David Pozen is the Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law at Columbia University, where he specializes in constitutional law, information law, and nonprofit law. Pozen has written extensively in the area of constitutional law. [1]
Pozen received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale College in 2002, a Master of Science degree from Oxford University in 2003, and a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School in 2007. [2]
From 2010 to 2012, Pozen served as special advisor to Harold Hongju Koh at the U.S. Department of State. [1] Previously, he was a law clerk for Justice John Paul Stevens on the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Merrick Garland on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, as well as a special assistant to Ted Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee. [3]
Pozen has published dozens of articles, essays, and book chapters and edited two volumes for Columbia University Press, Troubling Transparency: The History and Future of Freedom of Information in 2018 (with Michael Schudson) and The Perilous Public Square: Structural Threats to Free Expression Today in 2020. In 2019, Pozen received the Early Career Scholars Medal from the American Law Institute. [1] [4]
In April 2024, Pozen's book, The Constitution of the War on Drugs, was published. Its publisher calls it an "[a]uthoritative and first-of-its-kind critical constitutional history of the 'war on drugs' [that] [s]hows how the war on drugs was shaped by constitutional law, and how constitutional law was shaped by the war on drugs." [5]
Pozen's works as of 2022 include:
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects the liberty of married couples to use contraceptives without government restriction. The case involved a Connecticut "Comstock law" that prohibited any person from using "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception". The court held that the statute was unconstitutional, and that its effect was "to deny disadvantaged citizens ... access to medical assistance and up-to-date information in respect to proper methods of birth control." By a vote of 7–2, the Supreme Court invalidated the law on the grounds that it violated the "right to marital privacy", establishing the basis for the right to privacy with respect to intimate practices. This and other cases view the right to privacy as "protected from governmental intrusion".
Civil liberties in the United States are certain unalienable rights retained by citizens of the United States under the Constitution of the United States, as interpreted and clarified by the Supreme Court of the United States and lower federal courts. Civil liberties are simply defined as individual legal and constitutional protections from entities more powerful than an individual, for example, parts of the government, other individuals, or corporations. The explicitly defined liberties make up the Bill of Rights, including freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, and the right to privacy. There are also many liberties of people not defined in the Constitution, as stated in the Ninth Amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The right to privacy is an element of various legal traditions that intends to restrain governmental and private actions that threaten the privacy of individuals. Over 185 national constitutions mention the right to privacy. On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), originally written to guarantee individual rights of everyone everywhere; while the right to privacy does not appear in the document, many interpret this through Article 12, which states: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with their privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."
Patricia Ann McGowan Wald was an American lawyer and jurist who served as the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1986 until 1991. She was the Court's first female chief judge and its first woman to be elevated, having been appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. From 1999 to 2001, Wald was a Justice of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
John Hart Ely was an American legal scholar. He was a professor of law at Yale Law School from 1968 to 1973, Harvard Law School from 1973 to 1982, Stanford Law School from 1982 to 1996, and at the University of Miami Law School from 1996 until his death. From 1982 until 1987, he was the 9th dean of Stanford Law School.
Robert Charles Pozen, known as "Bob", is an American financial executive with a strong interest in public policy. He is the former chairman of MFS Investment Management, the oldest mutual fund company in the United States. Previously, Pozen was the President of Fidelity Investments.
Reva B. Siegel is the Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Siegel's writing draws on legal history to explore questions of law and inequality, and to analyze how courts interact with representative government and popular movements in interpreting the Constitution. She is currently writing on the role of social movement conflict in guiding constitutional change, addressing this question in recent articles on reproductive rights, originalism and the Second Amendment, the "de facto ERA," and the enforcement of Brown. Her publications include Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking ; The Constitution in 2020 ; and Directions in Sexual Harassment Law. Professor Siegel received her B.A., M.Phil, and J.D. from Yale University, clerked for Judge Spottswood William Robinson III on the D.C. Circuit, and began teaching at the University of California at Berkeley. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is active in the American Society for Legal History, the Association of American Law Schools, the American Constitution Society, in the national organization and as faculty advisor of Yale's chapter. She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018.
Jack M. Balkin is an American legal scholar. He is the Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School. Balkin is the founder and director of the Yale Information Society Project (ISP), a research center whose mission is "to study the implications of the Internet, telecommunications, and the new information technologies for law and society." He also directs the Knight Law and Media Program and the Abrams Institute for Free Expression at Yale Law School.
Thomas W. Merrill, a legal scholar, is the Charles Evans Hughes professor at Columbia Law School. He has also taught at Yale Law School and Northwestern University School of Law.
Paul D. Gewirtz is the Potter Stewart Professor of Constitutional Law at Yale Law School and the Director of the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale.
Open government is the governing doctrine which maintains that citizens have the right to access the documents and proceedings of the government to allow for effective public oversight. In its broadest construction, it opposes reason of state and other considerations which have tended to legitimize extensive state secrecy. The origins of open-government arguments can be dated to the time of the European Age of Enlightenment, when philosophers debated the proper construction of a then nascent democratic society. It is also increasingly being associated with the concept of democratic reform. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16 for example advocates for public access to information as a criterion for ensuring accountable and inclusive institutions.
Jed L. Rubenfeld is an American legal scholar. He is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He is an expert on constitutional law, privacy, and the First Amendment. He joined the Yale faculty in 1990 and was appointed to a full professorship in 1994. Rubenfeld has also served as a United States Representative at the Council of Europe and has taught as a visiting professor at both the Stanford Law School and the Duke University School of Law. He is also the author of two novels, including the million-copy bestseller, The Interpretation of Murder.
Cynthia Estlund is the Catherine A. Rein Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law.
The Information Society Project (ISP) at Yale Law School is an intellectual center studying the implications of the Internet and new information technologies for law and society. The ISP was founded in 1997 by Jack Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School. Jack Balkin is the director of the ISP.
Jeffrey Rosen is an American legal scholar who serves as the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, in Philadelphia.
Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security is a book written by Daniel J. Solove regarding the nothing to hide argument regarding privacy. It was published by Yale University Press in 2011.
The mosaic theory is a legal doctrine in American courts for considering issues of information collection, government transparency, and search and seizure, especially in cases involving invasive or large-scale data collection by government entities. The theory takes its name from mosaic tile art: while an entire picture can be seen from a mosaic's tiles at a distance, no clear picture emerges from viewing a single tile in isolation. The mosaic theory calls for a cumulative understanding of data collection by law enforcement and analyzes searches "as a collective sequence of steps rather than individual steps."
Nathaniel Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, where he has taught since 2013. He is a scholar of constitutional law, election law, and the democratic process.
Heather Kristin Gerken is an American legal scholar who serves as the Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where she teaches election law and runs the San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project. Since 2017, she has also served as the Dean of Yale Law School, being its first female dean.
Ganesh Sitaraman is an American legal scholar. He is a professor of law at Vanderbilt University, where he has also been a Chancellor Faculty Fellow and the director of the Program in Law and Government. He studies constitutional and foreign relations law.