Fall 2011 Series with Tom Barnico ‘77 – Registration Required: You can join series in progress

When: 9/26, 10/3, 10/10, 10/17, 10/24 from 5:30 - 6:30 pm.

Where: The Rockefeller Center, Silsby 113 (9/26 only) and The Rockefeller Center, Class of 1930 Room (10/3 - 10/24)

Tocqueville wrote: “Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.” Many are aware of the roles of federal and state courts in constitutional cases, but few understand how such cases arise and how they are briefed and argued by lawyers and decided by courts. We will study the course of such a case, Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council, in which the United States Supreme Court struck down a Massachusetts law that boycotted companies doing business with Burma (Myanmar). We will study the law, the claims by the affected companies, the key documents in the case, the oral argument in the Supreme Court, and its decision. We will also discuss careers in law and government that present similar issues. 

Mr. Barnico served as an Assistant Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from 1981 - 2010. He represented the state and its officers in civil cases involving constitutional law, administrative law, and business regulation. He has argued three cases in the United States Supreme Court, nineteen cases in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and 70 cases in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Mr. Barnico has been a Lecturer and Director of the Attorney General Clinical Program at Boston College Law School since 1989. He received his A.B. degree, cum laude, from Dartmouth College in 1977. He received his J.D. degree, cum laude, from Boston College Law School in 1980.