During last week’s Conversation with Ed Koch, moderated by Forum Director and Fordham Law School Professor Thane Rosenbaum, the famously outspoken former mayor demonstrated that both his wit as well as his frank opinions remain as sharp and engaging as ever.

For further coverage of the Forum’s entertaining Conversation with Ed Koch, please take a look at the following:

Capital writer Dan Rosenblum recaps the many topics of discussion on which Ed Koch provided his candid appraisal.

Fordham University’s eNewsroom also detailed the spirited discussion.

And just to allow Mayor Koch the final word, we recommend exploring Koch’s own prolific writing, in which he further explores many of the topics discussed during last week’s Conversation, including his support for President Obama’s reelection in 2012, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the need to keep investigating those responsible for the economic crises, and his preference for what he refers to as a “Flatter Tax.”  In addition, Koch not only maintains a busy Twitter account, but he also hosts his own webcast, “The Mayor at the Movies,” on which he offers his critical reviews on contemporary films.

Koch held the packed audience in rapt attention, offering humorous anecdotes and a level of candor rarely heard from a politician, as he commented on such issues as: the coarseness of modern day politics; the Republican presidential candidates (he predicts that Mitt Romney “notwithstanding stupid errors” will win the nomination); former Governor and Forum guest Eliot Spitzer (”superb governor” with “an obsession he couldn’t control”); the Occupy Wall Street movement; his tenure as Judge on “The People’s Court” (”I don’t think judges should scream”; his failed campaign for governor (”the idea of being in Albany was ridiculous”); as well as his support for Israel and the reelection of President Obama.

Elected to Mayor during a low point in the city’s history, Koch admitted that he had been “scared to death” of the task that lay ahead.  He had envisioned the overarching goal of his mayorship to be “to make people feel proud once again,” and “to give them a sense of pride for being New Yorkers.”  Reminiscing on his three terms in office, the former mayor had every reason to be proud, for he few could argue that he had fulfilled this mandate, having reenergized the city and its citizens.

We at the Forum thank Mayor Koch for a wonderful and unforgettable evening.

Ed Koch has done a lot of things. He was a soldier. He was a U.S Congressman. He was reelected three times as Mayor of New York City. He was the judge on the television series “The People’s Court.” He is a movie critic. He is a lifelong advocate for the people of New York City.

By doing a lot of things, Koch has lived quite the life. He was born in the Bronx, but raised in Newark, New Jersey. Eventually, after high school, he was drafted into the Army and fought in World War II. He landed in France a few months after Normandy and earned numerous medals during the war. Then in 1969 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for the 17^th District of New York. In Congress, he was an opponent of the Vietnam War and a strong supporter of civil rights. He stayed in Congress until 1977, when he ran, beating incumbent mayor Abe Beam, and was elected Mayor of New York City. He remained Mayor until 1989. While his life as a public servant may have been over, he was no less busy. He taught at Brandeis, writes movie reviews for The Huffington Post, writes restaurant reviews, and continually lectures on countless issues.

Luckily for the Forum on Law, Culture and Society, he will do one more thing: participate in the Forum’s conversation series. He is the perfect Forum guest. His years in public life give him a unique perspective on the issues facing New Yorkers. However, this isn’t totally unique. There are a lot of people in public life and a lot of those people have joined us at the Forum. What is so unique about Mayor Koch is his ability is to speak intelligently on political, legal, and cultural issues – really, any relating to law, culture and society. Just like the Forum.

With the release of a Blu-Ray version of 12 Angry Men, it is worth revisiting this film, which was part of last year’s Forum Film Festival. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor even said that this film had an incredible influence (click on the link and scroll down to her video) on her legal career.

Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men presents an interesting example of the points at which the law and morality diverge. The divergence occurs in what one might think would be an unlikely location: a jury deliberation room. In the film 12 strangers, pressed into public service as jurors, attempt to decide the fate of a young man who is accused of murdering his father. In the process, a legally “correct” result (12 jurors agreeing as to guilt or innocence) nearly results in a moral travesty, until the morally righteous (and nameless, until the very end of the film) protagonist intervenes.

