[JURIST] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] on Saturday named [press release] Susan Herman [ACLU profile], a law professor at Brooklyn Law School [faculty profile], as its new president. Herman, a constitutional and civil rights scholar [selected works], previously served as the ACLU's general counsel. ACLU executive director Anthony Romero [ACLU profile] commented on her appointment:

[She] is a deeply principled and talented leader who will ably harness the collective energies of the ACLU Board… She has a profound appreciation for the ACLU's historical role and monumental achievements and, at the same time, an enormous capacity to envision the ACLU's vibrant and growing role as it continues to fight the inevitable civil liberties challenges that lay ahead.

Herman has said she wants to reach out to African Americans and communities of faith as she undertakes her new position. She succeeds former ACLU president Nadine Strossen [ACLU profile], who had held the position since 1991. AP has more.

Herman has been a guest columnist for JURIST several times. In September 2006, she considered the longer term effects of 9/11 [JURIST op-ed] and the impact of "wartime" versus peacetime rules on the balance of governmental powers and decision making. In January 2006, she criticized the pending reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act [JURIST op-ed] and other consolidations of power in the executive branch, a follow-up to her December 2001 castigation of the original Act [JURIST op-ed].