IMMEDIATE
Michael Greenwald
800-CLE NEWS, ext.1626
(Philadelphia) – United States Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist will deliver the opening remarks at the 78th Annual Meeting of The American Law Institute (ALI) in Washington, D.C. Other speakers during the May 14-17 meeting at The Mayflower will include American Bar Association President Martha W. Barnett; Judge Richard Sheppard Arnold of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit; Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit; Dean Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania; and the Chief Justice of Canada, Beverley McLachlin.
Chief Justice Rehnquist will deliver his remarks at 10:00 a.m. on Monday, May 14. A graduate of Stanford University and Stanford Law School and a former law clerk to Justice Robert H. Jackson of the United States Supreme Court, Chief Justice Rehnquist practiced law in Phoenix from 1953 to 1969, when he became a United States Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. In 1973 he was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Nixon, and in 1986 he was chosen by President Reagan to succeed Warren E. Burger as Chief Justice. He is the author of The Supreme Court: How It Was, How It Is (1987; revised and expanded, 2001), Grand Inquests: The Historical Impeachments of Justice Samuel Chase and President Andrew Johnson (1992), and All the Laws But One: Civil Liberties in Wartime (1998). Chief Justice Rehnquist will be addressing an ALI Annual Meeting for the eighth time, having previously done so in 1987, 1990, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1998, and 2000.
Martha W. Barnett, who will also speak during the opening session on May 14, is a partner in the Tallahassee, Florida, office of Holland & Knight LLP. Her practice primarily involves public policy and governmental law. Ms. Barnett received her undergraduate degree from Newcomb College of Tulane University in 1969 and her law degree in 1973 from the University of Florida, where she was an associate editor of the University of Florida Law Review. She joined her present firm in 1973 and became a partner in 1979.
Prior to her election to the American Bar Association presidency in the summer of 2000, Ms. Barnett chaired several ABA committees and its Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities; she has also served on the Executive Council of the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar and on the Executive Board of its Central and East European Law Initiative. In 1994 she became the first woman to chair the ABA House of Delegates, of which she had been a member since 1984. Ms. Barnett is also a former Chair of the Florida Commission on Ethics and a member of the State Constitution Revision Commission. She has received several awards, including Outstanding Alumna of the University of Florida, Outstanding Graduate of Tulane University, the 1996 Arabella Babb Mansfield Award from the National Association of Women Lawyers, and the 2000 Award of the National Legal Aid & Defender Association.
A member of the Institute since 1982, Ms. Barnett is presently serving as Vice-Chair of the ALI-ABA Committee on Continuing Professional Education and as Chair of the ALI-ABA Executive Committee.
Richard Sheppard Arnold, a member of the Institute's Council, its governing body, will be the principal speaker at the Institute's Annual Dinner on Wednesday evening, May 16. A native of Texarkana, Texas, Judge Arnold was graduated from Yale University and, first in his class, from Harvard Law School, where he was Case Editor of The Harvard Law Review. He was a law clerk to the late Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., of the United States Supreme Court during the Court’s 1960-61 term. After three years of practice in Washington, D.C., with the firm of Covington & Burling, he became in 1964 a partner in the Texarkana, Arkansas, firm of Arnold & Arnold. Following a period of service as Legislative Secretary to Governor Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, he returned to Washington in 1975 after the election of Governor Bumpers to the Senate and became his Legislative Assistant. In 1978 Judge Arnold was named to the United States District Court for the Eastern and Western Districts of Arkansas, and in 1980 President Carter appointed him to serve on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. He was Chief Judge of the Court from 1992 until he stepped down from that post in 1998 but continued to sit as a Judge of the Eighth Circuit based in Little Rock. He assumed senior status on April 1, 2001.
Judge Arnold served as Chair of the Committee on the Budget of the Judicial Conference of the United States from 1987 to 1996 and as a member of the Conference’s Executive Committee from 1992 to 1998. In 1998 he received an award from the Women Lawyers’ Association of Greater St. Louis for leadership in support of women in the law, and he was the 1999 recipient of the American Judicature Society’s Edward J. Devitt Distinguished Service to Justice Award. A Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, he has been an ALI member since 1973 and was elected to the Council in 1985.
Judge Higginbotham, who will speak on Tuesday, May 15, on "The Changing Times of the U.S. District Courts," at a luncheon honoring new life members, members elected 50 years ago, and members who were elected within the last five years, will represent the Institute’s membership class of 1976, which attains life membership at the 2001 Annual Meeting. An Alabama native, Judge Higginbotham received a B.A. from the University of Alabama and an LL.B. from its School of Law, where he was Note Editor of the Alabama Law Review. After serving for three years as a Judge Advocate in the United States Air Force, he practiced for 11 years in Dallas, Texas, and he was a partner in the Dallas firm of Coke & Coke when in 1975 President Ford appointed him to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. At that time he was the youngest sitting federal judge in the United States. He was elevated to his present seat on the bench of the Fifth Circuit by President Reagan in 1982.
