It has been 40 years since the founding of IR&R, and as I look back over its history and leadership, I am pleased to find myself in the company of those former (and present) chairs, council members and leaders. There is a lot of good to build on and fall back on, and I hope to do both. As Roy Hammer said at our meeting in May, the Section is in the best shape that he can recall in all his years working with it. That is indeed a testament to the Section’s leadership including the present Executive Committee, Council and staff.

I will build on Paul’s work in making us aware of the importance of diversity. Coming from New York, the Ed Koch question, “How’m I doin” is one that I always ask. This year the Goal IX Report of the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession, chaired by our Council member Kay Hodge, helped to answer that question by ranking IR&R first among the sections of the ABA, just behind the Young Lawyers and Law Students Divisions. That tells me something we all knew anyway, that we must draw on these divisions for our future IR&R leadership. For this next year at least, one way to assure that we will continue to do well is to draw on these divisions for our committee “ pipeline” as it is called, so that we can continue to assure a diverse and expert future leadership. We must also look at the Section’s Diversity Plan and review the ABA’s yearly Goal IX report to learn from an independent source how others view our progress and to be responsive to their conclusions.

Each chair has barely a year in that position. In one sense, we are all grateful for the brevity of the term. In another it forces us to realize that we are part of a continuum and if anything we begin is to get done it must have the support of those who follow. Or looking at it another way, leadership must be collegial and there must be a buy in from the future officers and we must work towards our goals together. I am pleased that we have this.

Buy-in is important for another reason. One of the strengths of our section has not just been our diverse leadership, but the genuine care and concern that each of us has for issues, not necessarily because we are of the affected group (if narrowly conceived) but because we realize the simple truth that if one of us is discriminated against, we all are lessened and are at risk. On the wall of the Holocaust Museum in Washington there is a statement from a German Protestant pastor (who had earlier been a Nazi sympathizer), Martin Niemoeller who as many of you know said.

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats ,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists ,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews ,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

We don’t have to be of a particular group to be for that group.

We are again in extremely difficult times, times of considerable peril as both state actors and private entities seek to impose their way of life on others. It is also a time, in our country, when the Constitution, the very basis of our democracy, is being ignored and abused by those who claim it must be in order to combat terrorism. Must [or how much must] democracy and the rights of citizens inevitably suffer in a time of war and terror?

During the second world war, EB White, known better for his Elements of Style and children’s books said the following in one of the Talk of the Town columns he wrote for so many years in the New Yorker.

“July 3, 1944

“We received a letter from the Writers’ War Board the other day asking for a statement on ‘The Meaning of Democracy.’ It presumably is our duty to comply with such a request, and it is certainly our pleasure.

“Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don’t in Don’t Shove….It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere….It’s the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee. Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of the morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.”

So given this. What do I hope the Section can accomplish this year and into the future.

Let me highlight a few of these plans.

First, IR&R will have a new committee, a coordinating committee on National Security and civil liberties. Headed by Joe Onek, now of the Constitution Project, and with Neal Sonnett as an ex officio member the committee will draw from the expertise of our existing committees and provide a focus for determining what the Section and the ABA should be doing in this critical area. A committee on National security and Civil liberties not a new idea for IR&R. Mike Greco set up such a committee working on Non-proliferation issues when he chaired the section. I strongly believe that the current times require a new coordinating committee with a different focus. Having been a committee chair and co-chair before joining the Council I also believe that this is where so much of the Section’s work starts and is carried out and the place of committees in the section must be recognized. I hope that all committee leaders will attend the Committee conclave scheduled for Thursday October 26, the day before the fall Council meeting so that we can learn together how to be more effective.

Second, we must continue to build our membership and I suggest at least three ways of doing this. Steve Hanlon has sent a letter to pro bono coordinators around the country letting them know that Holland & Knight has given IR&R membership to its pro bono stars and urging other firms to do the same. We also are working with Jim Silkenet who will send letters to a few of the largest sections in the ABA urging IR&R membership as a second section. Finally, we are focusing efforts on the law student division and YLD. Anyone with a good idea about how to increase membership should contact our membership committee. We need more members and more involved members.

Third, we can do better than we have in providing timely responses to the Government Affairs Office and Media Affairs to be sure those policies that we have worked so hard to get approved by the House of Delegates are implemented. Whether the subject involves policies related to national security, signing statements, issues of civil and health rights, or issues of social justice including sexual orientation and gender identity, each IR&R committee should designate a person or persons who can both initiate and respond to requests for letters etc. A good example occurred just a few weeks ago with respect to stem-cell research legislation when we were able to provide timely assistance to GAO in getting out letters supporting the broadest bill and favoring overturn of the President’s veto. I hope that the system for doing this can be in place before our fall meeting.

Fourth, We must find new ways to work collaboratively with those state, local, minority and specialty bar association committees and other entities, that have an interest in and expertise in the same areas we do. As a first step, we will convene a conference in Spring 2007 to bring these groups together, to explore issues relating to human rights, civil liberties and social justice find ways to develop a community of interest and to be more effective in advancing sound policies that involve those issues. The whole is always greater than its parts and by learning from one another we all will be stronger. This civil rights and civil liberties summit hopefully will be the first of periodic gatherings hosted by IR&R.

A planning committee has already begum work on the conference and we have agreed that the conference should be held in Washington, DC. We are refining core themes for the conference and we have agreed that we should cast our net broadly to get participation form many groups. We will need additional help from the Council and Committees and as the Conference will take place over the same time that we will hold our Spring 2007 Council meeting I hope we all will be there to take part in this new effort. We will need speaker names, people with contacts in these bar associations to call them and obtain their interest in our effort. We will work with others in doing this as well and I already have gotten some interest from the American Constitution Society.

We can do a lot of this work ourselves, but for it and other aspects of our work we heavily rely on our excellent staff led by Tanya and Emily and their happy band. They are knowledgeable about our issues and about the arcane ways in which the ABA works. They deserve a lot of the credit for the work of the section and I look forward to continuing to work closely with each of them during this next year.

Finally, since I have quoted from EB White, a few style points. 1. This year, IR&R is my primary occupation. I will be available to anyone in the section who has an idea, wants to help or wants to get something off their chest about our work. 2. I also hope that we can have enough respect for one another that we can deal with these important and serious subjects with a sense of humor. I already have given Tanya a cartoon to take the place of clip art for our fall meeting materials. 3. My son, who teaches middle school social studies in Maine, described to me a meeting he attended in which a speaker drew a distinction between groups that are congenial and those that are collegial. To make IR&R as effective a force as it can be we must be both. We not only like and respect one another as individuals, which we do, but we must continually look for and find ways to share our work and our ideas, both amongst ourselves and with other sections. If we can work collegially, then, as we start our second 40 years as a section IR&R will continue to be the heart and soul of the ABA, the section involved with the issues that we became lawyers to address. And we can continue, through our work, to help make a difference in the lives of those we care so much about.

I look forward to an exciting, challenging and productive year.