Program Details

Freedom vs. Security: Civil Liberties and the War on Terror

Instructor
Roy Klein
WPL03032
Video Catch-up
Available

Course Description

Ben Franklin famously said, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Have our government’s responses to threats to our national security diminished the civil liberties that The Bill of Rights guarantees? This presentation explores the age-old tensions between security and liberty, culminating with a discussion of our responses to the 9/11 attacks, which continue to resonate today.

About the Instructor

  • Roy Klein, J.D., Esq. is an honors graduate of Columbia Law School, where he was a two-time Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. In forty-five years of legal practice, he represented large companies, small businesses, and individuals as both plaintiffs and defendants in commercial and employment litigation, as well as serving pro bono in constitutional/civil-rights litigation. As President of the Nassau County (N.Y.) chapter of the ACLU, Klein spoke regularly to high school, college, civic, and community groups on a wide variety of constitutional/civil-liberties issues. He also contributed to a Time Kids publication for middle-schoolers about the Constitution. He's coached a high-school mock-trial team for nearly 20 years. And he's judged numerous high-school, college, and law-school mock-trial and moot-court competitions.