ACLU to Grant Awards to Standing Rock Tribe Chairman and Lakota Water Protector for Protest Against Pipeline, and Constitutional Law Professor

NEW YORK — This month the American Civil Liberties Union will award its highest honors, the Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty, to Dave Archambault II and Regina Brave, and the Dorsen Presidential Prize in Academia, to Professor David Goldberger. Both awards will be granted at the organization’s upcoming Biennial Leadership Conference on September 16th in Denver, Colorado.

Dave Archambault II and Regina Brave are the 2017 recipients of the Medal of Liberty. Archambault is the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Brave is a water protector and member of the Lakota Tribe. Both are being honored for their leadership in the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline on behalf of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and all Indigenous People.

The ACLU awards the Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty biannually to recognize exceptional contributions to civil liberties. Established in 1989, the award honors Roger N. Baldwin, one of the ACLU’s principal organizers in 1919 and 1920. The Baldwin Medal of Liberty comes with a financial stipend of $30,000, split evenly between the recipients.

In addition to the Medal of Liberty, the ACLU will award the Dorsen Presidential Prize to David Goldberger, professor emeritus of law at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. The 2017 Dorsen Prize will be presented to Goldberger for his celebrated work as an author and academic for over 50 years, particularly on the subject of constitutional rights and the protection of free speech and the right to assemble. Prior to his career as an academic, Goldberger was the Legal and Legislative Director of the ACLU of Illinois where he brought the highly recognized First Amendment case, National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, to the US Supreme Court.

The Dorsen Presidential Prize awards full-time academic scholars for outstanding lifetime contributions to civil liberties. The award was established in 2013 to honor former professor of law and ACLU president Norman Dorsen, who served from 1976-1991 and recently passed away in July. The Dorsen Presidential Prize comes with a financial stipend of $10,000.

The 2017 awards selection committee met this past spring to choose this year’s honorees, and included the following members: ACLU president Susan Herman, Goldman Sachs trustee Diana Daniels, writer and activist Larry Siems, former ACLU board member Philippa Strum, and Ms. Foundation for Women president and CEO Teresa Younger.

Before Dorsen passed away on July 1, he participated in the selection committee’s meeting to select the 2017 honorees, his last ACLU meeting after a lifetime of extraordinary service in civil liberties.