DLA Weblog

DLA Annual Meeting May 4-5

Annual Meeting Set for May 4 and 5, 2007

The 23rd Annual Meeting will be held in Hanover on May 4th and 5th. President James Wright and Prof Jere Daniel, Professor Emeritus and historian of the College, will welcome participants to the meeting.

A lecture and seminar on Friday afternoon, "U.S. Legislative And Judicial Responses To Terrorist Threats," will include remarks by Professor Laura Donohue, Stanford Law School, a specialist in the Patriot Act.

Saturday morning, a session on "Careers in the Law" will be open to undergraduates. Retired Vermont Supreme Court Justice Jim Morse '61 and New Hampshire Supreme Court Justice Dalianis will join our Saturday afternoon CLE panel "Crimes Against Humanity, Terrorism and International Law."

At the closing banquet, Kenneth S. Yalowitz, Director of The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding and former Ambassador to Belarus and Georgia will speak. The program is dedicated to the late President James Freedman, in recognition of his devotion to the law.

We are again welcoming families in connection with our social events. If you have children, please plan to bring them along for what promises to be a beautiful New England spring weekend. Barbara Murphy and Hal Rabner have arranged the program.

Registration will take place on Friday, May 4th from 12:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. in the Hayward Lounge at the Hanover Inn. The lecture/seminar is at 3 p.m., followed by a college reception, then our welcoming cocktail party. Registration forms have been mailed, or you can register online.

We have reserved a block of rooms at the Courtyard Marriott off Route 120 in Lebanon (603-643-5600) for the weekend {book by April 3rd to obtain group rate of $134/night}, as well as the Hanover Inn (603-643-4300) for Saturday night only. These rooms will be available on a first come, first served basis. Please make your own reservations, identifying yourself as being with the Dartmouth Lawyers Association.

Other lodgings in the area include the Norwich Inn (603-649-1143), Sunset Motor Lodge in West Lebanon (603-298-8721), Holiday Inn Express in Lebanon (603-448-5070), the Ramada Inn in White River Junction (802-295-3000), the Hampton Inn in White River Junction (802-296-2800), the Fireside Inn (formerly Radisson Inn) West Lebanon (603-298-5906), and the Marriott Residence Inn at the Centerra Development on Route 120 (603-643-4511). Make your reservations soon, as it will be a busy time in the Hanover area.

Doug Simpson '70
DLA "Webster"

Merrill: Winter Meeting in Breck

We had 39 members of the DLA register for and attend the Breck meeting. When speakers, family members and guests are included, there were just over 90 people who attended at some point during the weekend.

The Bromley pre-meeting reception on Thursday was attended by about 25-30 people and the dinner downtown immediately following the reception was attended by about 20.

Friday night's reception and dinner was attended by about 70-75 people. Due to inclement weather, either in other parts of the country or in Colorado, there were between 10-15 people who were scheduled to arrive Friday afternoon but could not make it to Breck until either very late Friday night or Saturday morning. From the initial attendance list, we had a total of 4 people who did not make the event at all, including Uriel Barrera-Vasquez from Dartmouth's Office of Alumni Relations who was one of the many unhappy customers of Jet Blue that weekend, Gregory and Anne Yadley who had to cancel due to illness, and Pam Gregory, Kimberly Owens' guest, who also had to cancel due to illness.

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Between 20 and 30 people participated in the NASTAR race Saturday morning. Everyone who participated received a prize (in large part due to Mike Bromley's obtaining a bunch of freebies from the resort).

Although no official headcount was taken during the seminars, it looked to me that about 45 people attended the seminars each day.

Judd Golden, chair of the Boulder, Colorado chapter of the ACLU provided the first talk on Saturday and concentrated on governmental regulation of charitable speech and hate speech. Dan Abrahamson, legal counsel for the Drug Policy Alliance and spouse of the DLA's Tsan Abrahamson, followed with an entertaining discussion of the government's attempts to censor drug issues and dialogue, with a focus on medical marijuana. Dan used a power point presentation as part of his talk.

On Sunday, Frank Long '77 discussed trademarks and free speech. He also incorporated a power point presentation into his talk. Michael Kerry Burke, the general counsel of Mantra Films, Inc., concluded the presentations with a discussion of the chilling effects that strict liability criminal statutes can have on free expression and how the government has shifted the burden of proof to the defense and eliminated the mens rea requirement.

Saturday night's reception and dinner was attended by about 90 people and, following the presentation of the NASTAR prizes, Judge Buck Allen '71 gave an entertaining talk on his experiences as a municipal jurist in the towns of Vail, Avon, Eagle and Breckenridge.

Sunday night's reception and dinner was attended by about 80 people. Between Whistler and Mammoth, the group voted to go to Whistler. Due to a tie vote, the decision on when to have the Midwinter meeting was left to the DLA officers and board to decide. Following the votes, Jim Davidson, Speaking of Adventure, described to a hushed audience how his climbing companion had been killed and how he had survived and extricated himself after both of them fell into a glacier's crevasse while descending from a summit climb.

Everyone seemed pleased with the DLA in Breck website. All of the papers and speakers bios received to date are posted on the site.

I believe that, once everyone got to Breck, they had a good time. The lift lines were longer this year than when I skied Breck a year ago on the same weekend, which may have helped account for some of the change in perceptions regarding which weekend we should have the event.

Richard L. Merrill
Fabio & Merrill
Twelve Greenway Plaza, Suite 101
Houston, Texas 77046-1208