A panel of three judges, including Judge Michael Boudin (presiding), Justice David Souter (formerly of the Supreme Court) and Judge Jeffrey Howard engaged with Harvey Silverglate, representing the original plaintiffs who were appealing the district court finding, and Bill Porter of the Attorney General’s office with David Guberman, representing the Commonwealth.  JALSA joined in an amicus brief with Armenian groups and the Irish Immigration Center arguing that the Department of Education had the right to determine what materials should be included in a Curriculum Guide established to carry out the legislative intent to teach about genocide in the schools.

When the initial legislation had been considered, our organizational leadership had urged the legislature to include a broad number of examples of genocide in the proposed curriculum so that students might study history of particular interest to their community.  As a result, the legislation had indicated that the study might include materials about the Armenian Genocide, the European Holocaust, the Cambodian Killing Fields, the Middle Passage of the African Slave Trade, and the Irish Potato Famine.  Turkish representatives wanted materials in the curriculum that argued that the Armenian experience during WWI was not an example of genocide but the result of the conflict.  The DOE had decided that denial materials should not be part of the Curriculum Guide.  The core question raised by the plaintiffs was whether the removal of the denial materials from the Curriculum Guide, possibly in response to political pressure, was a denial of constitutional rights.

An audio recording of the court proceedings will be available at http://www.ca1.uscourts.gov/

Click “Court Calendar,” and follow the links for the RSS feed of oral arguments.

Case name:  Griswold v. Driscoll.    Case should be decided by June.