The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy has added James Forman Jr., a professor at Georgetown University Law Center; Linda Greenhouse, a senior fellow at Yale Law School and the former Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times; and Pamela Karlan, a professor at Stanford Law School, to its board of directors, the organization announced today.
The new members will serve a three-year term on the board of the liberal think tank.
Forman, a former clerk to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Yale Law graduate, is a former D.C. public defender and in 1999 was promoted to training director for new attorneys at the agency. His father was the late, legendary civil rights leader James Forman, who served as executive secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the early 1960s.
Karlan was mentioned as a shortlister for Obama’s solicitor general. She also co-directs the school’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, which litigates before the high court on behalf of workers, criminal defendants, nonprofit organizations and other groups and individuals who otherwise could not afford experienced Supreme Court counsel. Karlan clerked for Justice Harry Blackmun before serving as assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Greenhouse, a Pulitzer Prize winner, covered the Supreme for 30 years for The New York Times and authored a biography of Blackmun, Becoming Justice Blackmun. She retired in 2008 to serve as the Knight Distinguished journalist-in-residence and a senior fellow at Yale Law School.
ACS has had a flurry of additions to its board lately after many members were tapped to join President Barack Obama’s administration and others had their terms expire. To date, board members who have stepped down to join Obama’s team include Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. and Ronald Klain, Vice President Joseph Biden’s chief of staff. After her term on the board expired, Dawn Johnsen, a professor at the Indiana University School of Law, was nominated to head the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. She is currently awaiting confirmation.
ACS also lost its executive director Lisa Brown, who stepped down to serve as White House staff secretary.
In December, the board tapped Goodwin Liu, associate dean and professor at the University of California’s Berkeley School of Law, to serve as its chairman, and filled four other vacancies with Peter Edelman, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center; Dennis Herrera, city attorney of San Francisco; Judith Lichtman, senior adviser at the National Partnership for Women and Families; and Abner Mikva, a former federal appeals court judge, member of Congress, and White House counsel.
“It’s funny in a sense because we’ve had the problem of having to fill our board because many of our members have gone on to serve in the highest levels of government,” Liu says. “It’s a good problem to have.”
Comments