News Article

Geoffrey R. Stone, the Harry Kalven, Jr. Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, will deliver the Gonzaga University School of Law’s 35th William O. Douglas Lecture at 7 p.m., Monday, April 10 in the Barbieri Courtroom at the Law School.

The event is free and open to the public and a reception will follow.

Stone served as law clerk to then Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. during the high court’s 1972 term. (Brennan stepped down from the Supreme Court in 1990; he died in 1997.) The title of Professor Stone’s talk will be, “Civil Liberties in Wartime: Lessons for the War on Terrorism.”

The United States has struggled, throughout its history, to strike the proper balance in wartime between protecting the national security and preserving citizens’ individual rights. Too often, Stone will assert, the nation has failed.

“In almost every episode, we have excessively and unnecessarily limited civil liberties, only later to regret our mistakes,” Stone said, adding that his lecture will address the lessons the nation can learn from its past failures on these matters. “What lessons can we learn from our past? How can we avoid these errors in the present?,” he said. “And, most important of all, what does this tell us about the war on terrorism?”

Stone has been a faculty member of the University of Chicago since 1973, served as dean of the University of Chicago Law School from 1987 to 1994 and was provost of the University of Chicago from 1994 to 2002.

The lecture series, which has traditionally focused on First Amendment issues, is named for Justice William O. Douglas, who served 36 years on the U.S. Supreme Court and wrote more than 1,200 opinions during his tenure. Douglas inaugurated the series on April 6, 1972, with a speech entitled “The Grand Design of the Constitution.” He grew up in Yakima, Wash. In addition to Douglas, three other U.S. Supreme Court justices have delivered the Douglas Lecture: William H. Rehnquist (1976), Byron R. White (1982) and Antonin Scalia (1994).

For more information, please contact Pete Tunis, William O. Douglas Committee Chair, at (509) 280-8150 or via e-mail at ptunis@lawschool.gonzaga.ed