with Oliver Wendell Holmes) authored a series of dissents that would ultimately prevail in the court on the meaning of our fundamental rights.

Brandeis famously regarded free speech indispensable for the maintenance of all other rights. The Supreme Court has repeatedly referenced the indispensability of free speech, including most recently in the 303 Creative case. But our early thinkers and presidents differed on why free speech is indispensable: Is it a natural right, an inherent and foundational aspect of our humanity or, as John Adams and the early American courts came to regard it, a “functionalist” principle that advocates protecting free speech for its functional benefits to democracy, rather than its essence as a human right?

Looking to the sciences, Turley referenced neurological studies that suggest that the human brain is hardwired for expression.

“In the book, I suggest humans are creators with a common need to express themselves in the world around them. Putting aside the desire to procreate as itself an act of creation, the desire to create objects or expressions is irresistible for most people, from the simple act of doodling to the construction of the Great Wall of China.”

Turley cited The Creative Brain: The Science of Genius by neuroscientist Nancy Andreasen, who states that the human brain is wired for nonlinear thought, and as a result, “when the brain/mind thinks in a free and unencumbered fashion, it uses its most human and complex parts.”

For Turley, free thinking is an essential part of our humanity.

In a striking use of the visual arts to make his point, Turley asked his audience to consider Norman Rockwell’s 1943 Freedom of Speech painting. Artist Rockwell was moved to paint his Four Freedoms series after listening to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famed speech of that name on Jan. 6, 1941. Rockwell sought to capture the meaning of this indispensable right. His inspiration for the painting came not from Roosevelt but instead from a young selectman in Vermont named Jim Edgerton, who rose to question the financing of a new school.

Rockwell’s image was so penetrating and powerful that it was adopted by the government as part of its war bond campaign. The painting captures the essence of this right in our nation. Yet for many, it remains a quaint, if not campy, reference. For some, Rockwell was simply not as sophisticated as a cubist or abstract painter.

Turley thinks that that there is a striking parallel to the interpretative perspectives in the art and legal fields. Like the criticism of Rockwell’s work, the natural right or autonomous view of free speech is dismissed as simplistic. The world and art, critics suggest, must be recognized as more complex and nuanced.

While Rockwell studied at some of the leading art schools in America, art critic Clement Greenberg (who is credited as the intellectual force behind abstract expressionism and discoverer of Jackson Pollock, known for his “drip” paintings) denounced his realist art as popular kitsch. He railed against anyone who liked Rockwell (which clearly included most of America).

While Turley admits that he happens to like modern art, he is clear that when it comes to constitutional law, he is unapologetically Rockwellian. In constitutional law, the criticisms offered by Greenberg-like figures are strikingly familiar. Many law professors brush off natural or autonomy-based interpretations of the First Amendment as not “serious” and lacking a certain discernment.

Free speech is one of the paint drops in an abstract constitutional work in which the meaning comes from a functionalist whole. But if there is a “problem” with the First Amendment, it is not that it is abstract but that many academics do not like the seemingly clear meaning. They are constitutional connoisseurs looking at a Rockwell and seeing a Pollock.

For Turley, simple truths, like simple pictures, can hold profound meaning. He views the First Amendment as a work that people can understand without the assistance of interpretative agents to explain that the world is too complex for univocal meanings or simplistic depictions.

For “unsophisticated” viewers like Justice Hugo Black, the concept of free speech is immense, but the protection is clearly depicted: “The First Amendment’s language leaves no room for inference that abridgments of speech and press can be made just because they are slight. That Amendment provides, in simple words, that ‘Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.’ I read ‘no law … abridging’ to mean no law abridging.”

By contrast, Turley thinks that many law professors today often sound like constitutional connoisseurs defining the complexities of free speech to justify limitations on this right. Yet what if the First Amendment is a realist depiction of free speech, both literal and profound? He sees in today’s legal academia an echo chamber a similar domination of constitutional critics who tend to reject a natural rights or autonomous basis for constitutional rights like free speech.

Sadly, most law schools have largely purged their faculties of conservative or libertarian professors. Young faculty embracing such views are at risk of being dismissed as “choosing not to be serious,” and their works are likely to be met with Greenbergian “harrumphs” that they are little more than constitutional kitsch.

