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The Justice Department announced this week that Georgia State University College of Law professor Neil Kinkopf is joining the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy (OLP) as OLP's counselor to the assistant attorney general. Kinkopf, the faculty advisor to the ACS chapter at Georgia State, has been a regular ACS participant.

At the Justice Department, Kinkopf joins David Barron, former member of the board of advisors at the Harvard Law and Policy Review (the official journal of ACS,) and Martin Lederman, a regular ACS participant. Barron remains the de facto head of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) pending Senate confirmation of former ACS board member Dawn Johnsen to lead the office.

Also at the Justice Department, are former ACS board member Spencer Overton and Chris Schroeder, co-author of ACS's Keeping Faith with the Constitution -- both of whom are at the OLP. And, of course, former ACS board member Eric Holder is serving as Attorney General.

Non-unionized American workers generally may see their employment terminated for any reason not expressly forbidden by the National Labor Relations Act and other protections. In other words, unlike most other industrialized countries, the United States operates under an at-will system of employment, permitting employers to fire employees without explanation. There is an exception, however.

The state of Montana has operated under the requirement of just cause for termination of employees. Under a just-cause system, employers bear the burden of proof to justify dismissals of employees, usually by offering evidence of the employee having violated company policy or rules. 

This unique experiment in labor law is the subject of Just Cause in Montana: Did the Big Sky Fall? by labor law exper Barry D. Roseman, and ACS Issue Brief included in the latest edition of Advance: The Journal of the ACS Issue Groups. 

In his brief, Roseman applies the lessons of just cause in Montana to the broader national policy debate. While those defending at-will employment claim that it is necessary to maintaining a low unemployment rate, Roseman observes that, in the only state in the Union to adopt just-cause employment, this is not true.

Montana now has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the United States. Its economy over the last three decades has been driven by factors that have nothing to do with the fact that it has abolished employment at will. 

Roseman concludes that arguments predicting doom-and-gloom as a result of just cause employment prove unwarranted. In Montana, he writes, "the Big Sky did not fall." Rather, Roseman argues, the state is a modern success story, combining protections for workers with basement-level unemployment rates.

It is time-many believe, long past time-for the federal government and the states to enact laws to require just cause for termination of employment. The economy of the United States, the global economy and the state of labor relations are vastly different than they were in the first year of the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes, the year in Horace Wood first announced the doctrine of employment at will. The mere fact that this has become the default rule for the common law of employment does not mean that it is based on sound policy, if that ever was the case.

We don't usually interrupt our serious discussion of constitutional law on ACSblog, but today, we're asking for your assistance. ACS's Spring Appeal is critical to helping fund many ACS resources, including ACSblog and we need your help to reach our $100,000 goal. We're very close - only $3,000 away - and your gift today can help put us over the top. As we hope you have noticed, ACSblog has made a number of design changes that allow us to offer more content and to greatly expand our network of writers and readers. Your generous support has made this possible, and we want to keep enhancing this product and building our network.

Especially during difficult economic times, ACS relies on the generosity of individual members like you, and for your support we are truly grateful. To donate, please visit www.acslaw.org/donate or click here.

Gary S. Feinerman, a partner at Chicago's Sidley, Austin LLP, one of the nation's leading appellate attorneys, and a member of the ACS Chicago Lawyer Chapter Board of Advisors, was recently selected as the new president of the Illinois Appellate Lawyers Association.

Outgoing ALA President Michael I. Rothstein told the Chicago Daily Law Journal, "Gary is one of the finest and most talented appellate lawyers in the country. He's accomplished at a relatively young age more than most appellate lawyers accomplish in an entire career." Feinerman, who has argued two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, told the legal newspaper that beyond increasing ALA members, he would like to bolster the services provided to members, such as adding more Web seminars and making it easier to attend continuing legal education seminars. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan also lauded Feinerman's appellate work saying, "Gary gets it. He sees the big picture as well as seeing all the details."

The White House has officially announced its intent to nominate Prof. Christopher Schroeder (right) of Duke University School of Law to the head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy.

"In his new role, Schroeder would be a leading voice on legislation related to law enforcement and the federal court system, and on nominations for the federal judiciary," according to The Blog of the Legal Times. "If confirmed by the Senate, he would be the chief policy advisor to Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. and Deputy Attorney General David Ogden."

Along with Profs. Goodwin Liu and Pamela Karlan, Schroeder co-authored Keeping Faith with the Constitution, released this month by ACS. In Keeping Faith, the co-authors write, "[O]ur central theme is that the practice of constitutional interpretation must be faithful to what the Constitution is: not a legal code, not a lawyer's contract, but a basic charter of government whose practical meaning arises from the continual adaptation of its enduring text and principles to the conditions and challenges facing each generation." Liu and Karlan will join Judges Rosemary Barkett and Judge Jeffrey Sutton along with Supreme Court litigators Tom Goldstein and Pamela Harris to explore the ideas set forth in Keeping Faith with the Constitution at the 2009 ACS National Convention.

