Category: Forums

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The Annual Creativity Sunday

Hosted by Sena Havasy

November 25, 2018

Do you paint? Write? Do a skit? Read a poem? Do a dramatic reading?
Sing? Play an instrument? Join us!

Audience members are invited to share any activity like the above with the rest of the audience.

Please contact Sena at senahav@gmail.com or 408-739-5638, if you would like to share something at this Forum.

After the Forum, please join us for a special Festive Lunch at 12:30pm. The lunch is complimentary for first-time visitors and students.

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See videos of our past Forums here.

Corporate Personhood – Has the Court Gone Too Far?

Attorney Leland Chan

November 18, 2018

Mini Law School: In this next topic of the series we will explore the Supreme Court’s controversial decisions to grant personhood to corporations for purposes of first amendment “free speech” (i.e., spending money on elections per Citizens United) and exercise of religion (per Hobby Lobby).

Throughout U.S. history corporations have fought hard to claim Constitutional rights that are similar to rights accorded to natural persons. Has the Court gone too far? This presentation by Leland Chan (Golden Gate University School of Law) will draw upon the book “We The Corporations” by UCLA law professor Adam Winkler.

After the Forum, please join us for a lunch at 12:30pm. The lunch is complimentary for first-time visitors and students.

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The Results of the 2018 Election – a Group Discussion

Facilitated by Richard Hobbs

11 a.m., November 11, 2018

Richard Hobbs, Executive Director and Co-founder of Human Agenda, will share his thoughts about, and facilitate a discussion of, the results of the November 6th, 2018 election with audience members. Everyone will be given an opportunity to share their feelings about the results, if they wish to.

After the Forum, please join us for a lunch at 12:30pm. The lunch is complimentary for first-time visitors and students.

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Two Videos of Talks by Prof. Lawrence Lessig

11 a.m., November 4, 2018

Lawrence Lessig III is a distinguished American academic, attorney, and political activist. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Equal Citizens Foundation (https://equalcitizens.us/).

The first video is a TED Talk (see http://www.ted.com) from 2013 entitled “We the People, and the Republic we much reclaim” (18 minutes, https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim). Here is the description of the first video:

There is a corruption at the heart of American politics, caused by the dependence of Congressional candidates on funding from the tiniest percentage of citizens. That’s the argument at the core of this blistering talk by legal scholar Lawrence Lessig. With rapid-fire visuals, he shows how the funding process weakens the Republic in the most fundamental way, and issues a rallying bipartisan cry that will resonate with many in the U.S. and beyond.

The second video is a YouTube video entitled “Lawrence Lessig: What Maine Can Teach” (14 minutes, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3H6yswvPwg). It can be shown under the Creative Commons license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode). It presents Lawrence Lessig’s keynote address at the “Get Money Out of Politics Summit” at the University of Southern Maine on April 7th, 2018.

There will then be a general discussion of the content of the two videos by audience members.

After the Forum, please join us for a lunch at 12:30pm. The lunch is complimentary for first-time visitors and students.

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Should Judges Make Laws?

Attorney Leland Chan

October 28, 2018

Note: This Forum will be held at Hacker Dojo, 3350 Thomas Road, Suite 150, Santa Clara, CA 95054. Click here for a map.

The contested nomination of Brett Kavanaugh highlights the fact that many Americans on the left and the right look to the Supreme Court to decide some of society’s big questions: whether abortion should be legal, whether corporations can spend freely on elections, whether all citizens who are real persons have the right to vote.

Why do we invest so much power in the “third branch of government,” the one that Alexander Hamilton referred to in Federalist Papers No. 78 as the “weakest” branch because it had “no influence over either the sword or the purse”? Is it because of judicial activism? Are we better off with original intent or living constitutionalism? Or should we just abandon judicial philosophy – in other words just accept the reality that judges are political and be sure we get the right ones in order to get the right results?

We will examine these intriguing questions in the next segment of the Mini Law School.



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