Judge Higginbotham is a former Chair of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules of the Judicial Conference of the United States and member of its State-Federal Relations Committee. A member of the American Bar Association’s Ethics 2000 Commission, he has chaired the Appellate Judges Conference of the ABA’s Judicial Administrative Division and served on the Council of its Section on Antitrust Law. Since 1976 Judge Higginbotham has been an Adjunct Professor at Southern Methodist University School of Law, and he has also taught at the law schools of the Universities of Alabama and Texas. He served as President of the Patrick E. Higginbotham Inn of Court in Dallas and for four years as President of the American Inns of Court Foundation. He was an Adviser to the ALI’s Complex Litigation Project and to the Study of Habeas Corpus by The Center for State Courts. He is currently Chair of the Board of Trustees of The Center for American and International Law, formerly The Southwestern Legal Foundation, and a member of the Board of Overseers of the RAND Institute for Civil Justice. Judge Higginbotham received the University of Alabama’s Dan Meador Award in 1986, was the 1997 recipient of the Samuel F. Gates Litigation Award presented by the American College of Trial Lawyers, and holds an honorary doctorate from Southern Methodist University.
Dean Jamieson will speak at a luncheon on Wednesday, May 16, on "Incivility and Its Discontents: Contempt and Conviction in Congress." A native of Minneapolis and a graduate of Marquette University, she received a doctorate in Communication from the University of Wisconsin in 1972. She began her teaching career at the University of Maryland, where she later became a full professor. In 1986 she was named the G. B. Dealey Regents Professor of Communications and Chair of the Speech and Communications Department at the University of Texas, and in 1989 she became Dean and Professor at the Annenberg School, where she is also Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
Dean Jamieson is a leading authority on the rhetoric and advertising of political campaigns and frequently appears as a political commentator on national television and radio. She is the author or co-author of 10 books, including Everything You Think You Know About Politics...and Why You’re Wrong (2000), Spiral of Cynicism: Press and Public Good (1997), Beyond the Double Bind: Women and Leadership (1995), and Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction and Democracy (1992). She received the Speech Communication Association’s Golden Anniversary Book Award for Packaging the Presidency (1984) and the Winans-Wichelns Book Award for Eloquence in an Electronic Age (1988). The recipient at various times of Knapp, Ford, Fulbright, and East-West Center fellowships, Dean Jamieson in 1995 received the Murray Edelman Distinguished Career Award, which was presented by the Political Communication Division of the American Political Science Association for her lifetime contribution to the study of political communication.
Chief Justice McLachlin will speak at a luncheon on Thursday, May 17, on "Cultural Diversity: A Comparison of Canada and the U.S." A native of Pincher Creek, Alberta, the Chief Justice received an Honours Arts Degree in 1964 from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where she majored in philosophy. She then went on to Law School at Alberta and graduated in 1968 as gold medalist. In that same year she also received a Master’s degree in Philosophy. After experience as a practitioner in firms in Edmonton, Fort St. John, and Vancouver, she joined the law faculty of the University of British Columbia in 1974, eventually becoming a full professor with tenure. In 1981 she became a Judge of the County Court of Vancouver and later that year was appointed to the Supreme Court of British Columbia; in 1986 she joined the British Columbia Court of Appeal. She became Chief Justice of the British Columbia Supreme Court in 1988, and the following year was named to the Supreme Court of Canada. In 2000 Prime Minister Jean Chrétien appointed her Chief Justice of Canada, and she became the first woman to serve in that position.
Chief Justice McLachlin is co-author of British Columbia Supreme Court Practice, British Columbia Court Forms, and Canadian Law of Architecture and Engineering, and the author of numerous articles for professional journals. She has also received honorary degrees from a number of institutions.
The opening session on Monday, May 14, will also include reports by ALI Director Lance Liebman, ALI-ABA Executive Director Richard E. Carter, and Treasurer Bennett Boskey. Other highlights of the ALI Annual Meeting will include a Monday luncheon and colloquium for the particular benefit of new members and a Tuesday evening Officers' Reception and Buffet for members and guests at The Corcoran Gallery of Art. Also on Tuesday will be a special tour of Washington’s National Cathedral in historic Georgetown for spouses and guests of members, followed by a visit to and luncheon at the Hillwood Museum and Gardens.
The American Law Institute, founded in 1923 and based in Philadelphia, drafts and publishes restatements of the law, model codes, and other proposals for legal reform "to promote the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs, to secure the better administration of justice, and to encourage and carry on scholarly and scientific legal work." Its membership consists of judges, practicing lawyers, and legal scholars from all areas of the United States as well as some foreign countries, selected on the basis of professional achievement and demonstrated interest in the improvement of the law. The Institute’s incorporators included Chief Justice and former President William Howard Taft, future Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, and former Secretary of State Elihu Root. Judges Benjamin N. Cardozo and Learned Hand were among its early leaders.
The Annual Meeting represents one of the last steps in the development of an Institute draft. The Institute's restatements, model codes, and legal studies are used as references by the entire legal profession.
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