David
Cole, an expert in constitutional
law, will speak Tuesday, May 11, at4 p.m. in the Reamer Campus Center Auditorium atUnion College. His topic will be, “Enemy Aliens and American Freedoms: Double
Standards and Civil Liberties in the War on Terror.” Sponsors for the event are
the College's American Studies Program and Minerva Committee. His talk is free
and open to the public.
Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, is also a volunteer staff attorney for the Center
for Constitutional Rights, legal affairs correspondent for The Nation, and
a commentator on National Public Radio's “All Things Considered.” His legal
expertise includes criminal procedure, civil liberties and national security,
and immigration law.
A graduate of Yale University and Yale Law School, Cole litigated many First Amendment cases, including
Texas v. Johnson and U.S. v. Eichman, which extended First
Amendment protection to flag-burning. He represented the “Los Angeles 8” for 16 years, and numerous Arab and Muslim
immigrants against whom the INS sought to use secret evidence.
The American Lawyer named Cole one of the top 45 public-sector lawyers
in the country under age 45. New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis
called him “one of the country's great legal voices for civil liberties today,”
and former CIA director James Woolsey called David's new book, Enemy Aliens:
Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism (2003),
“the essential book in the field.” Cole's first book, No Equal Justice: Race
and Class in the American Criminal Justice System, was named Best
Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Boston Book Review, best book on an
issue of national policy in 1999 by the American Political Science Association,
and awarded the Alpha Sigma Nu prize from the Jesuit Honor Society in 2001.