University of Minnesota Law Professor Heidi Kitrosser will deliver the 2014 IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law/Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize Lecture
University of Minnesota Law School Professor Heidi Kitrosser will discuss her award-winning book Reclaiming Accountability: Transparency, Executive Power, and the U.S. Constitution at the 2014 IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law/Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize Lecture. The lecture will begin at 3 p.m. on November 20 in the law school's Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Courtroom, 565 West Adams Street (between Clinton and Jefferson streets) in Chicago. The program is free and open to the public.
Professor Kitrosser is the eighth winner of the IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law/Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize, established in 2007 by alumnus Roy C. Palmer and his wife, Susan M. Palmer, to encourage and reward public debate among scholars on current issues affecting the rights of individuals and the responsibilities of governments throughout the world. Winning books are exemplary works of scholarship that explore the tension between civil liberties and national security in contemporary American society.
In Reclaiming Accountability, Professor Kitrosser examines the tension between Americans' desire for transparency in government and the need for secrecy in matters of national security—two imperatives that are generally considered antithetical. She contends that this is not the case, and that our concern ought to lie not with secrecy per se but with the sort of unchecked secrecy that can result from "presidentialism," or constitutional arguments for broad executive control of information. Taking readers through the key presidentialist assertions—including "supremacy" and "unitary executive theory"—Professor Kitrosser explains how they misread the Constitution in a way that is profoundly at odds with democratic principles. Professor Kitrosser's book will be published in January 2015 by the University of Chicago Press.
A member of the University of Minnesota Law School since 2006, Professor Kitrosser teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, First Amendment law, and government secrecy. She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her J.D. degree from Yale Law School.
Benefactor Roy Palmer, a lawyer and real estate developer, is a 1962 honors graduate of IIT Chicago-Kent and a former member of its board of overseers. Palmer is the recipient of the IIT Chicago-Kent Alumni Association's 2012 Distinguished Service Award and was recently named by the law school as one of "125 Alumni of Distinction." Mr. and Mrs. Palmer are active in numerous civic, social and philanthropic organizations.
Founded in 1888, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law is the law school of Illinois Institute of Technology, also known as Illinois Tech, a private, technology-focused, research university offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering, science, architecture, business, design, human sciences, applied technology, and law.
