The Tennessee Bar Association (TBA) will bring its Balancing Civility and Free Expression Initiative to Lipscomb University on Tuesday, Oct. 16, at 6 p.m. in the Ezell Center.

This free public forum on civility and the courts will feature a panel of experts including retired Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Lyle Reid, a chance to watch the third presidential debate with all the attendees at 8 p.m. and expert analysis of the debate afterwards

TBA’s Balancing Civility and Free Expression Initiative is designed to encourage public conversation about the tensions between civility and free speech, the state of our public square and the challenges of maintaining civil discourse in a democracy.

Lipscomb’s forum will focus on civility in interacting with the courts, as well as in discussing issues affecting the access to and delivery of justice. It will feature a panel of experts discussing real-life scenarios that raise civility and free speech issues and will conclude with a question and answer session with the audience.  

Panelists will be Justice Reid, Frank Sutherland, former editor of The Tennessean, and Phyllis Hildreth, academic director of Lipscomb’s Institute for Conflict Management. The moderator will be Bill Haltorn, Memphis lawyer and former TBA president who is writing a book on civility and politics using Senator Howard H. Baker Jr. as the exemplar.

The Balancing Civility and Free Expression Initiative is part of the Civility and Free Expression in a Constitutional Democracy – A National Dialogue program funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The TBA’s local partners for the Tennessee programs are the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University; Lipscomb University’s Institute for Law, Justice and Society; the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law; and the University of Tennessee Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy.