March 1st 2008

Oregon Law Professor Garrett Epps Speaks to ACLU on Modern Erosion of Civil Liberties
 
Oregon Law Professor Garrett Epps addressed the Lane County Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Oregon on Sunday, Feb. 24, in Eugene.  
 
In his speech, Professor Epps discussed America’s slow transition from a self-governing democratic republic to an imperial despotism following the terror attacks of September 11.   He described America’s transition period as the “twilight zone,” and implored the audience to “dedicate themselves not solely to fighting for legal rights, but to opposing the fashionable notions of authoritarianism, official brutality, secrecy, empire and human subordination by birth or citizenship.”   Click here to download Professor Epps’s speech in its entirety.  
 
Professor Epps has published numerous books, scholarly articles and articles for general audiences on constitutional law and civil rights.   He won the Oregon Book Award for Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America (2006), which also was a finalist for the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award.   He is a former staff writer for the Washington Post, and has written for inter alia, The New York Times, The New Republic and The New York Review of Books.