Despite the many challenges to free speech that Turley observes, he says he remains optimistic.

“If you believe that free thought and expression are the essence of being human, that impulse cannot be entirely extinguished. While we can lose our appetite for free speech, we never truly lose our taste for it. In the end, our faith in free speech is really a faith in each other. A faith that we do not have to fear opposing viewpoints but rather fear the inclination to silence others.”

The ABA Crossroads Caucus thanks professor Turley for joining us at the Annual Meeting and helping us to launch this debate on the importance of ensuring viewpoint diversity.

Jo Ann Engelhardt is a member of the ABA Board of Governors representing District 8, a member of the board of the American Bar Foundation and a founding member of the ABA Crossroads Caucus.

This column reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Association.

Source link

The post Law professor Jonathan Turley discusses free speech at ABA Crossroads Caucus event appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.

Judge says he misperceived interaction at bar event as flirting, leading him to touch lawyer’s ‘lower hamstring’

homesafetytechpros — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 03:40:46 +0000

Ethics

Judge says he misperceived interaction at bar event as flirting, leading him to touch lawyer’s ‘lower hamstring’

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 9, 2024, 8:55 am CST

Image from Shutterstock.

A Baltimore judge faces a hearing in May to resolve ethics allegations that he inappropriately touched a female lawyer following a bar association event at the Maryland Club last year.

Judge Kevin M. Wilson is accused of inappropriate behavior after the event in May 2023, which was sponsored by the Bar Association of Baltimore City Young Lawyers Division. The Baltimore Sun and Baltimore Banner have coverage. They credit the Maryland Daily Record with breaking the story.

Wilson is accused of touching the lawyer when she stopped at a table where Wilson and another judge were seated after the event. As the lawyer was facing the other judge, she reported feeling Wilson’s hand touched her leg in an up and down movement, according to the statement of ethics charges by the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities.

Two other lawyers said they witnessed Wilson’s touching. One of them said she told Wilson his behavior was inappropriate and he should stop. The judge then moved his hand away, according to the allegations.

But Wilson allegedly put his hand back on the attorney’s leg, moved it under her skirt, and touched her buttocks. The lawyer stepped away and left.

The event was called “Join Our District Court Judges for Practice Tips on Tap,” according to Wilson’s Jan. 31 response to the allegations. Wilson had declined an invitation to serve on the event’s judicial panel, but he attended to support his colleagues. Afterward, he and several other attendees were invited to attend a social dinner at a different location in the Maryland Club called the Charles Street Grill.

Before the incident, Wilson’s response said, he and the lawyer had interacted in what he “genuinely perceived as reciprocal flirtation.” During the meal, he and the lawyer “continued flirting with each other which ultimately led to Judge Wilson touching [the lawyer’s] ankle, calf and lower hamstring.”

At no time did Wilson touch the lawyer’s buttocks, his response said. Nor did anyone tell him to stop, although one witness said, “I can see you touching her leg.” And his touching was based on “a genuine belief that their interactions were mutual and welcomed,” the response said.

Wilson cited a conversation in which he complimented the lawyer’s shoes, prompting her to allegedly respond that she liked wearing “sexy heels” when she goes out. He also cites an alleged comment she made after he answered a question at the event about his views on loss of consortium. He said he had only one case involving the issue and he awarded a lot of money. The lawyer then “said under her breath softly, ‘I would get a lot of money if I were in front of you,’ ” the response says.

During the meal, Wilson and the lawyer “continued to exchange flirtatious glances,” according to the response.

Wilson now realizes his perception was incorrect and he “sincerely apologizes and deeply regrets” touching that made the lawyer feel uncomfortable, according to the response. The judge is now meeting with a counselor twice a month “to improve his interpersonal skills, better recognize power dynamics, and avoid similar situations in the future,” the answer says.

Wilson’s lawyers at Silverman Thompson did not immediately respond to an ABA Journal email asking if the judge would like to comment.

Wilson is a single father to two children who are currently in college.

Source link

The post Judge says he misperceived interaction at bar event as flirting, leading him to touch lawyer’s ‘lower hamstring’ appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.