Sponsored by The Ethics Institute at Capital University Law School, the Columbus Bar Association’s Professionalism Committee, The Student Bar Association and Phi Alpha Delta
Wednesday, April 2, 2008; 12:15 – 2:15 pm (Reception to follow lecture)
Capital University Law School, 303 E. Broad St., Room 242
Approved for 1 hour of Ethics and 1 hour of Professionalism CLE credit.
Program is free, but registration is required.
Register online. (Lunch is not provided, so please plan ahead.)
Sponsored by the Capital University Law Review
Friday, April 4, 2008; 2:30 – 4:30 pm (Reception to follow lecture)
Columbus Museum of Art, 480 E. Broad St., Columbus, Ohio
Approved for 1.5 CLE
Program is free, but registration is required.
Register online.
Frank Armani Lecture April 2:
www.law.capital.edu/News/CLEs/20080402Armani.asp
John E. Sullivan Lecture April 4:
www.law.capital.edu/Sullivan/
Contact: Carmel Martin, Capital University Law School Event Coordinator, at (614) 236-6515, or at
cmartin@law.capital.edu.
In 1973, Frank Armani and his co-counsel, Francis Belge, gained international prominence as attorneys in the defense of serial killer Robert Garrow. Garrow told his attorneys where he buried the bodies of two dead girls. The attorneys thought they should verify the fact, because they were trying to acquit Garrow of a different murder using an insanity plea. Armani and Belge found the bodies and didn’t tell anyone – not the police, not the buried girls’ families, nor their own families. Six months later the bodies were found and a year later, Garrow’s case went to trial. It came out during the trial that defense counsel had seen the bodies and not told anyone, sending the community into an uproar. Armani received death threats and his practice, personal health, and family life suffered greatly. The lawyers’ struggle to protect the confidences of their client remains a central illustration in the teaching of legal ethics.
The popularity of the case and the difficult legal ethical issues that arose led to Armani co-authoring the book “Privileged Information.” Twentieth Century Fox made the movie “Sworn to Silence,” in which Armani had a small part and served as technical advisor; and Armani was featured on a WETA-TV documentary “Ethics on Trial,” a portion of which will be shown during the program on April 2.
In addition to hearing from Frank Armani himself, the program will include a panel discussion on reactions and professionalism issues related to the “Buried Bodies” case.
How law is made is often thought of as the province of elites: legal experts or elected or appointed officials. Yet the law is constructed out of the background material that is created by members of the society who are subject to it. Social movements represent organized and mobilized communities who play an important role in constructing authoritative interpretive communities who actually determine what the law is and what ambit elites have for constructing the formal apparatus of law. Professor Torres’ lecture will examine the relationship between elites and non-elites in the ethical construction of law.
Gerald Torres currently holds the Bryant Smith Chair in Law at the University of Texas at Austin and is former President of the Association of American Law Schools. A 1977 graduate of the Yale Law School, he joined the highly-regarded Children's Defense Fund as a staff attorney and took on cases involving civil rights violations of institutionalized children. Torres left CDF to accept a graduate fellowship at the University of Michigan Law School where he studied with Joe Sax, an early pioneer of environmental law. Professor Torres has visited at the Vermont Law School, the Stanford Law School and at the Harvard Law School where he served as the Oneida Nation Visiting Professor of Law. Before Moving to Texas, Professor Torres served as Counsel to Attorney General Janet Reno on environmental matters and Indian affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice. There, he coordinated the department's strategy on environmental justice and co-chaired the inter-agency working group on environmental justice. Torres also helped established the Office of Tribal Justice to coordinate Indian issues within the department and across the government. He has written widely on Indian law and has served as a consultant to several tribes. He also writes in the areas of environmental law and race and the law. In 2001, with Harvard Law School Professor Lani Guinier, Torres co-authored,
THE MINERS CANARY: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy (Harvard University Press),
www.minerscanary.org.
