Two prominent legal scholars well-versed in free speech law celebrated the 150th birthday of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis Monday evening with a discussion on Brandeis' legal influence and the need for the application of many of his ideas in government today.The scholars, Floyd Abrams and Anthony Lewis, spoke to a crowd of about 150 attendees who packed the Napoli Room in the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center.

Lewis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former columnist for The New York Times and an expert on Constitutional law, spoke in detail about Brandeis' contributions to the nation's legal understanding of the Constitution. Lewis said Brandeis' steadfast support for a separation of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government is absent from the policies of the current presidential administration.

"In the last five years, we have come significantly close to autocracy of presidential power," Lewis said, citing the torture of prisoners under interrogation, the suspension of habeas corpus in the arrests of American citizens suspected of terrorist activity, and wiretapping without a warrant, as examples of the Bush administration's overreaching.

President Bush's rule resembles the "royal prerogative" of the English King George III during the American Revolution, Lewis said.

Despite Bush's push for power, Lewis said the other two branches have not acted as checks on the executive. While judicial resistance has been "careful" and "modest," Lewis said Congress "showed the backbone of a blob" in countering the President.

Following Lewis' remarks, Prof. Richard Gaskins (HIST), chair of the Legal Studies program, introduced Abrams, an attorney and free-speech advocate who became a household name in 1971 after arguing on behalf of The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case, in which highly secret government documents were printed by that newspaper.

Abrams echoed Lewis' concern over the policies of the current administration, condemning with particular vehemence the recently revealed warrantless wiretapping program as a "lawless act."

Abrams described Brandeis as "the people's lawyer," because of "his reach and intellectual grasp of the issues necessary to defend the rights of the people."

Brandeis argued that speech should not be limited in response to threats to society, a position especially relevant in the face of a war on terror with no end in sight, Abrams said.

Abrams quoted an excerpt from a 1921 Supreme Court decision written by Brandeis that contained the famous line, "Men feared witches and burned women"-a line Abrams called the greatest ever penned by a Supreme Court justice. "When did we ever have a clearer example of a case in which we feared one thing and punished another?" Abrams asked.

A question-and-answer session followed the talk, which was sponsored by the Legal Studies and Journalism programs.