As the litigation on health care reform percolates up towards the Supreme Court, join legal experts Dr. Roger Pilon (the founder and director of Cato's Center for Constitutional Studies) and Laurence Tribe (the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard Law School) for a debate on the constitutionality of health care reform. This exchange is chaired and moderated by Jesse Choper (the Earl Warren Professor of Public Law at the University of California Berkeley School of Law).

Panelists

Dr. Roger Pilon
Cato Institute, Vice President for Legal Affairs

Roger Pilon is the founder and director of Cato's Center for Constitutional Studies, which has become an important force in the national debate over constitutional interpretation and judicial philosophy. He is the publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review and is an adjunct professor of government at Georgetown University through The Fund for American Studies. Prior to joining Cato, Pilon held five senior posts in the Reagan administration, including at State and Justice, and was a National Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. In 1989 the Bicentennial Commission presented him with its Benjamin Franklin Award for excellence in writing on the U.S. Constitution. In 2001 Columbia University's School of General Studies awarded him its Alumni Medal of Distinction. Pilon lectures and debates at universities and law schools across the country and testifies often before Congress. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Legal Times, National Law Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Stanford Law & Policy Review, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC's Nightline, CBS's 60 Minutes II, Fox News Channel, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and other media. Pilon holds a B.A. from Columbia University, an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and a J.D. from the George Washington University School of Law.

Laurence Tribe
Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Harvard Law School

Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard, has taught at its Law School since 1968 and was voted the best professor by the graduating class of 2000. The title "University Professor" is Harvard's highest academic honor, awarded to just a handful of professors at any given time and to fewer than 70 professors in all of Harvard University's history. Born in China to Russian Jewish parents, Tribe entered Harvard at 16; graduated summa cum laude in Mathematics (1962) and magna cum laude in Law (1966); clerked for the California and U.S. Supreme Courts (1966-68); received tenure at 30; was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at 38 and to the American Philosophical Society in 2010; helped write the constitutions of South Africa, the Czech Republic, and the Marshall Islands; has received ten honorary degrees, most recently a degree honoris causa from the Government of Mexico in March 2011 that was never before awarded to an American; has prevailed in three-fifths of the many appellate cases he has argued (including 35 in the U.S. Supreme Court); was appointed in 2010 by President Obama and Attorney General Holder to serve as the first Senior Counselor for Access to Justice; and has written 115 books and articles, including his treatise, American Constitutional Law, cited more than any other legal text since 1950. Former Solicitor General Erwin Griswold wrote: "[N]o book, and no lawyer not on the [Supreme] Court, has ever had a greater influence on the development of American constitutional law," and the Northwestern Law Review opined that no-one else "in American history has... simultaneously achieved Tribe's preeminence... as a practitioner and... scholar of constitutional law."

Moderator

Jesse Choper
Earl Warren Professor of Public Law, Berkeley Law

Jesse Choper was born in 1935, received his B.S. degree from Wilkes University, his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Wilkes University. He was Research Editor of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and served as law clerk to Chief Justice Earl Warren during 1960-61. He has taught at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, at the University of Minnesota Law School and has been at Berkeley Law since 1965 where he was Dean from 1982-1992 and is presently Earl Warren Professor of Public Law. He has also been Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, the Bacon-Kilkenny Distinguished Visiting Professor at Fordham Law School, and has taught and lectured at many universities throughout the world, including Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland and Portugal.

He teaches in the fields of Constitutional Law and Corporation Law. His major publications include the books, Judicial Review and the National Political Process and Securing Religious Liberty. He is also a co-author of two widely used casebooks in the fields of Constitutional Law (now in its tenth edition) and Corporation Law (now in its seventh edition), as well as the editor of The Supreme Court and Its Justices. He has delivered major titled lectures at twenty American law schools. He received a Berkeley Campus Distinguished Teaching Award in 1998, the Boalt Hall Lifetime Faculty Achievement Award in 2005, and the University of Pennsylvania Law School's James Wilson Award, its highest award for alumni in 2005. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (vice-president 1997-99, 2004-09), the American Law Institute, and The Order of the Coif (national president 1992-95). Since 2004, he has been Cal's Faculty Athletic Representative to the Pac-10 and the NCAA. In 2007, he was appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger to the California Horse Racing Board.

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Making Health Care Reform Work

The Political and Economic Aspects of Implementing National Health Care Reform in California

The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS) is proud to sponsor a public series of events analyzing the political and economic aspects of implementing national health care reform with an emphasis on California.

The year-long series includes several panels of experts to be held at various locations throughout Northern California: Sacramento, San Francisco, and UC Berkeley. All events are open to the public

Details of previous events in the series can be found on the past events page.

This program is made possible by generous grants from:
Blue Shield of California Foundation &
Kaiser Permanente