Robert Blakey

G. ROBERT BLAKEY

Attorney and Law Professor

Professor G. Robert Blakey, the nation's foremost authority on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO), has served on the Notre Dame Law School faculty for more than 30 years. He teaches in the areas of criminal law and procedure, federal criminal law and procedure, terrorism, and jurisprudence. Blakey's extensive legislative drafting experience resulted in the passage of the Crime Control Act of 1973, the Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1970 and the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, Title IX of which is known as RICO. He has been personally involved in drafting and implementing RICO-type legislation in 22 of the more than 30 states that have enacted racketeering laws. He frequently argues in or consults on cases involving RICO statutes at both the federal and state levels, including several cases before the United States Supreme Court.

Blakey has considerable expertise in federal and state wiretapping statutes as well. He helped draft and secure passage of Title III on wiretapping of the federal 1968 Crime Control Act, and has been personally involved in drafting and implementing wiretapping legislation in 39 of the 43 states that have enacted such laws. Blakey has extensively investigated the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He served as chief counsel and staff director to the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations from 1977 to 1979, and helped to draft the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. Blakey gave remarks at the 2012 Law School Hooding/Diploma Commencement Ceremony on May 19, 2012. Blakey received Emeritus status in December 2012.

G. Robert Blakey will participate in Revisiting The MLK Assassination with G. Robert Blakey, on April 8, 2021. Books of his include: The Development of the Law of Gambling, Rackets Bureaus: Investigation and Prosecution of Organized Crime, The plot to kill the President, Fatal Hour: The Assassination of President Kennedy by Organized Crime.

Jeanni Gersen

JEANNIE SUK GERSEN

Professor at Harvard Law School

Jeannie Suk Gersen is a professor at Harvard Law School and is known for her specialty in a large range of topics (including constitutional law, criminal law and procedure). She has written countless articles and three books, one of which, At Home in the Law, was awarded the Law and Society Association's Herbert Jacob Prize for the best law and society book of the year. 

In 2010, she became the first Asian American woman to receive tenure at Harvard Law School.

She is a longtime contributor to The New Yorker, focusing on legal and policy issues. She served as a law clerk to Justice David Souter on the United States Supreme Court, and to Judge Harry Edwards on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Jeanni Suk Gersen participated in The Presidential Pardon with Joyce Vance and Jeanni Suk Gersen, on January 16, 2021.

Robert Pape

ROBERT PAPE

Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago

Robert Pape is Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago specializing in international security affairs, as well as, a successful publicist. His commentary on international security policy has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, New Republic, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, as well as on Nightline, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and National Public Radio. 

Before coming to Chicago in 1999, he taught international relations at Dartmouth College for five years and air power strategy for the USAF's School of Advanced Airpower Studies for three years.

His current work focuses on the causes of suicide terrorism and the politics of unipolarity. He is the director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats.

Robert Pape participated in The Rise and Threat of Right Wing Domestic Terrorism. Along with Jeh Johnson, Michael German and Oren Segal he discussed the rise of right wing terrorism, and what can be done to fight it.