Section 1, Paragraph 1: Do I understand correctly correctly that someone can enjoy the benefits of membership for a year without paying dues before being dropped off the active lists? Do we need to specify the term of “proper notice”?

Section 2, Paragraph 1: Do we need to define “seriously prejudicial”?

Section 2, Paragraph 2: Do we need to specify the method of random selection? Who does the selecting? What, if any, is the requirement to notify membership of the complaint (and timing of such notification, if required)? Or does notification only occur in the case of an appeal?

Section 2, Paragraph 3: Do we need to specify the number of the board members voting as well?

Section 2, Last Paragraph, second sentence: Not sure I understand the “30 days” requirement here. Is that for adequate notice for membership? If that is the case, should we specify that requirement and the method of delivery? Add timing of appeal notification here—bring up from below?

Section 2, Last Paragraph: [[Edits to consider]] In the event that the appeal is filed in less than 30 days of the next annual meeting, the appeal hearing shall be heard at the subsequent year’s[[Clearer? Or no?]] annual meeting. Any and all disciplinary action against the accused shall be suspended pending outcome of the appeal. Prior to the appeal hearing[[Timing?]], all pertinent information will be made available to the entire membership in secure electronic format.

There has been some criticism of the "process" leading up to this posting of the draft. As co-chair of the Artice VIII revision committee, I was initially reluctant, largely because I envisioned demands to explain the genesis of every single clause which I could not realistically respond to. That was a mistake -- transparency is important and I understand that my reaction made it look like maybe we were hiding something. I will do my best to explain how we came up with what you see here, but as the NASW-Announce announcement indicated, I can't promise an individual response to every question. Cheers, JG

Section 1, Paragraph 1 would benefit with inclusion of a definition of "suspension." Is there a standard length for suspension? How does it differ from revocation of privileges?

Section 2, Paragraph 2 When, if ever, is a member terminated under the "materially and serioulsy prejudicial" clause eligible to re-apply?

First, thanks for your efforts on the bylaws. I'm on the board of directors of a nonprofit and we recently voted to amend our bylaws from 18 months to 6 months in arrears. Recommend we shorten the time in arrears to 6 months followed by one month's notice. To follow-up on the member's comment below, does a member in arrears enjoy any membership benefits? Inclusion in the directory?

Paragraph 2, Section 1: I believe there should be some definition of what is "seriously prejudicial," with a language caveat that conduct considered as such is not limited to the examples noted.

Section 2, Paragraph 3: Could a definition of "substantial conflict of interest" be added?

If I am reading correctly, the phrasing of section 1(iv) implies that the meaning of "materially and seriously prejudicial" is for the committee formed according to part 2 to decide. I think that's the right way to do it. If you start trying to define what the phrase means, or give specific examples, you will run into a swamp -- people will get bogged down in all sorts of minutiae about what is or isn't seriously prejudicial, and you will never hit on wording that everyone can agree to.

On the random selection of 7 members to form a committee, I imagine that some people would prefer not to serve, and so you would keep picking names out of the hat until you've got the full complement. Does that need to be stated explicitly? What I have in mind is that if you ask 7 people, and they all politely say no, then the "accused member" could say, if the committee will not sit, you must acquit.

Finally, 7 days does not seem very long for the accusee to prepare a rebuttal. Thirty days instead?

FYI, in light of a couple of the previous comments, Article VII Section 3 (http://www.nasw.org/about/const.htm) says that a member whose dues are more than two months late shall have services suspended. So if your dues are late, your services are suspended on Feb. 28. If you're still unpaid at the end of the year, this Section 1 would be triggered. At least that's my reading of it.

Also, should there be some mechanism for summary dismissal of a charge that is clearly groundless? I can't think of any example offhand, but as it stands, any accusation that is supported by three members (or even just one, if it's the president) triggers a full hearing process even if there's no chance it will be upheld in the end.

Is there an obligation for members to serve on the "randomly selected ad hoc committee of seven members" sort of like NASW jury duty? If not, should there be such an obligation?

Comment re/ this section: "No individual shall participate substantively in processing or reviewing a complaint if he or she is a complainant or the accused member, or if he or she has a substantial conflict of interest involving complainants or the accused member."

Should there be a stated process whereby "conflict of interest" is determined? Who decides if there are differing opinions on whether a conflict of interest exists? The Board? The remaining members of the randomly selected group? Do members of the group/the Board need to sign a statement affirming no conflict of interest?

Thanks for all the hard work.

