The day long event will bring together leading scholars, lawyers, and policy makers to examine the legal merits, ethical and political issues driving some of the year's most controversial and publicized Supreme Court cases, and discuss the intersection between Supreme Court adjudication and American politics.

Conference participants from Columbia Law School, Duke University Law School, Fordham Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Harvard Law School, New York University School of Law, Rutgers School of Law, University of Virginia School of Law, and Wechsler Harwood LLP will join Princeton scholars and participate in five panel discussions that will examine docketed Supreme Court cases and debate justification of their political and legal application on a broader level. Questions from the audience will follow.

Cases and issues to be discussed will include; Johnson v. Gomez: racial segregation in prisons and the proper role of race in law and society; Ashcroft v. Raich: state rights, medical marijuana, and the ability of commerce to regulate its use through its interstate commerce clause; Van Orden v. Perry: McCreary v. ACLU: the Ten Commandments, the government, and the proper role of religion in American life; Crawford v. Martinez: Jama v. INS: deportation, individual rights, and the rights of non-American detainees; and Dura Pharmaceutical Inc. v. Broudo: corporate fraud and the right of investors of publicly traded companies in corporate fraud.

"The Supreme Court: Case and Controversy" will be held on Thursday, May 26 in Jadwin Hall, Room A10 on the Princeton University campus. The conference is open to the public. There is a registration fee of $250 per person ($75.00 per person for Princeton alumni). Princeton students, faculty and staff are free with valid ID card. Registration information is available on the Program in Law and Public Affairs conference website .

LAPA is a joint venture of the Politics Department, the University Center for Human Values, and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Established nearly two decades ago, JSI has traditionally, and continues to convene juniors in colleges and universities whose diverse cultural backgrounds are similar to the national and international communities in which they hope to serve; provides the unique opportunity to interact and discuss a broad range of coursework, field research, and policy analysis with leaders within the public policy, government and nonprofit sectors; and encourages a commitment to public service.

This year's workshop will focus on Juvenile Justice, with a specific focus on disproportionate minority contact ("DMC") with the juvenile justice system and will be taught by Craig Levine, MPA-JD '91. New to the program this year will be a seminar series focused on the intercultural dimensions of policy making. Topics will address a range of issues including culture and identity in policy leadership, culture and politics, cross-cultural negotiations, and intercultural communication. The summer program will also include weekly brown bag lunches with WWS faculty, alumni, government officials, and leading practitioners in the field of public and international affairs.

As part of the program's culmination, students will present a comprehensive final report on a current policy issue that will encompass the skills acquired and the knowledge base gained over the prior seven weeks.

Of the 35 students admitted to the program, 31 were selected from an applicant pool of 215 students. The other four were recommended directly by the Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship program of the U.S. State Department. In total, there are 19 male and 16 female students and slightly more than half are interested in International Relations, and the remainder in Domestic Policy.

In late spring Woodrow Wilson graduate students participating in WWS 547: "The Conduct of International Diplomacy," taught by School Diplomat-in-Residence Ambassador Edmund Hull '71, traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with senior policymakers working on the Middle East issues. The objectives of the trip were fourfold: (1) To gain an improved understanding of how various actors, such as Congress, foreign embassies, think tanks, and interest groups, work to shape U.S. foreign policy; (2) To critically examine the Bush administration's policy of democracy and freedom promotion in the Middle East; (2) To better understand the current dynamics and prospects of the Middle East peace process; and (4) To expand career development networks with policymakers in Washington.

During the course of the trip, students had an opportunity to meet with:

- Ambassador Marc Grossman, former Under Secretary for Political Affairs, U.S. Department of State;
- Ambassador William Burns, former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Department of State;
- Representative Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), Chairman, Subcommittee for Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs;
- Ambassador Nabil Fahmy, Egyptian Ambassador to the U.S.;
- Ambassador Farid Abboud, Lebanese Ambassador to the U.S.;
- Ellen Laipson, President and CEO of the Henry L. Stimson Center;
- Said Hamad, Deputy Director of the PLO Mission to the U.S.;
- Raphael Danziger, Director, Research & Information and Editor, Near East Report, American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC); and
- Perry Cammack, Democratic Staff on the Middle East, U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Students utilized the meetings to gain an insider's view of how various actors influence U.S. foreign policy and to gauge future prospects for peace and democracy in the Middle East from the perspectives of both American and foreign officials. As Ambassador Hull noted, "Diplomacy, in a significant way, is about trips - by Presidents, Secretaries of State, envoys or academics."

Egypt's Ambassador Nabil Fahmy opened up his presentation to the WWS team with the observation that the class's "presence here [in Washington] is an investment. Everyone else in Washington is too busy talking and not listening."

In his remarks to students, Ambassador William Burns noted, "This is a moment of remarkable turmoil and change in the Middle East. In much the same way the late 1980s and 1990s were taken up with the challenges of transforming the former Soviet Union, the current and next few decades will be filled with the same challenges in the Middle East."

Burns laid out four key areas for U.S. policymakers in the region: achieving a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians, successfully handling reconstruction efforts in Iraq, defusing the links between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and supporting homegrown efforts for political and economic reform. He stressed the need for the U.S. to move quickly in all these areas, quoting comedian Will Rogers for emphasis: "Sometimes you can be pointed in the right direction, but if you don't move fast enough, you can get run over."

Emphasizing this sense of urgency, Congressman Jim Kolbe discussed his commitment to foreign assistance and the Bush administration's priorities in the Middle East. However, he also stressed the need for Congressional oversight, accountability, and learning from past mistakes. "Huge tactical mistakes were made right from the beginning" on planning for reconstruction in Iraq, Kolbe said. "I'm not sure if the administration has learned any lessons from this. I hope they have." Kolbe and Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer Perry Cammack also acknowledged the bitter partisanship that exists in Washington, but noted that their committees were among the least partisan since the leadership worked hard to forge productive relationships across party lines. "Congress and the legislative process is all about personal relationships, not skills," Kolbe stated. Cammack also observed that the Democrats in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have the most impact when they work with the administration rather than fight them.

But Cammack also stressed that for influencing Congress, constituent voices were the most effective. "Five personal letters are more influential than 100 form faxes," Cammack stated. "Democracy really does work on an individual level."

In response to the role of interest groups, including lobbyists and think tanks, on the political process, Cammack noted that they were a good source of information. The Stimson Center's Ellen Laipson echoed this point, finding "think tanks facilitate the flow of information between academia and the government and between the press and policymakers. Sometimes they are a source of new ideas, and sometimes they are the testing ground for new ideas."

Understanding this key point has been one of the reasons groups like AIPAC, which invented the concept of grassroots lobbying, has been so successful, according to AIPAC's Raphael Danziger. Fortune magazine ranks AIPAC in the top five most effective lobbying groups in the U.S., out of some 13,000 groups. Danziger attributed AIPAC's success mainly to the fact that a solid majority of Americans support Israel (polls historically show that Americans support Israel to Arabs by almost four to one) and that the Jewish-American community is educated, affluent, and politically engaged, as evidenced by the fact the 11 Senators and 35 Representatives are Jewish. AIPAC's main task is to support foreign aid to Israel, and in the process, according to Danziger, it supports the President's entire foreign policy budget, not just aid to Israel. "If AIPAC were not so vocal on foreign aid," asserted Danziger, "it would be cut everywhere around the world."

For the Palestinian perspective, students also visited the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Mission in Washington, a foreign mission with no diplomatic status, registered in the U.S. as a foreign agent. The PLO acts a liaison between the Palestinian Authority and the U.S. government and is focused on using the "road map" as the vehicle to peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Mission Deputy Director Said Hamad emphasized the need for the U.S. to act as a third party broker of peace between the two parties, stating that only the U.S. could facilitate a true peace settlement. He also discussed the upcoming Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. "We're not going to stand against the Gaza disengagement, but does it have a political horizon?" he asked. "Is it going to be followed by a West Bank disengagement? If not, we have left the road map."

Lebanon's Ambassador Farid Abboud discussed the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, and Syria's upcoming withdrawal, noting that "Everyone is happy with what happened in Lebanon," he claimed, "but it has nothing to do with Iraq or Libya."

The trip ended dining with Ambassador Marc Grossman who discussed the exciting opportunities available to WWS students interested in careers with the U.S. State Department. He observed how much the role of diplomats had changed in a generation. "During the Cold War, it was our senior officials in Moscow and Washington that were the faces of American diplomacy," Grossman said. "Today, foreign service officers, mostly young ones, on the ground in the Middle East and other hot spots are on the front lines."

In efforts to prepare for this trip, in addition to regular coursework students met with various Middle East experts at Princeton including Eric Schwartz M.P.A./J.D. '85, formerly with the National Security Council and currently a Lecturer in the Woodrow Wilson School; Julie Taylor, Assistant Professor in Near East Studies; and L. Carl Brown, Professor Emeritus in Near East Studies.

Students who participated in the WWW 547 trip include Ylber Bajraktari, MPA '06, Drew Blakeney, MPP '05, Arthur Boutellis-Taft, MPA '06, Fatema Gunja, MPA '06, Danny Harris, MPA '06, Nick Holt, MPA '06, Richard Johnson, MPA '06, Ilan Jonas, MPA '06, David Malkin, MPA '06, Jane Rhee, MPA '06, Megan Selmon, MPA '06, Bart Szewczyk, MPA '06, and Earle Trott, NES '05. They were accompanied by Ambassador Edmund Hull and Faculty Assistant Cynthia Ernst.

The workshop series grew from the premise that the need to address key public safety challenges in new immigrant communities would require on-going, constructive dialogue grounded in research between the core constituencies - immigrant groups and the police. By bringing together regional leaders from each group, and scholars from around the country, the Institute hopes both to catalyze and inform a broader discussion. The first gathering in November, 2004, involved law enforcement leaders from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The second session convened immigrant advocates, elected officials, and representatives from community based organizations.

The final meeting will bring law enforcement and immigrant advocates together, many of whom participated in the first two sessions. Through facilitated small group discussions, focused on the key points and ideas that emerged from earlier meetings, the Institute will begin to assemble a list of strategies for improving safety and the administration of justice in America's immigrant communities.

The Policy Research Institute for the Region was established to bring the resources of the University community to bear in solving the increasingly interdependent public policy challenges facing New Jersey, New York, and southeastern Pennsylvania. For more information please visit the Policy Research Institute for the Region's website.

The service is open to members of the University community and the public. Colleagues, friends and family members will speak in Bradford's memory, and musical selections will be performed.

Bradford, an influential authority on taxation issues, died Feb. 22 from injuries sustained while escaping from a fire in his home. He was 66.

Bradford was a member of Princeton's faculty since 1966, focusing on public sector economics. In addition to his research and teaching at Princeton and the Woodrow Wilson School, he also served three U.S. presidents, including a term as a member of President George H.W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad, 237 N. Harrison St., Princeton, NJ 08540; or the Nature Conservancy, Attn: Treasury, 4245 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 100, Arlington, VA 22203.