Should ex-offenders be denied the right to vote? That issue will be the center of Constitution Day programs at Rutgers University in Newark on Sept. 17. A 90-minute forum, including a mock appellate argument before a panel of student judges and a moderator, will examine that issue beginning at 2:30 p.m. The Constitution Day program is free and open to the public. A campuswide voter registration drive will be held on the Norman Samuels Plaza from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. The day’s events will end with a showing of the film, “1776,” at 4:30 p.m.
The Constitution Day program and film will be in the Paul Robeson Campus Center, 350 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. The first 100 attendees will receive a free copy of the U.S. Constitution.
The mock appellate argument will be presented by nationally renowned constitutional law expert Frank Askin, who will discuss “The Constitutionality of the Denial of Voting Rights to Ex-Offenders.” He will deliver the argument before a panel of student and faculty judges and a moderator, Jonathan Lurie. An audience Q & A will follow.
Askin is a professor of law at Rutgers School of Law-Newark and founder of the school’s pioneering Constitutional Litigation Clinic. Askin, a former general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union, is author of DEFENDING RIGHTS: a Life in Law and Politics. (Askin’s biography is attached.) Jonathan Lurie is a history professor and expert in American legal history and author of Military Justice in America.
This is Rutgers-Newark’s fourth annual program marking Constitution Day, an American federal observance that recognizes the ratification of the United States Constitution. This year, that historic event will be observed on Sept. 17, the day the U.S. Constitutional Convention (39 of 55 delegates from 12 states) discarded the Articles of Confederation and signed the Constitution in 1787.
The law establishing Constitution Day was created in 2004; previously it was known as “Citizenship Day.”
Although a federal mandate, “It is important to celebrate the Constitution because many students don’t appreciate the historical importance of the Constitution as the foundation for democratic rights, not only for the past but for the future as well,” states Vice Chancellor Marcia Brown, coordinator of the event.
For more information, please contact Carla Capizzi, 973/353-5262, or email: capizzi@rutgers.edu.
The Paul Robeson Campus Center is wheelchair-accessible, as is the Rutgers-Newark campus. Rutgers Newark can be reached by New Jersey Transit buses and trains, the PATH train and Amtrak from New York City, and by Newark Light Rail. Metered parking is available on University Avenue and at Rutgers Newark’s public parking garage, at 200 University Ave. Printable campus maps and driving directions are available online at:
PROFESSOR FRANK ASKIN
RUTGERS NEWARK LAW SCHOOL
Professor of Law and Robert E. Knowlton Scholar
(973) 353-5687
(973) 353-1249 (fax)
faskin@kinoy.rutgers.edu
Professor Askin is Director of the Constitutional Litigation Clinic and he also teaches Civil Procedure; Election Law, and Public Interest Advocacy.
He entered Rutgers School of Law-Newark in September 1963 as a student — after an earlier career as a journalist — and has been there ever since. He was appointed to the faculty upon his graduation with highest honors in 1966. Admitted to the law school without an undergraduate degree, he was awarded a B.A. from City College of New York at the same time he received his J.D. from Rutgers.
In 1970, he established the Constitutional Litigation Clinic as part of the law school’s curriculum; he still is associated with the clinic. Under his guidance, the clinic litigated the first police surveillance cases in the nation; battled the FBI over the investigation and maintenance of files on two precocious New Jersey high schoolers who corresponded with “the wrong persons”; defended affirmative action programs up to the United States Supreme Court; challenged the New Jersey State Police for stopping and searching “long-haired travelers” on the state’s highways; argued for the right of the homeless to vote and to have access to public library facilities; and protected the right of grassroots advocacy groups to take their messages door-to-door and to privately owned shopping malls. He was attorney for the Plaintiffs in NAACP v. Harvey, which claimed that New Jersey law forbidding convicted felons from voting until they completed parole/probation violated the State Constitution. The suit was dismissed by the Appellate Division, and the New Jersey Supreme Court denied review. Prof. Askin now has a petition pending before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) arguing that the New Jersey law violates the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man.
Professor Askin has been a member of the National Board of the American Civil Liberties Union since 1969 and has been one of the ACLU’s four general counsel since 1976. In 1986, he was the (unsuccessful) Democratic candidate for Congress in New Jersey’s 11th District, covering parts of Essex and Morris Counties. His memoir, DEFENDING RIGHTS: A LIFE IN LAW AND POLITICS, was published in 1997 by Humanities Press. He is listed in Woodward & White’s Best Lawyers in America.
Professor Askin has a personal home page http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~askin/, with information on his publications and other activities.