Writing in The Huffington Post, Prof. Geoffrey Stone described Keeping Faith as a work that "critiques the ‘conservative' approaches to constitutional interpretation - originalism and so-called strict construction, and then traces out a more progressive approach to constitutional interpretation, which the authors describe as ‘constitutional fidelity,' which is designed both to preserve the Constitution's meaning over time while at the same time recognizing that the Framers intended the Constitution to be a ‘visionary document.'"

ACS is very proud to announce a successful conclusion to our search for a new executive director: Caroline Fredrickson (right).

Since 2005, Fredrickson has been the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington Legislative Office, where she led the organization's efforts to promote its priorities in Congress, the White House and federal agencies. Her selection is the culmination of a thorough search process that began after the former ACS Director Lisa Brown was selected by President Obama to be Assistant to the President and White House Staff Secretary. Deputy Executive Director David Lyle has admirably served as acting executive director in the meantime.

Prior to assuming leadership of the ACLU's national legislative portfolio, Fredrickson served as General Counsel and Legal Director of NARAL Pro-Choice America. Before that, Fredrickson was Chief of Staff to Sen. Maria Cantwell and Deputy Chief of Staff to then-Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle. During the Clinton administration, Fredrickson served as Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs. She has been widely published and appears frequently in the media on topics including labor law, anti-discrimination law, and human and civil rights issues. She holds a law degree from Columbia and graduated summa cum laude from Yale. 

"We could not ask for a better leader than Caroline Fredrickson to take ACS into its next stage of development and growth," said Goodwin Liu, Chair of the ACS Board of Directors and Associate Dean and Professor of law at UC Berkeley School of Law. 

The American Constitution Society is proud to announce that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) will speak at the ACS National Convention.

Whitehouse sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and serves as chair of the Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts. In his capacity as oversight subcomittee chair, Whitehouse recently convened a hearing on torture. Whitehouse has been an outspoken advocate of Truth Commission on torture.

Continuing in his leadership role in the torture accountability debate, Whitehouse recently fielded questions about suggestions that then-Vice President Dick Cheney ordered a former Iraqi intelligence officer waterboarded in order to produce evidence of links betweeen al Qaida and Saddam Hussein. See Whitehouse's handling of the revelations below.

Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, the head of the oversight panel responsible for the TARP bailout fund, and Gregory Craig (below), the White House Counsel, are two of the speakers already booked for the 2009 ACS National Convention, June 18-20.

Professor Warren will be the featured speaker at a luncheon on Saturday, June 20. Craig will be part of a plenary panel to discuss "The Levers of Change: How Progress is Made in Today's Policy Environment" on Friday afternoon. Joining Craig will be Preeta Bansal, General Counsel for OMB; Lisa Brown, White House Staff Secretary; Ron Klain, Chief of Staff, Vice President Joe Biden; Spencer A. Overton, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Office of Legal Policy; and John Podesta, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for American Progress.*

This is one of three star-studded plenary panels that will take place during the convention. "Improving the Courts: The Perspective from the Bench," will be moderated by former New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse and includes a number of prominent federal judges. A third panel, which opens the Convention, is entitled "Keeping Faith with the Constitution, and is the theme of the convention and also the title of a book just released by ACS and written by Professors Goodwin Liu, Pamela Karlan and Christopher Schroeder. In addition to the authors, the panel will include Judges Rosemary Barkett and Jeffrey S. Sutton and will be moderated by Thomas Goldstein.

The convention will also include breakout sessions addressing a range of topics including the future of the civil jury system, mass incarceration, judicial elections, employment discrimination and technology and the law, as well as a panel of federal judges discussing how to improve the courts.

Early discounted registration closes May 29, 2009. Hotel reservations are available at a special reduced rate until May 28, 2009. Click here to see the full list of speakers, to register and for hotel reservations.

*Titles provided for identification purposes only.

On Friday, May 1, Law Day, ACS released two important new books on the Constitution and constitutional interpretation, and hosted a panel discussion at the National Press Club with the authors and other experts on the ideas presented in the books, moderated by Dahlia Lithwick. Keeping Faith With the Constitution offers a compelling and common-sense approach to constitutional interpretation that is faithful to the Constitution's words and principles and explains why it is the world's most enduring written Constitution. The authors of the book are three leading constitutional scholars: Goodwin Liu, Pamela S. Karlan and Christopher H. Schroeder. The companion volume, It Is a Constitution We Are Expounding: Collected Writings on Interpreting Our Founding Document, is an anthology of excerpts of some of the finest existing writing on methods of constitutional interpretation, taken from decisions of the Supreme Court and other judicial opinions and speeches, the scholarly literature, and other sources. It was edited by Pamela Harris and Karl Thompson, and includes a Foreword by Professor Laurence H. Tribe. These books are designed to be useful to a wide readership, including lawyers, judges, law students, and every citizen engaged in the nation's debates over the Constitution, the courts and judicial nominations. Watch video of National Press Club event on the books here.