Initially, all but one of the jurors have convinced themselves that the defendant is guilty, despite clearly having failed to weigh the evidence, being preoccupied with other matters, and allowing prejudice to guide their decision making. The nameless protagonist, portrayed by Henry Fonda, demonstrates considerable moral courage by insisting to his colleagues that they take the time to weigh the evidence properly, even as the crowd urges a quick verdict of guilty so that they can proceed with more important things (such as that night’s ball game).

If we assume that the law-school notion of the “reasonable man” test is accurate, and thus that in a given group of people, the majority of them will behave reasonably, then 12 Angry Men illustrates that the staple of law school torts classes is indeed a low bar to satisfy.

In this jury deliberation room, the majority of the people are arguably acting “reasonably” in that they are performing the task assigned to them with minimum effort. Only Fonda’s character, however, is willing to do the morally right thing; to thoroughly examine all the evidence to try to determine what happened on the night in question. In fact, Fonda’s character’s insistence on doing the right thing elicits complaints from his colleagues and suggestions that he is being UN-reasonable.

Of course, in a moral sense, Fonda’s character is the only one being reasonable, by refusing to convict a defendant based on flimsy evidence and prejudice, or at the very least, attempting to thoroughly delve into the case to determine the truth. Luckily for the defendant in this case, Fonda’s character is able to convince his cohorts to follow his lead. How often are similar scenes repeated in jury deliberation rooms, and how many times is a morally righteous individual absent?

Both Preet Bhara and Samuel G. Freedman are looking for something. Mr. Bhara wants justice and Mr. Freedman wants the truth. Both have a professional duty to find what they’re looking for. And both, if they fail to conduct their search ethically, can hurt people.

Bhara is the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and Samuel Freedman is a journalist. Each has earned a reputation for doing their jobs very well. Bhara has earned plaudits (and more than a few critics) for his crackdown on insider trading and financial crimes. Freedman is an author, columnist and professor. Currently, he writes the “On Religion” column for The New York Times and is a professor at the Columbia University School of Journalism. His work, Small Victories, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1990; in 1991 his Jew vs. Jew won the National Jewish Book Award for Non-Fiction; and Freedman’s book The Inheritance was a finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize.

Because of this experience, both men understand the power they hold. They also know what can happen if they abuse it.  As seen in Sydney Pollack’s Absence of Malice, when prosecutor Eliot Rosen (Bob Balaban) unnecessarily investigated an innocent person, and then leaked that information to Megan Carter (Sally Field), a journalist, who ran the unconfirmed story. In the film’s case, this lack of scruples had devastating consequences for all involved. Fortunately, in Mr. Bhara and Mr. Freedman, we have two people who understand their role in society and the need to carry it out ethically.

The financial crisis created a special need for those who understand the intricacies of the market and basis for the collapse. New York Times Bestselling author Andrew Ross Sorkin is one of those people.  As an acclaimed financial reporter, Sorkin was at the forefront of exposing corruption in the financial system. Sorkin, an American author and journalist, is best known for his reporting on the financial sector. Well-versed in the dealings of Wall Street, Sorkin is co-host of CNBC’s Squawk Box, editor and founder of DealBook, a New York Times columnist, and author.

Sorkin’s coverage of the controversial Wall Street bail out culminated in his first book: Too Big to Fail: How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System – and Themselves. Too Big to Fail is an in-depth account of the events that precipitated the stock market crash and the reactions that immediately followed. This play-by-play narrative, from the eyes of Wall Street CEOs, documents the moments leading up to the announcement of the collapse, the bankruptcy filings and proceedings, the governmental intervention, and the aftermath of the collapse. The book became such a sensation that it was made into a hit HBO movie, “Too Big To Fail,” directed by Curtis Hanson.

With an all-star cast, the HBO movie was an accurate and successful depiction of Sorkin’s work. The book and movie alike illustrate the U.S. government’s decision to bail out the large investment banks and save the world’s financial system.

Clyde Haberman is a journalist. He seeks the truth. As a longtime reporter for The New York Post and The New York Times he has covered the Attica prison riots, served as a foreign correspondent in Tokyo, Jerusalem, and Rome, reported on the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, and the first Gulf War. This experience seeking and then explaining events cloaked in mystery, intrigue, and possibly, deception, makes him an ideal person to answer the question: did the Rosenbergs really do it? Did they spy for the Soviets? Does the movie “Daniel” accurately capture the sentiments of the time and the evidence for or against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s innocence or guilt?

