Professor of Law, Emeritus
Education
J.D., University of Maryland, 1966
M.A., The Johns Hopkins University, 1967
A.B., The Johns Hopkins University, 1963
Areas of Expertise
Civil Liberties
Constitutional Law
Dispute Resolution
International Human Rights
Law & Religion
Law & Social Reform
Legal Writing
Lasson joined the faculty in 1977 and left full-time teaching in 2021. His professional experience reflects a wide variety of academic and consulting positions, which include: teaching fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, consultant to Ralph Nader's Center for the Study of Responsive Law, director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and visiting fellow and lecturer at Cambridge University in the UK. He is a member of the bars of Maryland, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and the United States Supreme Court. In 2008 he was named a University System of Maryland Faculty Regents Scholar.
Lasson is author of 10 books (most notably The Workers, Private Lives of Public Servants, Mousetraps & Muffling Cups, and Trembling in the Ivory Tower), and numerous articles, several of which have won national awards, in major law reviews and magazines. He advocates on behalf of a variety of human-rights and civil-liberties issues, about which he writes appellate briefs, appears on radio and television and is a frequent contributor to newspapers and magazines both in this country and abroad.
Selected Publications
Books and Book Chapters
Amicus Briefs in Appellate Practice for the Maryland Lawyer – State and Federal (Andrew Levy and Paul Mark Sandler, eds., MICPEL, 2014).
Trembling in the Ivory Tower: Excesses in the Pursuit of Truth and Tenure , Bancroft Press (2003)
Articles and Essays
Op-Ed., Academic Extremism Threatens Democratic Values, Balt. Sun, Jan. 29, 2014.
Bloodstains on a "Code of Honor": The Murderous Marginalization of Women in the Islamic World, 30 Women's Rights Law Reporter 407 (2009)
Torture, Truth Serum, and Ticking Bombs: Toward a Pragmatic Perspective of Coercive Interrogation, 39 Loyola University Chicago Law Journal 329 (2008)
Defending Truth: Legal and Psychological Aspects of Holocaust Denial, Current Psychology (November 2007)
Scientific and Scholarly Boycotts of Israel: Abusing the Academic Enterprise, 21 Touro Law Review 989 (2006)
Incitement in the Mosques: Testing the Limits of Free Speech and Religious Liberty, 27 Whittier Law Review 3 (2005)
Holocaust Denial and the First Amendment: The Quest for Truth in a Free Society, 6 George Mason U. L. Rev. 35 (1997)
Political Correctness Askew: Excesses in the Pursuit of Minds and Manners, 63 Tenn. L. Rev. 689 (1996)
Feminism Awry: Excesses in the Pursuit of Rights and Trifles, 42 J. Legal Educ. 1 (1992)
Scholarship Amok: Excesses in the Pursuit of Truth and Tenure, 103 Harv. L. Rev. 926 (1990)