OCU law school to host high-profile speakers

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Oct 28, 2004 by Journal Record staff

The Oklahoma City University School of Law will host two high- profile speakers in the coming weeks.

* On Nov. 10, for the school's annual Alumni and Friends Luncheon, the featured speaker will be Samuel M. Lohman of Geneva, Switzerland. This noon gathering in the Westin Hotel's Plaza Ballroom coincides with the Oklahoma Bar Association's annual meeting.

* Eight days later, Randy Barnett - the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Law at Boston University - will deliver the 2004-05 Brennan Lecture at 5 p.m. in the Homsey Family Moot Courtroom in the Sarkeys Law Center, at the corner of NW 23rd and N. Kentucky. The Nov. 18 lecture is free and open to the public.

Lohman, an Oregon native and a 1984 law graduate of OCU, is principle in Law Firm Lohman; president emeritus of The Offshore Institute, Isle of Man; and co-director of The Financial Services Institute, British Virgin Islands. He also chairs the supervisory board of the European Court of Arbitration and Mediation.

The topic of his luncheon address will be Anti-Money Laundering Compliance: Perils of Overzealous Reporting and Impact on Attorney/ Client Privilege. Advance registration is required. Tickets are $25. For reservations, contact Jackie Weekley, special events coordinator, by Nov. 5, either by phone at (405) 521-5197 or by e-mail to lawevents@okcu.edu.

On Nov. 29 the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Raich vs. Ashcroft, which concerns whether the federal government, under its power to regulate interstate commerce, possesses the authority to prohibit individuals from growing and using their own marijuana solely for medical purposes as is currently permitted by California law. Barnett, who successfully defended the California law in lower courts, will be the oralist in the Supreme Court.

As part of his preparation, on Nov. 18 Barnett will deliver a preliminary version of his oral argument before an OCU moot court and be questioned by a three-member panel of professors from the School of Law. This will mirror similar moot courts at Georgetown University and Harvard Law School. Details on the case can be found at http:// angeljustice.org/.

In announcing the Brennan Lecture, OCU praised Barnett as one the nation's most important and interesting scholars.

His scholarship has reshaped several seemingly disparate fields, including constitutional law, contracts law, and jurisprudence. The special mark of his work is the close examination of legal doctrine from the perspectives of philosophy and political theory. No matter the field of law studied, Barnett explores how law can be interpreted to better serve the requirements of justice.

In addition to the many articles he has authored in scholarly journals, Barnett is the author of seven books, including The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law; Contracts, Cases and Doctrine; Perspectives on Contract Law and his most recent work, Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty, published earlier this year by Princeton University Press. In this work, Barnett seeks to revive the natural rights foundation of the Constitution.

Barnett joined the faculty of Boston University School of Law in 1993 and became the Austin B. Fletcher Professor there in 1995. He teaches cyberlaw, contracts, and constitutional law. He is a senior fellow of the Cato Institute and has visited at Northwestern University School of Law, the Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala, and Harvard Law School. Before coming to Boston University, he taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Chicago-Kent College of Law. A graduate of Northwestern University and Harvard Law School, before entering law teaching he served as an assistant state's attorney for Cook County, Illinois.

Named in honor of Justice William J. Brennan Jr., the Brennan Lecture at OCU brings leading scholars in state constitutional law to campus. The Brennan Lecture is sponsored by the Center for the Study of State Constitutional Law and Government, under the direction of Professor Andrew Spiropoulos.

The OCU School of Law is fully approved by the American Bar Association and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools. It offers full- and part-time degree programs and serves a diverse student body of about 650, including many working professionals and other nontraditional students. Approximately half of its students come from outside Oklahoma, and its nearly 5,000 alumni practice in every state and several foreign countries.