Headlines at Hopkins
News Release

Office of News and Information
Johns Hopkins University
901 South Bond Street, Suite 540
Baltimore, Maryland 21231
Phone: 443-287-9960 | Fax: 443-287-9920

August 25, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Amy Lunday
[email protected]
443-287-9960


Journalist Jeffrey Toobin to Discuss the Supreme Court

Award-winning legal affairs analyst Jeffrey Toobin will discuss how the composition of the Supreme Court will change under the next president at The Johns Hopkins University's 2008 Constitutional Forum, a discussion of important legal issues held in conjunction with the annual observance of Constitution Day.

Toobin's talk, "The Election and the Supreme Court," will take place at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 18, in Hodson Hall auditorium, Room 110, on the Homewood campus, 3400 N. Charles St. in Baltimore. Admission is free. Visitor parking is available in the South Garage, 3101 Wyman Park Drive, Baltimore, Md. 21211. For information, the general public may call 443-287-9900 or email [email protected].

A staff writer at The New Yorker since 1993 and senior analyst for CNN since 2002, Toobin is one of the most recognized and admired legal journalists in the country. In 1993, Toobin joined The New Yorker, where he has covered legal affairs and written profiles of Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas, as well as such subjects as the legal implications of the war on terror, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Florida recount, Kenneth Starr's investigation of President Clinton, and the trials of Martha Stewart, Timothy McVeigh and O. J. Simpson. Toobin also spent six years with ABC News, where in 2000, he received an Emmy Award for his coverage of the Elian Gonzalez case.

Toobin's first book, Opening Arguments: A Young Lawyer's First Case United States v. Oliver North, is based on his work as an associate counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh. He is also the author of the best-selling books Too Close to Call: The 36-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election, which was published in 2001; A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal that Nearly Brought Down a President (2000); and The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson (1996). Toobin's most recent book, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, was published in fall 2007. The book spent more than four months on the New York Times best-seller list and was named one of the 10 best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, Time, Newsweek, Fortune, Entertainment Weekly and the Economist. The Nine also received the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for Non-fiction. He lives in Manhattan. His Web site is www.jeffreytoobin.com/.

In addition to Toobin's lecture, the university will host a free public colloquium at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 17, in Hodson Hall, Room 210. Joel Grossman, professor of political science at Johns Hopkins, will be the speaker and moderator for the discussion, "How Supreme Court Justices are Selected — and What Difference it Makes." All students, faculty and staff and the general public are invited to attend, listen and participate in the discussion.

The 2008 Constitutional Forum is supported by the George Huntington Williams Memorial Lectureship, established to honor the memory of George Huntington Williams, a pioneer in the microscopic study of rocks and minerals. He was the university's first professor of petrology and founded what was then called the Department of Geology (now Earth and Planetary Sciences) in the late 1880s. In 1917, his family created an endowment in his memory for lectures by distinguished public figures on topics of widespread contemporary interest. Past speakers have included Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

The events will celebrate Constitution Day, officially Sept. 17. That is the day in 1787 when delegates convened for the final time to sign the U.S. Constitution. Additional information about Constitution Day may be found by searching the Web site of The National Archives, www.archives.gov/ .

The 2008 Constitutional Forum at Johns Hopkins is sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Department of Political Science, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the Office of Government, Community and Public Affairs.

[Note to editors: A high resolution, color, digital photograph of Jeffrey Toobin is available by contacting Amy Lunday at 443-287-9960 or [email protected].]