Randy Barnett, JD, will speak at CSU's Cleveland Marshall College of Law on Thursday, March 20th at 12:00 Noon. Professor Barnett will lecture on natural law approaches to the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution. He is the Fletcher Professor of Law at Boston University. He received his BA in Philosophy from Northwestern University and his JD from Harvard Law School. This lecture is sponsored by the Cleveland Marshall Federalist Society. Aaron O'Brien, president of the Federalist Society as well as President of the Friends of Liberty, has invited all students of liberty to CSU to see this interesting and important talk. The event will be held in Room 237 of the Law Building, corner of 18th and Euclid in downtown Cleveland. Admission is free and open to all local liberty minded people. Please call Aaron O'Brien at 687-3978 if you have further questions.
Just as we on the Northcoast have made a conscious and determined effort to separate the political and outreach arms of local libertarianism, our friends in the Akron-Canton area have done the same. Recently, volunteers there formed the Summit/Portage Chapter of the LPO. In addition to the new political organization, they have already begun a separate outreach group. According to Barry L. Ganoe, quoted in the March 1997 LP News, the debate and supper club is designed to "invite non-Libertarians to witness and participate in an active debate environment to stimulate interest in the LP." Great minds think alike.
The February 24 meeting featured speaker Walker Todd. A lawyer, economist, French Ph.D. His presentation was on "The origins of civil society." He was born in 1945 east of Nashville, into a society that was fairly self sufficient. Voluntary cooperation was the successful basis of society -- maybe that is why Tennessee is known as the Volunteer state. That society appeared very Jeffersonian in nature, as people left others alone. The same was returned in kind and as people helped each other that too was returned in kind. Government was a local issue and occasionally a state issue. It was a fairly peaceful society.
From the Greeks in Homer's Iliad and in ancient Biblical text the civil origins and legal underpinnings of individual Liberty history is loaded with the recognition of individuals' rights. Common Law rights such as those enumerated in the Magna Carta forced the King's recognition of individual rights and natural liberties. Every man did what was right in his own eyes. But how can such a society run? Social coherence was maintained by way of voluntary cooperation and voluntary restraint. Liberty is not license.
This history, and the history of despots through time, helped shaped the thinking of the American founders. Our problems went into high gear in 1933, when the Federal Reserve Board switched America to a corporate state. In 1933 it was not necessary to close the banks, nor was the seizure of citizens' gold which occurred the next year. The post-World War Two dismantling of the war economy did not happen. The Korean and Vietnam crises insured that. LBJ's "Great Society" helped promote the government monolith into what we have today.
Alternatives? Personal adjudication issues on a local issue by peers. If we go to a truly global society, others who do not share a local view or culture will be dictating our lives and values. Witness the effects of the NAFTA and GATT treaties, which have sold our rights for profit.
9:00 - 9:30 Registration/Continental Breakfast 9:30 - 9:45 Welcome/Introduction Dave Ferguson, President, AFI 9:45 - 10:30 Mary Ruwart: "Healing Our World" 10:30 - 10:45 Break 10:45 - 11:30 Walker Todd: "Natural Law, Pesos, and Politics" 11:30 - 12:00 FIJA ... Nathan Lapp: "Order in the Court" 12:00 - 12:45 Lunch Buffet 1:00 - 1:30 AFI Meeting, Informal Gathering/Discussion
Dr. Mary J. Ruwart received her Ph.D. in Biophysics in 1974 from Michigan State University. After service as an Assistant Professor at St. Louis University, Department of Surgery, she joined The Upjohn Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1976 as a Senior Research Scientist. While there, from 1976 to 1995, she assisted in the development of new therapies for a variety of diseases, including AIDS. Mary is a newly elected member of the Board of Directors of the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA). She is profiled in several Who's Who publications, including International Leaders of Achievement and Who's Who of American Women. She is the Author of Healing Our World: The Other Piece of the Puzzle, a book about political freedom of choice. Visions Magazine thought it might be "the most important book of the decade."
Dr. Walker F. Todd received his Ph.D. in French from Columbia University and a J.D. degree from Boston University School of Law in 1974. He has published extensively on banking, international debt, and the regulation of the banking system and financial markets. From 1985 until 1994, Mr. Todd was assistant general counsel and research officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. In 1981 he was a member of the United States negotiating teams that obtained the release of 52 American hostages from Iran. Currently, he is a member of the bar in the states of Ohio and New York and is admitted to practice in all courts, including the United States Supreme Court. He has served as an adjunct faculty member in the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University since 1988.
"Order in the Court," a talk by Nathan Lapp, FIJA's New York State Coordinator, and well-known local civil activist. Mr. Lapp, whose family dairy and vegetable farm is located in Cassadaga, Chautauqua County, New York, speaks from a deeply personal perspective on jury nullification, and the Bill of Rights. Sisters, Barbara and Rachel Lapp, co-authored the book, No Law Against Mercy, a chronicle of the nationally publicized, (and locally jailed) "Mayville Five," a legal case with ties to the historic trials of William Penn and John Peter Zenger and jury responses to the Fugitive Slave Laws.