These are all excellent comments and suggestions. Dan or I (or both) will offer some responses in the next couple days. Thanks all!!

The seven calendar day provision for providing evidence and allowing the member to prepare a rebuttal seems very short. I have no experience with these matters, but if a person were on extended travel or otherwise occupied, this might be a problem. Thanks to all of you who worked so hard on putting this together.

First let me say that the committee had considered most of the issues raised in these comments in our discussions, but we will revisit them in light of your suggestions. Personally I think there is some merit in either lengthening the period of time an accused member would have to respond to a charge, or allowing the Board or ad-hoc committee to grant more time if requested.

We spent a lot of time discussing whether to define "conflict of interest" and "prejudicial conduct," in the end deciding not to. The general sense was that the constitution should lay out general principles and structures, not dictate the specifics of every action the organization might take. The possibility of appeal to the membership at large is a very powerful check on abuse of the system.

I understand "Registered User's" concern about frivolous charges, but any "mechanism" for summary judgment requires someone to make it, and who would that be and what checks and balances would be needed to prevent abuse?

Daryl asks if service on the ad hoc committee should be obligatory. Again, speaking for myself, I don't think so simply on practical grounds (would we kick someone out because they refused?) and because the committee didn't think it would be that hard. It may require a few rounds of emails to recruit seven people but it seemed doable to us.

The other questions and suggestions are all good and the committee will consider them seriously. Thanks to you all!!

I am a member of this committee. I thank everyone for their comments and questions which are both thoughful and insightful. They will be addressed.

I want you to know that the committee worked very hard to reach a concensus on multiple issues to get the Article in the shape it is now. I especially want to thank Dan and John, our co-chairs, who guided our group and drafted the document as well as my fellow committee members whose dedication to the task was never less than 100%.

Best,

David Levine

I'm confused. What's going to an attorney? Which attorney? One on retairner to NASW? I'd like to know before I vote at Yale. I'd thought I was being asked to vote on article VIII before then.

Thanks in advance for your response.

Susan V.L. Volkmar

I'm not sure when I am allowed to vote on this. At Yale this fall?

Susan: You'll be voting on a new Article VIII at the November meeting. The draft is going to an attorney retained by NASW now so that what goes to the vote has had a legal review. The final language to be voted on will appear beforehand in ScienceWriters and in an email and/or on the NASW website.

To all who commented: in response to several suggestions, the committee changed the time an accused member has to prepare his/her defense to 10 days, plus the member may request 30-day extensions if he/she is traveling or otherwise unable to complete his/her case in 10 days.

We considered alternate scenarios for when to terminate members who don't pay their dues and finally chose to leave it the way it is -- members are considered in arrears on Feb. 28 if they don't pay; if they still don't pay for another year, they get a final warning; and they are terminated one month later if they STILL don't pay. We thought NASW should be relatively lenient. Plus, those who get booted for nonpayment can reapply when they are able to pay.

We also decided (again) not to attempt to define "conflict of interest" and certain other terms (such as "conduct prejudicial") for the reason David Lindley explained very concisely.

Thanks to you all for participating. Feel free to continue the discussion. We have until Aug. 31 to finalize the language that goes to the November vote.

I consulted the legal counsel about dropping the phrase in question so that we don't have to spend money and time sending paper notices or expensive overnight mail to those members who just choose not to renew (see comment from 9/14/10).

""The quick answer is yes, you can drop the clause. The notice language we added: "and by first-class mail . . . " isn't required by the law. We added it to provide NASW with a legal presumption of delivery in case anyone disputed whether they received notice that the member was being suspended from the membership. Since such a dispute is unlikely to arise in the situations where people don't renew their memberships, the language you originally had is fine. We do recommend leaving the clause about delivery in the section regarding suspensions and terminations for cause, since that is more likely to be a contentious situation and NASW should be able to prove it completed its delivery obligations.""

I wholeheartedly agree that it must stay in for notifications of suspensions and disciplinary procedures.

Norman Bauman posted the following critique of the draft Article VIII on nasw-talk. I've moved it here so people can read why Norman doesn't like the draft amendment that the other six members of the Article VIII committee, including yours truly, approved.

Best,

Dan Ferber

--

The proposed revision to the NASW Constitution, Article VIII, for expelling members, has serious problems. I served on the committee to draft this revision, and my positions were voted down. I recommend that members vote against it.

