Symposium on McCullen v. Coakley

Villanova hosted a noteworthy symposium recently on one of last term's major free speech cases, McCullen v. Coakley. Video of the event is available here, with remarks from Eleanor McCullen (lead plaintiff), Mark Rienzi (CUA and also Mrs. McCullen's counsel), Greg Magarian (Washington University-St. Louis), Carrie Severino (Judicial Crisis Network), and Kevin Walsh (Richmond). In addition to the significance of hearing directly from the plaintiff in such a case (as John Noonan long ago observed, we are apt to neglect the experience of actual, living persons behind a major case), the symposium was a rich conversation among participants who all (like the justices on the Court) basically agreed on the outcome of the case but for different reasons (and with different assessments of McCullen's long-term importance to such areas as public forum doctrine and content-neutrality analysis).