From: posner1 at nyc.rr.com (Louis Posner)
Sign and post the new online petition to Protest Scalia at Hofstra Ethics Conference at http://www.petitiononline.com/voter01/petition.html
To: Dean David Yellen, Hofstra Law School:
Antonin Scalia, one of the five ultra-conservative U.S. Supreme Court Judges who stopped the legal hand count of votes in Florida in Election 2000, was invited to speak at Hofstra University in Hempstead, Long Island, NY on Sunday, September 9th at 4:00 pm. To add insult to to injury, Scalia will be a keynote speaker and will be honored at this Hofstra Law School Ethics Conference at the Hofstra Univ. Student Center, Hempstead, Long Island, NY.
See what the legal community says about Injustice Scalia:
"Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the law." --John Paul Stevens, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Dissent Opinion on Florida Vote Recount.
"[In Bush v. Gore, Antonin Scalia] peeked beneath the blindfold of justice and decided the case not on neutral principles or precedents designed to govern future cases, but rather on the basis of whom he wanted to see win this election. In doing so he violated his judicial oath to do justice 'without respect to persons. ...'" -Prof. Alan M. Dershowitz, Harvard Law School
"The Supreme Court decision effectively handing the presidency to George W. Bush reveals the intensely partisan nature of the Court's current majority. The Court, to be sure, has always been political, but rarely as blatantly as today. Nor are there many precedents for Justices trampling on their own previous convictions to reach a predetermined conclusion." -Prof. Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History, Columbia University
"By stopping the vote count in Florida, the United States Supreme Court used its power to act as political partisans, not just judges of a court of law. We are professors at 137 American law schools, from every part of our country, of different political beliefs. But we all agree that when a bare majority of the U.S. Supreme Court halted the recount of ballots under Florida law, the five justices were acting as political proponents for candidate Bush, not as judges."
-Statement of 637 Law Professors lawprofs at the-rule-of-law.com
"[The Supreme Court majority in Bush v. Gore has] made it impossible for citizens of the United States to sustain any kind of faith in the rule of law as something larger than the self-interested political preferences of William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy, and Sandra Day O'Connor."
-Prof. Jeffrey Rosen, George Washington University Law School
"Having Justice Antonin Scalia speak on ethics is like having a prostitute speak on sexual abstinence. Scalia was the leader of the five Supreme Court Justices who, on December 12, committed one of the biggest and most serious crimes in American history when they stopped the recount in Florida, took the election away from the American people, and handed it to George Bush. In a fair and just world, Scalia should only be speaking from behind prison bars, not at a distinguished American University. After he did what he did how dare he have the stratospheric audacity to speak about ethics? Scalia is a disgrace to the judiciary and to the legal profession." - Vincent Bugliosi, author of "The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined The Constitution and Chose Our President"
"At least two judges should have recused themselves - Justice Scalia whose son was an attorney in the same law firm as Ted Olson, who pleaded the Bush case before the Court. In our system of Justice, grounds for recusal are based not on an understanding that there is an impropriety - but merely on the basis that there is, or could be, the appearance of an impropriety." - Louis Posner, New York attorney, founder and National Chairman of Voter March, The Democracy Chronicle, Vol. 1, No. 1, Interview, p. 10
I, the undersigned, condemn the actions of Hofstra Law School in honoring at an ethics conference Antonin Scalia who acted totally unethical in the decision in Bush v. Gore and I fully support the protests at Hofstra University described at http://www.votermarch.org/ScaliaProtest.htm
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
Sign and post the new online petition to Protest Scalia at Hofstra Ethics Conference at http://www.petitiononline.com/voter01/petition.html --