February 2024 – The Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic

Cornell First Amendment Clinic alum Connor Flannery ’23 argued in the Court of Common Pleas, Dauphin County, on February 26, 2023, seeking access to sealed settlement agreements on behalf of local journalism client The Patriot News/PennLive. The Clinic’s client seeks access to the settlement agreements in a wrongful death suit to shed further light on an issue of great public concern involving a young mother killed by an oncoming train as she was exiting a boat ramp in Halifax, Pennsylvania. Also pictured are Mr. Flannery’s supervising attorneys Heather Murray, Managing Attorney of the Cornell Local Journalism Project, Paula Knudsen Burke, Local Legal Initiative Attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Diane Siegel Danoff, a partner at Dechert LLP.

The Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic kicked off the Spring 2024 semester with another informative and inspiring Bootcamp. This Bootcamp treated five new Clinic students and ten returning students to three days of learning and discussion. Speakers included speaker Daniel Novack, Vice President, Associate General Counsel at Penguin Random House, on ongoing legal challenges to book-banning legislation; a panel of some of our stellar local journalism clients and co-counsel, including Teresa Bonner at Penn Live, Jo Ciavaglia at Bucks County Courier Times, Janon Fisher at Newsday, Paula Knudsen Burke at Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and clinic alum Connor Flannery; Prof. James Grimmelmann on the ever-changing landscape of Internet-related First Amendment issues; and a panel of returning students Cam Misner, Sabrina Palacios and Matt Hornung on ways to get the most out of one’s clinic experience.

We are grateful to all our speakers for making this Bootcamp special, and we look forward to the semester ahead.