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Dawn Clark Netsch will receive the Roger Baldwin Lifetime Achievement Award at this year's ACLU Bill of Rights Celebration on October 5, 2002, at the Hyatt Regency Chicago. She is being honored for her strong and consistent voice for civil liberties throughout her career in state legislature and in the classroom.

Professor Netsch, a 1952 graduate of Northwestern Law, became the first woman in Illinois history to be elected to a state constitutional office when she was elected comptroller in 1990. She had previously served five terms in the State Senate from Chicago's North Side, authoring the landmark proposal for family and medical leave, helping to pass the AIDS Confidentiality Act, and sponsoring the Criminal Sexual Assault Act that toughened rape statutes to protect victims.

Coauthor of the book State and Local Government in the Local System, Professor Netsch has written extensively on state constitutional issues. From 1965 to her retirement in 1992, she was on the faculty of the Law School, where she taught state and local government law and antitrust, real estate, and race relations law. She continues to teach today as a professor emerita.

Professor Netsch joins a stellar group of other civil libertarians who are also being honored at this year's Bill of Rights Celebration, the Roger Baldwin Foundation of the ACLU's major fundraising effort to support its legal program. For more information about the celebration, click here.

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