Now, it is unlikely he has a definitive answer, as the only people that do are either dead or forced to remain silent due to any number of confidentiality laws. However, he can explain the atmosphere at the time and help make sense of the information publicly known to date. He can synthesize the information to explain what is missing, what the government had, and what the Rosenbergs knew. It will not be complete, but it can give us an idea of the controversy surrounding this case and family.

Sydney Pollack’s wonderful film, “Absence of Malice,” makes a good, if not slightly depressing, point. At the beginning of the film, The Miami Standard’s lawyer explains to Megan Carter (Sally Field), a reporter at the newspaper, that the subject of her article, Paul Newman’s Michael Gallagher, is unable to do the paper “harm.” “We have no knowledge the story is false, therefore we’re absent malice. We’ve been both reasonable and prudent, therefore we’re not negligent. We can say what we like about him; he can’t do us harm. Democracy is served.” Implicit in this monologue is the question: is this right? The answer, while demonstrated by the events that follow, is stated specifically at the film’s end, when Assistant U.S. Attorney General James Wells (Wilford Brimley) explains,

“You know and I know that we [the law] can’t tell you [the press] what to print or what not to. We hope the press will act responsibly, but when you don’t, there ain’t a lot we can do about it. We can’t have people going around leaking stuff for their own reasons. It ain’t legal. And worse than that, by God, it ain’t right.”

So there’s the answer: it’s not right, but there’s nothing much we can do about it.

The film starts with an investigation. Miami strike force (something like an organized crime task force) leader Eliot Rosen (Bob Balaban) initiates an investigation of Michael Gallagher in order to find out what happened to local labor leader Joey Diaz, who disappeared a few weeks prior. The investigation is not meant to find Diaz, as they have no evidence that Gallagher was involved, but to pressure Gallagher into helping the authorities. All they know is that Gallagher’s father was a mob leader who kept the longshoremen, the union Diaz led, out of Miami for years. In order to put the heat on Gallagher, Rosen leaks news of the investigation to a reporter, Carter, by giving her an opportunity to read an uncompleted file on the investigation. Carter does and without confirming the story, publishes it. This articles, and others, ruin Gallagher’s reputation. They induce the longshoremen who work for Gallagher to strike in support of their lost leader, and lead his best friend to kill herself. Needless to say the articles, which were based on an unconfirmed leak, do some serious damage.

The damage wrought by Carter’s sloppy reporting brings the point of the film into stark relief: when journalists use their immense power – the power to publish pieces of information which the public depend on – irresponsibly, people suffer. This is different than the current “News of the World” scandal unfolding in Britain. There, the paper did something outright illegal, bribing cops and hacking cell-phones, in “Absence of Malice,” everything Carter did was legal, it was just wholly irresponsible.

And that brings up the final and companion point the film hopes to make. That the law does not set out what should be done, only what must be done. Carter followed the law, but she was still wrong. In turn, journalists, a profession with the power to ruin lives, need to take that responsibility seriously and practice their profession with the utmost care and prudence. Only then, contrary to The Standard’s attorney, will the people who make up that democracy be served.

Syndey Pollack is a cinematic icon.  Over the course of his lifetime, he was a soldier, teacher, actor, writer, producer and Academy Award winning director. Mr. Pollack was born in Indiana, in the early 1930’s.  His parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants and had absolutely nothing to do with the world of entertainment.  As a young man, Mr. Pollack moved to New York to study acting, and even eventually taught acting, after he returned from fighting overseas. In one of his earliest films, War Hunt, Mr. Pollack acted alongside Robert Redford, and the two established a friendship that would last a lifetime. Robert Redford even starred in two of Mr. Pollack’s most successful movies, Out of Africa and The Way We Were.  Out of Africa received eleven Academy Awards nominations and an astonishing seven awards, including Best Direction for Mr. Pollack’s work. Mr. Pollack also proved that he could give the audience a few laughs when he directed and acted in Tootsie, which received ten Academy Award nominations. Mr. Pollack went on to produce popular films like The Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain. Mr. Pollack is particularly interesting to the Forum because he directed the complex and thrilling film, Absence of Malice, which will be shown in our 2011 Forum Film Festival.