Biography: JAMES B. JACOBS in the Warren E. Burger Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, where he has been a member of faculty since 1982.  A lawyer and sociologist who works in the criminal justice area, Jacobs has written extensively on the U.S. government's attack on Italian-American organized crime (Cosa Nostra). His most recent book is Mobsters, Unions & Feds:  The Mafia and the American Labor Movement (2006). He is currently completing a book on the federal government's 22 year on-going effort to purge Cosa Nostra influence from the nation's largest private sector union. 

 

Abstract: The Italian-American Mafia infiltrated the International brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), America's largest and most powerful union both through the union's local affiliates and through the union's central administration.  While there were sporadic prosecutions of mobsters and union officials during the 1960s and 1970s, the "devil's pact" between the Cosa Nostra and the IBT only grew stronger and more entrenched.  In 1988, the U.S. Department of Justice brought an unprecedented civil racketeering lawsuit against the IBT.  That lawsuit, settled in 1989 and continuing in its remedial phase to the present day, has achieved what dozens of criminal prosecutions were not able to achieve.  This lecture will examine the lessons that can be drawn from this remarkable lawsuit.   

 

Date and Time: Tuesday, 13 July: 10.30am – 11.30am (morning tea available from 10.15am; for catering purposes please RSVP to k.baker@griffith.edu.au).
Venue: Seminar Room 5.01, Level 5, M10 (Social Sciences Building), Mt Gravatt campus, Griffith University (map)