Nan Aron, President and founder of the Alliance for Justice, spoke at Memorial Chapel last night.

“Now I don’t have to tell any of you that these are extremely tough times for all us in this room – our values, the causes we believe in, our interests,” she said. “For progressives, we’ve never faced the kind of challenges that we now do, but it’s also been such an opportunity for us in the progressive community to stand up and fight like we have never fought before.”

Aron described her early beginnings practicing law with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a federal agency that works to end employment discrimination in the United States.

“I saw, on a daily basis, women, African Americans, Latinos, having a hard time getting good jobs and getting paid the same amount that white males were being paid,” she said.

She spoke about how EEOC’s lawyers often found themselves greatly outnumbered by the lawyers representing the large corporations charged with employment discrimination.

“We were outnumbered and outmaneuvered at every twist and turn, but there was one hope that I had as a young lawyer,” she said. “The hope and promise of the federal courtroom was that one judge. That judge was supposed to do something very simple: hear the facts of the case. Then, after hearing our rendition and the defense side’s rendition, make a decision. [A decision] not based on ideology and not based on predispositions to ruling in favor of one party or the other.”

Aron said that civil rights lawyers in the 1960s and 1970s were able to achieve an enormous amount because lawyers sitting on the federal bench were honest, independent, and not appointed because of their ideology.

“As we all know, that situation has changed enormously,” she said.

In 1979, Aron left litigation to establish the Alliance for Justice. The Alliance works to ensure a fair and independent selection of federal judges for the Supreme Court, courts of appeals, and district courts.

“We led the effort in 1987 to defeat [Ronald Reagan Supreme Court nominee] Robert Bork’s nomination to the Court,” she said. “And who would have thought that Anthony Kennedy, who was appointed when Ford was defeated to fill that seat, would now be considered that swing vote on the Supreme Court? It’s amazing.”

One thing that has remained constant during her time in Washington, Aron said, has been how Supreme Court nominees evade questions during their hearings.

When Clarence Thomas was questioned on his feelings on Roe v. Wade during his 1991 hearing, he claimed that he didn’t have a view on the matter, despite being a student at Yale Law School in 1973 when Roe v. Wade was decided.

Eight months later he joined dissent with Justices William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Byron White stating that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided, and that a woman’s right to choose is not a constitutionally protected liberty. Aron contrasted this with the recent hearings on Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

“There you’ve got John Roberts up before the Senate Judiciary committee and he is asked a question on Roe v. Wade, and what is his answer?” she said. “His answer in the year 2006 was the same answer that Clarence Thomas gave in 1990, which was ‘I don’t know how I’d rule on Roe v. Wade.”

Aron then spoke about the uproar over the since-withdrawn nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

“The radical right in this country couldn’t stomach the fact that they didn’t know where she was on abortion, they didn’t know where she was on upholding torture in America, they weren’t sure [if she would join] the right wing in dismantling environmental, consumer, and worker protections,” she said. “And the right wing in this country [pressured] the Bush administration to withdraw her name.”

When Miers was replaced by Alito, he too was asked his feelings on Roe v. Wade.

“Alito was asked, ‘Do you view Roe v. Wade as settled law? In other words, do you agree with John Roberts?’ and his answer was ‘I cannot go that far,’” she said. “Here you have a nominee to the Supreme Court that won’t even agree that Roe v. Wade is settled law.”

Aron said that President George W. Bush’s judicial action often seems to have put us on “some awful collision course,” but she offered hope for the future.

“We’ve all been here before,” she said. “Who would have thought that we’d live through Ronald Reagan, and George Bush senior, and William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court, and John Ashcroft? [But] we survived all of them, and you know what, I think we’re going to survive George Bush too.”

Aron closed by saying that young people today have opportunities for massive organizing that past generations have not had, such as blogs and e-mail.

“Nan Aron’s use of personal anecdotes to convey universal themes and ideas about American politics was fascinating and stirring,” said Elissa Gross ’08. “She inspired us with what we the general public can do to incite change.”

Alex Halpern Levy ’08, who interned with the Alliance for Justice last summer, agreed.

“Nan has a tremendous history and reputation in Washington,” he said. “The Alliance doesn’t have the same name recognition of the Sierra Club, or the ACLU, or EMILY’s List at Wesleyan, so it was a good opportunity for students to hear about it and hear Nan Aron, someone who is often behind the scenes.”

Justin Costa ’06, president of the Wesleyan Democrats, organized the lecture in conjunction with Campus Progress. He was happy with the turnout, especially during a room selection night.

“Inside D.C., Nan is, no exaggeration, one of the two or three most important liberal advocates in the country,” Costa said. “It’s important to see that people of this caliber care about what we’re doing here at Wesleyan.”