John O'Brian Gives Godkin Talk Tonight

John Lord O'Brian '96 will speak on "Security in an Age of Anxiety" at 8 p.m. tonight in the first of this year's Godkin lectures at Sanders Theatre. He will speak again tomorrow night to conclude the series, with his topic "Security, Sanity, and Fair Play."

O'Brian will deliver only two lectures instead of the customary three, because he was not named as lecturer until January. He them replaced the late Robert H. Jackson, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

Jackson died last fall after he had prepared his lectures on "The Position of the Supreme Court in the America System of Government." O'Brian's overall topic is "National Safety and Individual Freedom, 1955."

O'Brian, a Washington attorney, has argued Constitutional cases before the Supreme Court for four decades. One of his most important cases came when the Roosevelt administration retained him to support the constitutionality of the Tennessee Valley Authority. This was only a few years after he served as Assistant to the Attorney General under Hoover from 1929 to 1933.

A former Overseer, O'Brian was awarded the Medal of Merit for his World War II services as General Counsel to the Office of Production Management and the War Production Board.

The Godkin Lectures, given under the auspices of the Graduate School of Public Administration, were established in 1903.