The worst problems are:

(1) The Board told us we had to make changes for legal reasons -- but that wasn't true. They got their legal advice second-hand, filtered through summaries by non-lawyers. You wouldn't write a legal news story like that. The Board claimed the lawyers told us we must make these changes. Actually, the Board wrote their own changes, and sent them to the lawyers, who told us that we may make these changes.

The lawyers don't understand the NASW. They're giving us a generic non-profit constitution that they might write for a dance company. You can't give your lawyer selective facts, and then say that we have to follow your lawyer's advice.

(2) Reducing the number of people required to bring charges against a member from 20 to 3 will give any 3 members the power to bring baseless charges, or to disrupt the organization with complaints and counter-complaints. (But now 3 members will be able to bring disciplinary charges against the Cybrarian.)

(3) The randomly-selected Ad Hoc Committee violates the statistical standards we would use in interpreting a survey. It's a biased sample. It looks like a jury but it's not. Committee members aren't supposed to have conflicts of interest -- but the committee member decides himself or herself whether he or she has a conflict of interest.

(4) The List Rules are more likely to bring a lawsuit than the old Article VIII public hearings. They're enforced arbitrarily, and used to suppress dissent and criticism of the NASW. They don't have a fair and unbiased hearing, which violates New York State non-profit law.

(5) Apart from legal liability, the Constitution doesn't protect free speech. I could get kicked off the list for writing this memo. We have a $400,000 budget. I could get kicked off the list for asking the kind of questions about it that any journalist would ask. This isn't a hypothetical fear -- the National Writers Union and other writers organizations (which have significant overlapping membership with the NASW), have had these problems, and the NASW has had these problems itself.

(6) This revision has a few good features. It allows members to vote on disciplinary procedures without being present at the meeting. It allows an appeal to the entire membership, with a 2/3 vote required to sustain the charges. (However, in practice, so few people use the "secure electronic format" that it may not work.)

Any 3 members will be able to bring charges against the Cybrarian and the President if they find the moderation is "substantially prejudicial to the best interests of the Association." (However, other people could bring charges against me, or charges against the officers for frivolous reasons, and I think this is a net loss.)

(7) I would recommend that you vote against this. This revision is supposed to solve a problem that we haven't had in the organization's 75 years. We have no legal advice. The Board got its legal advice not from lawyers but from second-hand summaries by non-lawyers. The lawyers don't understand our organization, and a lawyer can't give legal advice to an organization he or she doesn't understand.

I hope I don't get put on moderation for posting this, but if I do you'll know that we no longer have free speech in the NASW, and that you can't serve on a committee and give your dissenting report.

In more detail:

(1) Originally, the Board told us that we had to change Article VIII for legal reasons. The NASW lawyer, they said, told us that it put us at risk of liability for invading a member's privacy. But that turned out to be false.

According to the old Article VIII, 20 members could bring disciplinary charges against a member, the charges would be brought up at the next annual meeting, and if 2/3 of the members at the meeting voted to uphold the charges, the charges would be upheld, and the member could be expelled.

According to the Board, Gene Takagi, our California lawyer, told us that bringing charges against a member in public left us open to liability for invading the member's privacy. The Board and Takagi rewrote the Constitution. Instead of a 2/3 vote by the members, the Board could vote to expel a member by itself, and the the membership would lose its power over expulsion. When David Appell complained about this on the list, members vigorously objected to turning this power over to the Board. That change was withdrawn. We now have a new proposed Article VIII.

As it turned out, nobody in the NASW knew what Tagagki actually said. They got it all second-hand from Tinsley Davis, our Executive Director. The rest of us got it third-hand from the Board. We were never able to ask the lawyers what they meant.

I've written a lot of legal stories, and I've interviewed lots of lawyers. If you don't understand a legal issue thoroughly, you have to go through a lot of back-and-forth with a lawyer to get it right. Our communications with the lawyer were just the opposite. As Edward Tufte said: "As information gets passed up an organizational hierarchy ... key explanations and supporting information is filtered out."

Lawyers usually give important legal advice in writing. Instead, Takagi had a conversation with Tinsley. Tinsley gave an oral summary to the Board. Tinsley isn't a lawyer and non-lawyers can't paraphrase legal advice. (I always read my quotes back to the lawyers.) Legal terms (like "malice" or "privacy") have a different meaning than the same word in ordinary language. In particular, when non-lawyers paraphrase legal advice, they tend to make it say what they want it to say.

