provided to The Santiva Chronicle
The League of Women Voters of Sanibel is hitting its post-hurricane stride with a series of five non-partisan citizen education programs. The programs will focus on the core mission of the League of Women Voters since 1920: The education and encouragement of voters and their fundamental rights.
“The Presidency Unleashed–From Washington to Nixon to Trump” was the title of the first luncheon on Thursday, Dec. 5, attended by more than 70 guests at the Sundial Beach Resort.
The keynote speaker was Philip Allen Lacovara, a former Deputy Solicitor General of the U.S. for criminal and national security matters and former Counsel to the Watergate Special Prosecutor.
Mr. Lacovara is a Columbia Law School graduate who clerked at the U.S. Court of Appeals before joining the Solicitor General’s office, working under Thurgood Marshall.
Highlights of his long-time service include working on hundreds of federal cases before the Supreme Court and presenting many oral arguments before the Court; he served as consulting counsel in connection to the Senate’s “ABSCAM” investigation and special counsel in charge of the House of Representatives Ethics Committee’s “Koreagate” investigation.
Lacovara’s teaching career spans Columbia Law School, Georgetown Law Center, John Jay College, and Hunter College of the City University of New York. He developed and taught a university-level political science course, “Presidential Power in Peace and War.” He is a resident (and local treasure) of Sanibel.
Lacovara’s talk traced the framers of the Constitution’s expectations about the character of the presidency, both the expected personal qualities and the constitutional mechanisms that would “check and balance” presidential power.
He explored the ebbs and flows of presidential power as illustrated in several important decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, including the Nixon Tapes case, which he personally argued before SCOTUS.
Mr. Lacovara also discussed the presidency’s evolution to the present with the Court’s decision related to presidential immunity this year. He recently testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee about this decision.
After a comprehensive history of how the Constitution and Supreme Court cases impact presidential powers, Lacovara concludes that a free citizenry in a democracy ultimately depends on four important criteria: Active engagement in civil society, an informed citizenry, dedication to the “common good”, and broad voter participation.
The next luncheon program will take place on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, at the Sundial Resort, featuring a non-partisan, deep dive into Project 2025: What it is and what might be ahead if the core ideas presented are carried out in a future presidential administration.
For more information and to register, visit the LWVS Facebook page or contact LWVS at lwvsanibel@gmail.com.