Stefan Presser

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: John Morris <jmorris () cdt org>
Date: October 11, 2005 1:17:17 AM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Stefan Presser


Dave,

I thought it would be appropriate to send to IP a brief remembrance  
of Stefan Presser, the former Legal Director of the ACLU of  
Pennsylvania.  The Internet has lost a good and long-time friend with  
Stefan's passing, at age 52.  See the obit at http://www.nytimes.com/ 
2005/10/10/national/10presser.html

Although Stefan would have been the first to disclaim a deep  
knowledge of the inner workings of the Internet, he played an  
instrumental part in Internet free speech cases for as long as there  
have been such cases.  Stefan was on the ACLU's legal team in the  
1996 legal challenge to the Communications Decency Act, resulting in  
the seminal Reno v. ACLU decision by the Supreme Court in 1997.  
Stefan continued as the ACLU's local counsel in the critical Internet  
free speech cases filed in Philadelphia following the victory in the  
CDA case (including the still on-going challenge to the COPA  
statute).  Most recently, I was privileged to be co-counsel with  
Stefan in the 2004 CDT v. Pappert case (involving the blocking of 1.5  
million innocent web sites in a misguided Pennsylvania effort against  
child pornography).  That case would prove to be the last that Stefan  
tried -- his diagnosis with and initial treatment for cancer occurred  
toward the end of the 13 days of evidentiary hearing spread out from  
January to June of 2004.

Stefan's work reached far beyond the Internet, and addressed some of  
the most fundamental human rights.  Among his successes over his 25+  
year legal career, for example, was a landmark restructuring of the  
care provided by the City of Philadelphia to abused and neglected  
children.  But Stefan worked equally hard in cases not expected to be  
seminal or landmark -- cases that involved a single injustice, or  
that vindicated only one person's rights.  He took great pleasure,  
for example, in an early victory against the Transportation Security  
Administration -- in that case, an 18- or 19-year old college student  
had (with no justification) ended up on the TSA's watch list, and she  
had been repeatedly detained at airports while attempting to return  
home for the holidays in the middle of a year of study abroad. Before  
she flew back out of the country, Stefan prepared a complaint and  
motion for a temporary restraining order against the TSA, and then  
without even filing the lawsuit he convinced the TSA and the  
Department of Justice to back down.  The end result was that a DOJ  
attorney personally went to the Philadelphia airport to ensure that  
the student was able to board her flight without delay.

The Philadelphia stories give a richer flavor of Stefan and his work,  
at http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/12857056.htm and http:// 
www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/12863484.htm.  With his passing, Stefan  
joins two other other great lawyers -- Bruce Ennis and Ron Plesser --  
who made important contributions to the protection of rights on the  
Internet, but who died far too young.  As with Bruce and Ron, Stefan  
will be sorely missed.

John Morris

--
----------------------------------------
John B. Morris, Jr.
Staff Counsel
Center for Democracy and Technology
1634 I Street NW, Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20006
(202) 637-9800
(202) 637-0968 fax
jmorris () cdt org
http://www.cdt.org
----------------------------------------


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