If you were writing a news story about on a legal issue, you would interview lawyers directly. If you didn't understand something, you'd ask the lawyer to clarify it. You wouldn't write a story by giving a non-lawyer your questions, having her orally repeat your questions to a lawyer, and then giving you an oral summary of her understanding of the lawyer's answer. (Believe me, you get different answers when you talk to the lawyers directly.) So why are we making an important decision about the fundamental rules of the NASW without using the same fact-checking standard we would apply to our stories?

The Board claimed that the lawyers told us we had to change Article VIII, but when they finally gave the Article VIII committee everything they had in writing, they couldn't provide a clear statement from the lawyers saying that. They gave us a second opinion from Pamela A. Mann, our New York lawyer, stating the opposite of what Takagi said.

So the Board told us it was legally necessary to change Article VIII, based on a non-lawyer's paraphrase. In fact, that wasn't true according to the documents. The Board never even talked directly to the lawyer about it. So why are we changing Article VIII?

(2) Under the old Article VIII, 20 members had to bring charges. Under the proposed Article VIII, 3 members can bring charges. This will give any 3 members the power to disrupt the organization, and bring charges against anyone they disagree with or don't like, for any reason whatsoever.

The original supposed problem was the risk that a disciplinary action would expose the NASW to liability for invading the member's privacy. To the extent that it's a problem, this revision makes it worse.

We've never had a disciplinary action in the 75 years of the NASW. So Takagi identified a hypothetical problem, not a real problem. We have liability insurance. Our liability insurers never brought it up.

One reason that we've never had a disciplinary action is that getting 20 members to complain is a significant barrier. 3 members is a much lower barrier.

One of the benefits, in my view, is that members will have redress against arbitrary moderation on the listserv. If a member was moderated on the list, thought he was being treated unfairly, and 2 other members agreed, they could file a complaint against the Cybrarian, charging that his moderation was not in the best interests of the organization. This would trigger the creation of an Ad Hoc Committee of 7 members, who would hear the charges. The 3 members could also file a complaint against the President. (However, if the Ad Hoc Committee imposed sanctions, in my reading the Board could ignore them. But then the complaining party might sue under New York State law.)

One of the problems is vagueness. The offenses are so vague that you could bring charges against anyone for anything. In law, they call this "void for vagueness." We could be like Nigeria: You could bring charges against a member for "Showing disrespect for the President of the NASW."

You could bring charges against a whistleblower. You could bring charges against someone who asked embarrassing -- but legitimate -- questions about NASW finances. This isn't a theoretical problem. Many of our members (and Board members) were also members of the National Writers Union. At the NWU, Jonathan Tasini gave himself a $50,000 salary, without notifying the membership or disclosing it in the financial statements. People who criticized Tasini were kicked off the NWU email lists, removed as editors of the local NWU newsletters, and driven out of the NWU. The NWU finally collapsed (along with its health plan, and NWU members were stuck with tens of thousands of dollars in unreimbursed medical bills). If you think the NASW Board can be trusted, read about Leonard Zahn http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/action/document/page?tid=joq94f00

When I served on the Listserv Rules Committee, we reviewed the emails that had been moderated on the list. Many of the people who had been moderated, or expelled from the list entirely, had criticized the ethics of a practice that another member was engaged in -- for example, taking money from a source to pay for expenses. Now, if somebody criticized that practice, and 3 members were offended by the criticism, they could bring charges against the critic and get them expelled entirely. We can no longer safely discuss journalistic ethics in the NASW.

I've seen writers' organizations, like the NWU, get into some nasty factional fights. It only takes a few people. If that happened to the NASW, we could have both sides filing charges against each other, triggering these Ad Hoc Committees, meeting in secret. We'd be like the Bolsheviks. This 3 member provision makes that possible.

I repeatedly asked why we were changing the number of members required to bring charges from 20 to 3. If your problem is that a disciplinary hearing can bring legal liability, why make it more likely that a disciplinary hearing would come up? Why give any 3 members the right to trigger a disciplinary hearing for any reason whatsoever? I never got a good answer. I'd like to know now.

(3) The Ad Hoc Committee has fatal problems.

I've never heard of another organization using a method like this to discipline its members. It's modeled on a jury system but it has none of the protections of a jury system. Significantly, there's no voir dire.

After 3 members complain in writing that the conduct of a member is "substantially prejudicial to the best interests of the Association," some undefined person will select 7 members at random and ask them to be part of the Ad Hoc Committee. If the members refuse, the person will select more members at random until they get 7. The Ad Hoc Committee will hear the evidence, and 5 of the 7 must agree to sustain the complaint.

