New York Almanack

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Albany Law School

Albany’s Ira Harris: From Rights Advocate to Lincoln’s Assassination

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Ira HarrisIra Harris was born at Charleston, Montgomery County, NY on May 31st, 1802 to Fredrick Waterman Harris and Lucy Hamilton. When he was six years old, his family moved to Preble, NY where his father became one of the largest landowners in Cortland County.

Harris attended Homer Academy and graduated from Union College in 1824. He studied law for one year in Homer, New York and then moved to Albany where he assisted one of that city’s most highly regarded jurists, Ambrose Spencer. [Read more…] about Albany’s Ira Harris: From Rights Advocate to Lincoln’s Assassination

Symposium on 21st Century Public Executive Records

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The New York State Archives Partnership Trust and the Albany Law School’s Government Law Center are sponsoring a two-day event focused on the need for effective record keeping by elected government executives. Entitled Documenting Leadership: A Symposium on Public Executive Records in the 21st Century, the program is designed to explore the importance of the records generated by governors and other high ranking elected public executives, such as presidents, attorneys general, and mayors. The symposium will be held on the Albany Law School campus, New Scotland Avenue, Albany, NY on May 20-21.

Panelists for the program are coming from throughout the nation and represent government, the media, academe, and law. Among the presenters will be former U.S. Attorney General and former Governor of Pennsylvania Richard Thornburgh, nationally renowned Presidential historian Richard Norton Smith, and former NYS Comptroller Ned Regan.

Session topics include:

— Public Policy and the Public Interest
— Transparency, Executive Records, and the Media
— Executive Records: Access and Disclosure
— Access in the Digital Age; and Executive Records as Legacy

The event is free and open to the public. To register, go to www.albanylaw.edu/executiverecords/