Broder to speak at Kastenmeier Colloquium

David Broder, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post, will be the keynote speaker at the UW Law School’s 1999 Robert W. Kastenmeier Colloquium.

David Broder

The colloquium – “From Watergate to the Present: Impeachment, Presidential Accountability, and the Separation of Powers” – will be held Friday, April 9 at the Law School, 975 Bascom Mall. Broder will join a panel of prominent players in the dramas of Watergate and the impeachment trial of President Clinton to discuss issues raised by the investigations. The event is scheduled for 3:15 to 5:45 p.m. in the Law School’s Godfrey & Kahn Hall (Room 2260), with a reception to follow.

Moderating the colloquium will be Stanley I. Kutler, UW–Madison historian, legal scholar and author of “Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon.” Panelists will be Michael Gerhardt, professor of law at the College of William and Mary’s Marshall-Wythe School of Law and author of “The Federal Impeachment Process”; Father Robert Drinan, former Democratic congressman from Massachusetts and member of the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate; U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., a member of the House Judiciary Committee during the Clinton impeachment; and UW–Madison law professor Frank Tuerkheimer, who was a Watergate associate special prosecutor.

Introducing Broder will be Kastenmeier, who as a member of the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate drafted the rules used by the congressional panel during its impeachment hearings of President Nixon.

Panelists will discuss a number of impeachment topics, including whether Clinton’s impeachment fit into the pattern established by Watergate; whether Clinton should have resigned, as Nixon did; whether the Senate should have convicted Clinton; implications from the Clinton trial on presidential accountability and the constitutional separation of powers; and the future of the independent counsel law.

The Kastenmeier Colloquium is supported by a fund established by friends of the former Democratic representative to honor his service in Congress. Kastenmeier represented Wisconsin’s Second Congressional District from 1958-1990. The first colloquium speaker in 1992 was Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who presided over Clinton’s impeachment trial.

This year’s event is co-sponsored by the Law School and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.