I don't think 7 randomly-chosen members have the standing to judge other members in the name of the entire membership.

If 20 members brought charges against me, and 2/3 of the members voted to sustain those charges, I wouldn't like it but I would have to agree that I got a fair hearing. If 7 members chosen by this pseudo-random procedure sustained the charges, I wouldn't agree that I got a fair hearing.

Science reporters should understand the problems of sampling. If you saw a survey that concluded that 71% of doctors opposed the Obama health plan, and then you found out that they questioned 7 doctors, you wouldn't take that survey seriously, would you?

We're taking a sample of 7 members, to represent the values of the entire NASW membership. It's not an adequate sample.

Furthermore, science reporters should understand response rates. We don't know how many members will refuse to serve on this Ad Hoc committee. A lot of people wouldn't want to make the open-ended commitment of time. (How many writers do you know who want to serve on jury duty?) Some people wouldn't want to sit in judgment over another member. Suppose we have to ask 25 members before we get 7 who agree to serve. If you saw a survey in which the response rate was 28%, you wouldn't accept that as a representative sample of the entire universe, would you?

Maybe freelancers would be more likely to refuse. Maybe journalists would be more likely to refuse. Maybe there would be a bias in favor of conviction, of "doing something." I don't know. But it's not a fair sample.

Another serious problem with the committee is conflict of interest. An individual with "a conflict of interest involving complainants or the accused member" is excluded from the Ad Hoc Commtitee. But who decides whether the individual has a conflict of interest? Some members of the Article VIII Committee said that the individual would decide himself or herself. One member said that, if the dispute involved the NASW Board, and the individual had gotten funding from the NASW Board, that funding would not create a conflict of interest. It's likely that the people who agree to serve on the Ad Hoc Committee will have some kind of relationship with one party or the other.

That's why I think that only the entire membership can make a vote like this.

(4) The List Rules are a bigger problem.

I've repeatedly complained about the List Rules. They are vague and undefined. What's a "personal attack"? What's "cursing"? Now, they're enforced by the Cybrarian at his own discretion. Enforcement can be appealed to the President, but the President routinely turns down appeals. I've shown examples of discriminatory enforcement of the rules. I think violations of the List Rules should be enforced by a group of members who subscribe to the list. I think we should do that because it's a good policy, but also for legal reasons.

We haven't had a disciplinary complaint in 75 years, so the risk for liability of violating somebody's privacy in a disciplinary hearing is theoretical and negligible (until we lower the number of complainants to 3).

However, we've had many disciplinary actions by the Cybrarian for violations of the list rules. The moderations are secret but there are apparently a dozen a year. If you think the theoretical risk of liability for the regular disciplinary procedure is enough to be concerned about, the risk of liability for list moderation is far greater, because it occurs regularly.

Our New York lawyer, Pamela A. Mann, said that the enforcement of Listserv policies would be a disciplinary action outside of Article VIII. But I don't think she understands how the List Rules are enforced, so I don't think you can depend on her answer. I gave the Article VIII committee a list of questions to ask Mann. I explained how the List Rules work, the complaints and problems people have had, and asked whether moderation on the list could open the NASW to liability. The Article VIII commtitee edited my question down to 2 sentences, eliminating all the factual background of what the problems actually were. You can't give your lawyer selective facts, and then say you got legal advice.

Mann's memo says that the internal procedures have to be fairly and honestly administered, with the minimum standards of due process, including a fair and unbiased hearing, formal presentation of charges, and the opportunity to defend against those charges. The list moderation fails all of those rules. David Appell complained that the Cybrarian never told him exactly what he was being moderated for. When he appealed, he got boilerplate rejections from the President, as everyone else does. This happens repeatedly. In addition, people are moderated for expressing reasonable opinions about journalistic ethics, and reasonable criticisms of NASW policies. List moderation is recorded in email, and if those emails were submitted in court, it would be embarrassing. I think that if our lawyers knew how the list policies were being enforced, they might see a risk of liability.

The one benefit of these rules is that if someone like Appell felt he was being unfairly moderated by the Cybrarian, when he was still a member, and 2 other members agreed, he could bring disciplinary charges against the Cybrarian and against the President.

(5) Freedom of expression. Finally, apart from legal liability, we're a writer's organization. We should support freedom of expression. This Constitution limits freedom of expression.

The Board passes resolutions supporting free speech -- for everyone except us. The list rules have been used to punish members for making reasonable statements about journalistic ethics and about NASW policies and finances. There's a circle of Board members and ex-members who you can't offend, because if you do, they can complain to the Cybrarian and have you silenced. I might be moderated for posting this email.

