Susan Herman

In a column that appeared in TIME Magazine’s Ideas section, “ACLU President: We Didn’t Always Have Free Speech,” Professor Susan Herman points to the recent student protests at the University of Missouri as another important chapter in the longstanding battle for free speech and racial equality.

Professor Susan Herman explains why robots might share our rights if they functioned as our intelligent and independent agents.

Professor Susan Herman co-authored this op-ed that appeared in the Des Moines Register that specifically lays out the myriad reasons to re-examine forfeiture laws.

Professor Susan Herman was interviewed in this examination of issues ranging from the concept of democracy to free speech, civil liberties, war and terrorism, human rights, social justice and more.

Professor Susan Herman, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, participated in a panel at the international conference on the “Freedom of the Press” hosted by the Jerusalem Press Club. The panel of lawyers and journalists weighed the contemporary state of freedom of the press and threats to journalists with the attempt to fight terrorism.

About the lecture: "Surveillance, censorship, invasion of privacy: many people, including thought-leaders and legislators on both sides of the aisle, think the law is lagging behind technology when it comes to protecting our rights and liberties. But current legislation continues to allow the government to intercept and access a treasure trove of information about who you are, where you go, and what you do, data that are collected by cell phone providers, search engines, social networking sites, and other websites every day. Susan N. Herman, President of the American Civil Liberties Union and Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, is our guide to understanding how we can preserve our civil liberties without compromising public safety and national security."

Professor Susan Herman discusses how Western nations should balance civil liberties concerns in developing programs to combat threats from extremist groups such as ISIS.

Susan Herman, president of the American Civil Liberties Union and Centennial Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, spoke about “Civil Liberties and the ‘War on Terror.’” Her talk focused on the time-period after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, when, according to Herman, the government “supersized laws and loosened the Constitution.” She provided a number of accounts over the past 14 years where the lives of American citizens, immigrants, and foreign students studying in the United States were disrupted because of FBI investigations.

Professor Susan Herman was quoted in a Slate article titled “The History of the Pocket Constitution” on January 28, 2015.

Professor Susan Herman, president of the ACLU, was interviewed by Pasadena Weekly and The Santa Barbara Independent in advance of her appearances on the West Coast next week. Her talk, titled “Civil Liberties in National Security Era: What Happened to Edward Snowden?,” will explore the balance between safety and maintaining basic rights – a theme drawn in part from her book, Taking Liberties: The War on Terror and the Erosion of American Democracy (2011), recently published in paperback.

In a radio interview with Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, BLS Professor and ACLU President Susan Herman commented on a week of extraordinary Supreme Court rulings, from changes to the Voting Rights Act to the strike down of the Defense of Marriage Act and California's Proposition 8.

In light of the Boston bombing, Professor Susan Herman, president of the ACLU, argues in U.S. News & World Report against detaining an American citizen suspected of committing a crime within the United States as an enemy combatant. Such detention is “illegal, unconstitutional, unnecessary and unsettling,” according to Professor Herman—especially when federal investigators and prosecutors, with local assistance, are showing themselves to be “fully capable” of handling the case.

Professor Susan Herman recently contributed to Learning from Precedent, a new book for prospective law students. The author, an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley, published the book based on interviews he had with prominent lawyers while deciding whether or not to apply to law school.

In an op-ed for the American Lawyer, Professor Susan Herman discusses how the overreach of the Patriot Act not only affects ordinary Americans, but also the professional lives of lawyers. She outlines how the controversial law can require attorneys to receive the government's permission to represent certain clients and can even suggest that a lawyer has supported materially supported terrorists.

Thought Economics, a blog that publishes one on one interviews with the some of the most influential people around the world, spoke with Professor Susan Herman in a post on the leading experts on justice. In the interview, Professor Herman touches on the role and purpose of law in society, free speech and censorship, and justice in the third world.

American Civil Liberties Union President and Brooklyn Law School Professor Susan Herman will speak on national securities issues and Guantanamo at the University of Nebraska, College of Law. Her lecture, “How the Bush/Obama War on Terror Threatens Ordinary Americans, Constitutional Rights, and Democracy” is based on her upcoming book, Taking Liberties: The War on Terror and the Erosion of America Democracy.

The New York Post publicized My Daily Constitution's weekend celebration of the First Amendment. Professor Susan Herman, President of the ACLU, presented at the event and said, "The Constitution makes us the government of this country. Not knowing what’s in the Constitution is like being an umpire in a ballgame and not knowing the rules."

Professor Susan Herman headlined the 26th annual Jefferson B. Fordham debate at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law about the Patriot Act, which will be reexamined by Congress this year. The Patriot Act was passed soon after the September 11 attacks in an attempt at counterterrorism, but has been criticized for unfairly targeting innocent people. Professor Herman, who is also the President of the ACLU, argued, "There is a tremendous cost to all these broad laws," mentioning those innocents who have lost jobs, abilities to travel freely in and out of the U.S., and even those who were prosecuted for unknowingly donating to charities associated with terrorist groups.

Professor Susan Herman was named September Alumna of the Month by New York University School of Law for her work with the American Civil Liberties Union, New York Civil Liberties Union, and Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York.

Professor Susan Herman, president of the ACLU, was the featured speaker at the annual Scolnik Dinner in Freeport, Maine. Sponsored by the Main Civil Liberties Union, the Scolnik Dinner is held each year to pay tribute to an outstanding Maine lawyer in the field of civil rights. The 2009 honoree was James Mitchell who challenged Maine’s Sex Offender Registry law.

The Rutgers School of Law-Newark will hold a symposium on March 6 entitled "The Gender Dimensions on Terrorism: How Terrorism Impacts the Lives of Women." The symposium is hosted by the Women's Rights Law Reporter, the nation's oldest legal periodical on women's rights law, and will feature several prominent legal experts, including Professor Susan Herman, President of the ACLU.

Susan Herman, Centennial Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, has co-edited a book based on the first symposium held to examine issues of federalism raised by the “war on terror.” Titled Terrorism, Government, and Law: National Authority and Local Autonomy in the War on Terror (Praeger Security International 2008) (co-editor P. Finkelman), the book features the work of contributors from the David G. Trager Public Policy Symposium, “Our New Federalism? National Authority and Local Autonomy in the War on Terror,” which Professor Herman organized at Brooklyn Law School in November 2003.

Susan N. Herman, Centennial Professor of Law, presented a compelling analysis of a 100-year old murder case and the classic novel that it inspired, “An American Tragedy,” by Theodore Dreiser, at the New York State Court of Appeals on June 26. She spoke as part of a lecture series co-sponsored by the Court and the Historical Society of the Courts of the State of New York, and hosted by Chief Judge Judith Kaye. Also on the program was Francesca Zambello, the acclaimed director of an opera based upon the novel that had its world premiere in 2005 at the Metropolitan Opera.

Professor Susan N. Herman, Centennial Professor of Law, was interviewed by Dan Abrams on MSNBC-TV News Live on the second day of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Judge Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court. Herman, a widely regarded expert on Supreme Court decisions, and co-panelist Adam Ciongoli, a former law clerk to Judge Alito, commented on the Judge’s answers concerning Roe v. Wade and the role of stare decisis, the legal doctrine of respecting past precedent. Herman also spoke about broader issues of the philosophy of judicial review and judicial views about federalism.