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24th Public Printer of the United States Bruce R. James to Present Jackson Lecture April 9

3/14/2008

The 24th Public Printer of the United States, Bruce R. James, will present The National Judicial College’s (NJC) Jackson Lecture on April 9 at 4 p.m. in the NJC’s Tom C. Clark auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.

The speech is titled The Importance of Citizen Access to Government Information and will trace the history of freedom of government information, the transformation it has undergone in the Internet age, and how it affects judges and the courts.

From 2002 to 2007, James served as the 24th Public Printer of the United States, a position first held by Benjamin Franklin. As such, he headed the Government Printing Office (GPO), headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices and facilities throughout the country. The GPO is charged with the production, distribution, and preservation of both electronic and printed publications for all three branches of the federal government.

James is credited with the transformation of the GPO from a print-centric factory operation into a modern, 21st century, digital information provider. In 2006, he was named Federal Civilian Executive of the Year. Today, virtually all published federal government information is available on the Internet and the GPO is moving to make all past documents back to the Federalist Papers also available. More than half of government documents today are born digital and will never be printed by the federal government. The challenges of authenticating and preserving electronic documents are being met in a variety of ways by the Government Printing Office.

Prior to serving as Public Printer, James founded and operated a dozen technology-based printing and publishing companies which operated throughout the United States and around the world. Among those companies was Barclays Law Publishers which pioneered customized electronic publications for lawyers and judges and is now part of Thomson/West. For four years running, Inc. Magazine cited Barclays as one of the nation’s 500 fastest growing companies.

The NJC’s Jackson Lectures are held in honor of Justice Robert H. Jackson, a 1940s Supreme Court Justice best remembered for his role as chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg War Trials. The NJC presents these lectures two times a year at the end of each two-week General Jurisdiction course for the course participants as well as community residents.

Justice Jackson was born in Spring Creek, Penn., on Feb. 13, 1892. He never went to college, but attended Albany Law School for a year. He obtained most of his legal education under the old apprenticeship system as a law clerk and did not get his law degree until after he was named as a justice to the Supreme Court of the United States, when he was awarded an honorary degree by Albany Law School.

Justice Jackson was invited by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to serve in the New Deal government, first as General Counsel to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, and later as solicitor general and attorney general. He took his seat as a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States on Oct. 6, 1941, and served until his death in 1954. Justice Jackson is best remembered for his vigorous decision and wisdom.

The decision to honor Justice Jackson with this lecture series was made by his friend and Supreme Court colleague, Justice Tom C. Clark, chairman of the Joint Committee for the Effective Administration of Justice and one of NJC’s founders, for whom NJC’s auditorium is named.