The NASW budget is now around $400,000 a year. There are some obvious questions that a journalist would ask if you were writing about any nonprofit. (Such as, "Who gets that money"?) I'm afraid to ask them because if -- when -- I irritated the wrong people, they kicked me off the list. We're supposed to be a democratic organization, but if anyone tried to run a dissident campaign against the board, they could simply moderate him off the list and prevent him from communicating with the membership. Last year the Board tried to pass a version of Article VIII that would have given them the power to expel any member at their own discretion. Takagi rewrote our Constitution without understanding what the NASW is. We're a membership organization originally of journalists, with a commitment to free speech and debate. Tagagki gave us a generic constitution that would be appropriate to, say, a nonprofit theater company, giving the director complete power to run it any way he chooses.

Finally, there's nothing in the NASW Constitution that guarantees freedom of expression to members, and nothing that assures us that these disciplinary proceedings won't be abused to violate our free speech.

(6) This revision to Article VIII has a few beneficial changes.

Most of all, it will allow all members to vote on general disciplinary hearings by proxy ballot, rather than just the members present at the annual meeting.

While the Ad Hoc Committee is flawed, it allows for an appeal at the annual meeting to the general membership, 2/3 of whom must vote to uphold the complaint. The problem is that the accused has a "full opportunity to present rebutting or exculpatory evidence and argument" before the Ad Hoc Committee, the accused doesn't have the same right at the annual meeting. I can imagine the accused trying to appeal a decision, and having his arguments brushed aside at a busy meeting.

Another problem is that the communication is by "secure electronic format," and the experience is that only a handful of members will be willing or able to log into the secure members-only forums. That's not a fair hearing. If only 6 people log on to the forum, that's not a fair hearing. If you want to be fair to the accused, you should give them the opportunity to address the membership in ScienceWriters or NASW-Announce.

The 3 members revision lowers the threshold for bringing a disciplinary complaint from 20 members to 3 members. That could have some benefits. If I (or anyone) have a complaint, it should be easy for me to get 2 other members to join me. On the other hand, it leaves me (or anyone) vulnerable to a complaint by any 3 people with a grudge. On the whole, I think it's a bad idea and has the potential to do a lot of damage to NASW. We could be torn apart like the NWU.

(7) Overall, I would vote against it. We're supposed to be doing this for legal reasons. Instead of depending on messages that have been passed up the hierarchy, we should deal with the lawyers directly and get a clear, written statement of what the legal problems with Article VIII actually are. We've gone for 75 years without a disciplinary hearing. There's no hurry. It's like the war in Iraq; we can wait until we find out whether there really are any WMDs.

The List Rules are uncontestedly discipline, and I think they should be (and are) covered by Article VIII. I think the lawyers will agree if you give them the facts and ask them again. But at least this revision gives members the option of bringing a complaint against the Cybrarian. I doubt that ever occurred to the lawyers, who don't understand the distinctive features of our organization and are treating us like a generic nonprofit.

I would like to see someone address Norman's point about whether or not this process applies to the NASW email lists, and if not what the rationale is for not doing so. He points out that termination of membership is something that has never happened, whereas list "discipline" happens at least a few times every year. It seems that we may need a better process for the list rules, and Norman may be right that the current system leaves us with some legal exposure. I'd like to see these points addressed.

At the request of another member, sent to me offline, I'd like to clarify the question I raised in my earlier comment. Specifically, I was referring to Norman's comment, to whit: "The List Rules are more likely to bring a lawsuit than the old Article VIII public hearings. They're enforced arbitrarily, and used to suppress dissent and criticism of the NASW. They don't have a fair and unbiased hearing, which violates New York State non-profit law." I don't know if there's any validity to that concern about legal exposure, but I'd make two points: 1. It's not clear to me that under the process now being followed, we'd have any way of knowing the answer. Apparently the new amendment as written is being submitted to a lawyer for review (to be delivered when and how, by the way?), but it's not clear to me that the lawyer would even be aware that there's a separate process for list "discipline," and that the question has been raised as to whether there is possible legal risk from that process. 2. Regardless of legal risk, the list rules are enforced often, unlike the disciplinary process, which apparently has never happened. But the list process is not under review, is apparently not included in this revised article about disciplinary process, and has its own rules. I think some review of that process might be useful. Wouldn't it make sense to at least have some reference to that process in our constitution?