Hays Civil Liberties Program Celebrates 50 Years With Alumni Events, Publication of New Book

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg delivered the keynote address last spring at the 50th anniversary celebration of the School of Law’s Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program, noting that she “could hardly resist” the chance to speak at such an occasion. The commemorative events, which included a dinner as well as discussion panels, were attended by an impressive 45 percent of the program’s 263 living alumni. Honored at the dinner were professor Donald Wollett and the late professor Paul Oberst, the first directors of the program, and longtime Hays assistant Evelyn Palmquist.
    Founded in 1958, the Hays Program awards fellowships to third-year law students committed to civil liberties. Fellows are awarded a stipend, and the program also assists those entering public interest careers with expenses related to the bar examination. Fellows earn two academic credits for their participation and work in special internships—usually two during the academic year—for civil liberties and other human rights organizations on litigation, legislation, and other legal assignments. The Fellows and directors meet each month to discuss the students’ work and also meet regularly with former Hays Fellows or other guests to discuss current civil liberties problems.
    Throughout its half century, the program has taken the lead in addressing issues ranging from free speech to church and state, gay, lesbian, and transgender rights to immigrants rights. To summarize this work and credit its participants, Norman Dorsen, Hays Program co-director (since 1961) and Frederick I. and Grace A. Stokes Professor of Law, has published A History of the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program 1958-2008.
    Dorsen was assisted by Hays co-directors Sylvia Law (Law ’68), Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law, Medicine, and Psychiatry, and Helen Hersh¬koff, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law, and former Hays Fellows Gabrielle Prisco and Kathryn Sabbeth.
      The 400-page book includes the program’s founding documents and annual reports for each of its 50 years, along with a short bio of Hays, a renowned civil liberties lawyer who died in 1954, and a general history of the program’s accomplishments.
    “The book was prepared to enable researchers to examine how the oldest civil liberties program at an American law school operates and contributes to the community, to serve as a micro-reflection of the civil liberties issues that the nation faced over the past 50 years, and to encourage other law schools to initiate similar programs,” said Dorsen.