Norman Dorsen profiled in Columbia College alumni magazine

Norman DorsenNorman Dorsen, Frederick I. and Grace A. Stokes Professor of Law and co-director of the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program, is profiled in the Spring 2013 issue of Columbia College Today, that school’s alumni magazine. The piece details Dorsen’s time at Columbia from 1946 to 1950, followed by a steady rise to his longstanding status as one of the top civil liberties lawyers in the nation during the more than half-century he has spent at NYU Law. Within the legal academy, Dorsen was the founding director of the Hauser Global Law School Program, the founding editorial director of the International Journal of Constitutional Law, and the founding president of the Society of American Law Teachers. In the broader legal field, he served as both president and general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union, and has appeared six times before the Supreme Court.

Fresh out of law school, Dorsen worked in the Secretary of the Army’s office of the general counsel, where he helped represent the Army in the famous Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954. He described the experience as a formative one in the Columbia magazine profile: "There is no doubt that being confronted by the McCarthy crowd, and in particular by Roy Cohn, sensitized me to issues of fairness in hearings and other proceedings and the drastic harm that the government can do to free expression. This experience led me to become a civil libertarian."

Posted on April 1, 2013