Sept. 18 address and panel discussion at Syracuse University will explore Supreme Court

Sept. 18 address and panel discussion at Syracuse University will explore Supreme CourtSeptember 07, 2007Kelly Homan Rodoskikahoman@syr.edu

A distinguished panel of two veteran journalists and a legal scholar will debate the relationship between Supreme Court tradition, modern day news coverage and public image-making Tuesday, Sept. 18, at 4 p.m. in Grant Auditorium on the Syracuse University campus.

The event, “Supreme Makeover: Inventing a New Model of Judicial Openness on the High Court,” is free and open to the public; parking is available in the Irving Garage for $1.75 for the first hour (increases by $1 for each additional hour). The event will also be webcast live and later archived at http://jpm.syr.edu.

The panel discussion will take place on the eve of the visit by Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Jr., to SU to dedicate the Newhouse III building, during which he will deliver a speech on the First Amendment. The event is also part of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications’ Year of the First Amendment celebration. It is presented by SU’s College of Law, the Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics and the Media (IJPM), the Carnegie Legal Reporting Program in the Newhouse School and the 2007 Syracuse Symposium (presented by The College of Arts and Sciences).”Supreme Makeover” will feature a panel discussion with Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor and Supreme Court correspondent for Slate.com; veteran Supreme Court reporter Tony Mauro and Benjamin Wittes, a fellow and research director of public law at the Brookings Institution. Lithwick is a new addition to the panel, replacing ABC News’ Jan Crawford Greenburg. Greenburg is unable to travel to Syracuse for the Sept. 18 event due to an unavoidable work obligation in Washington, D.C.

The panel discussion will be moderated by Mark Obbie, associate professor and director of the Carnegie Legal Reporting Program in the Newhouse School. Obbie has been a reporter and editor for more than 25 years, focusing on lawyers, courts, crime and business news. He teaches magazine editing, news reporting and writing, and media law at Newhouse, and blogs about legal journalism at LawBeat (http://newhouse.syr.edu/legal).

Lithwick is one of today’s leading journalists covering and commenting on the Supreme Court and law. Her work appears in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Elle magazine, on CNN.com and NPR, and in The American Lawyer. She has written extensively about the Court’s obligation to interact with the public, and the sometimes-tricky issues that attend that interaction. She is the author of “Me v. Everybody: Absurd Contracts for an Absurd World,” a legal humor book. Her legal work, outside of journalism, included clerking for a federal circuit chief judge and practicing family law in Reno, Nev. Lithwick holds an English degree from Yale University and a law degree from Stanford University.

Mauro is a Supreme Court correspondent for Legal Times, American Lawyer magazine and law.com. He joined ALM in 2000 after covering the Supreme Court for USA Today and Gannett News Service for 20 years. He is also a legal correspondent for the First Amendment Center. A graduate of Rutgers University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Mauro won a certificate of merit from the American Bar Association for his 1998 stories on Supreme Court law clerks. He is the author of “Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court” (Congressional Quarterly Press, 2005) and has written several law review articles and contributed chapters to four books.

Wittes is also a columnist for The New Republic Online and contributing editor for The Atlantic Monthly. He is the author of “Starr: A Reassessment” (Yale University Press, 2002) and “Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times” (2006, Rowman & Littlefield, Hoover Institution). He was an editorial writer at The Washington Post from 1997-2006, specializing in legal affairs. He previously covered the Justice Department and federal regulatory agencies as a reporter and news editor at Legal Times. His writing has appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines.