Justice Speaks: September 16, 2009

Little Adults: Minors, the Law and Changing Sexual Mores

Wednesday, September 16, 2009
12:50 - 1:50 p.m.
Room W400

Cynthia Godsoe, Professor, Brooklyn Law School
Marjorie Heins, Founder, Free Expression Policy Project
Moderated by: Doni Gewirtzman, Associate Professor of Law, New York Law School

From past to present, the social characterization of children has undergone a radical transformation. No longer are children only innocents, but they have been portrayed as both naive and inexperienced, and as, sometimes voraciously, sexual individuals. Paradoxically, forces in government, politics, and the private sector continue to view sexual ideas, activity, and information as 'harmful to minors.' Increasingly, the legal system has sought to impede minors’ access to sexual expression and punish their sexual behaviors. It has treated minors inconsistently, sometimes punishing them for their sexual behaviors, and othertimes attempting to protect them. This dichotomy of ‘good child/bad child’ has led to widely disparate treament of youth for the same acts, and failures to recognize minors as independent actors.

In the reality of youth sexuality, where does and should the law lie? The panelists will discuss: the portrayals and trends of youth sexuality, inconsistencies in the societal treatment of minors, minors’ free speech rights, and New York’s recent safe harbor law.

Lunch will be served. 

Please email jac@nyls.edu to RSVP.

Speaker Biographies

Doni Gewirtzman is a scholar of constitutional law and theory whose research focuses on the intersection between constitutional law and politics. Prior to joining New York Law School, Professor Gewirtzman taught Constitutional Law as a visiting fellow at Vanderbilt School of Law, and served as the Co-associate Director and Acting Assistant Professor of Law in New York University School of Law’s Lawyering Program. He began his legal career as a Skadden Fellow at the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, where he represented the mother of Brandon Teena, a Nebraska teen whose murder was portrayed in the film Boys Don’t Cry, in a wrongful death suit against a local police department. He also represented members of gay student organizations that were banned from meeting in Salt Lake City public schools, and spearheaded Lambda’s advocacy efforts on behalf of older lesbians and gay men.

Marjorie Heins is the founder of the Free Expression Policy Project. She is the author of Not in Front of the Children: "Indecency," Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth, which won the American Library Association's Eli M. Oboler Award in 2002 for the best published work in the field of intellectual freedom. From 2004-07, she was a fellow in the Brennan Center for Justice Democracy Program. From 1991-98, she directed the American Civil Liberties Union's Arts Censorship Project, where she was co-counsel in a number of Supreme Court cases, including Reno v. ACLU (the challenge to the 1996 Communications Decency Act). Marjorie is also the author of Sex, Sin, and Blasphemy: A Guide to America's Censorship Wars (1993, 1998), "The Progress of Science and Useful Arts": Why Copyright Today Threatens Intellectual Freedom (2003), and numerous book chapters and articles about free expression, copyright, and media reform. She currently serves on the board of directors for the National Coalition Against Censorship and has wirtten amicus briefs in the Second Circuit and Supreme Court for Fox v. FCC, 129 S. Ct. 1800 (U.S. 2009), the currently pending "fleeting expletives" case.

Cynthia Godsoe is a professor at Brooklyn Law School. Previously, she work at the Children's Law Center in New York City, where she was an appellate attorney. She also taught legal writing at Fordham University School of Law. Previously, she held staff attorney positions with several nonprofit legal organizations dedicated to children's rights, including Advocates for Children of New York, the Legal Aid Society's Juvenile Rights division in New York City and Brooklyn, and the Child Care Law center in San Francisco. After law school, she was a Skadden public interest fellow, and she clerked for Judge Edward Korman in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. She has written on education, child welfare issues and juvenile justice issues.