Glenn Altschuler and Faust Rossi to lead summer program on great American trials of the 20th century

Cornell University School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions, January 20, 2016

Glenn Altschuler, dean of the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions, and Faust Rossi, the Samuel S. Leibowitz Professor of Trial Techniques (emeritus), will team up to lead a weeklong program this summer for Cornell’s Adult University (CAU) on Ten Great American Trials, the subject and title of their forthcoming book.

Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies and the author or coauthor of ten books, including Cornell: A History, 1940–2015 (with government professor Isaac Kramnick). He received his PhD in American history from Cornell in 1976 and has been an administrator and teacher at Cornell since 1981. Rossi, a dynamic teacher and lecturer and a national authority on evidence and trial advocacy, graduated from Cornell Law School in 1960 and began his legal career as a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Honors Program. He joined the faculty of the Cornell Law School in 1966, where he taught for 47 years before his retirement in 2013.

Offered from July 24 to 30 on the Cornell campus, Ten Great American Trials will examine compelling U.S. trials of the twentieth century, including Sacco and Vanzetti, Leopold and Loeb, Alger Hiss, Claus von Bülow, and O. J. Simpson. The seminar will examine the use of evidence by prosecution and defense attorneys, the conflicting narratives they crafted, and the influence of politics on the content and context of the trials.

CAU sponsors four weeks of summer programming on the Cornell campus as well as education vacations around the world all year long. For information about CAU and to register for courses, visit cau.cornell.edu.