Senior Judge Sterling Johnson, Jr. will speak in the Irvin L. Young Auditorium at 3:30 p.m. on January 23rd. This is the 22nd annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative Event on the UWW campus, and you’re all invited!
The Honorable Sterling Johnson, Jr., has been United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York since 1991, where he presides over a heavy workload of cases on criminal and civil matters. His previous experiences include a stint as a marine and service as a police officer, Judge Advocate General (United States Naval Reserve), and Special Narcotics Prosecutor for New York City. More of his background is available online at the web site of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Perhaps his most widely publicized case is his 1993 finding that the detention of Haitian asylum seekers due to their HIV status at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, without access to legal counsel, visitors, telephones, etc. was unconstitutional. To learn more about this case and the issues involved, you could use some of the Library’s databases:
- CQ Electronic Library – Search for “sterling johnson” to find brief articles.
- Campus Research (Westlaw) – Search “all federal cases” for ju(johnson) and haitians to read the court cases.
- Proquest Newspapers – Search for sterling johnson and haitians to read newspaper articles.
- Articles on this case could also be found in magazines and journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine (search for annas and haitians).
An additional brief summary, with a note about the subsequent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the Federal government’s actions and links to related resources is provided online by the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Also in honor of MLK, you may want to check out the tall display case in the Library’s lobby.
