The report and its findings, released in December 2017, led to the development of new policies and procedures regarding how to better manage public protests while also ensuring First Amendment protections and public safety. Heaphy headed the team of lawyers from Hunton & Williams, LLP who conducted the review.
“The founders of our democratic government believed in an ordered liberty that guarantees all Americans the right to express themselves in the public square. Thomas Jefferson helped enshrine that value in the early days of the republic,” writes Heaphy in the report’s preface. “It is therefore only fitting that his hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, continues to serve as a forum for emerging intersections of speech and security.”
Heaphy, who currently serves as university counsel at the University of Virginia, led the report’s preparation as a partner at the law firm of Hunton Andrews Kurth. He is a former United States Attorney for the Western District of Virginia. As a law student at UVA, he helped start a loan forgiveness program for students who entered public service work after graduation.
The Delaney Dinner and Lecture Series is designed to encourage knowledge, proficiency, efficiency and ethical standards in criminal justice, intelligence and fire officer professions. It is named in honor of Fr. James T. Delaney, a faculty member in psychology and sociology who founded and directed the criminal justice studies program at the Mount in the early 1990s.