On November 20, 2024, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana and New Orleans Chapter of the Federal Bar Association presented the 33rd Annual Judge Alvin B. Rubin Symposium to a packed en banc courtroom, with many more joining via Zoom. As with the James Meredith case reenacted last year, the historic courtroom reenactment selected for this year’s Rubin Symposium—Vietnamese Fishermen vs. The Ku Klux Klan—also had strong ties to the geographic footprint of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, where Judge Rubin served with distinction for over a decade. The all-star cast featured Judge Darrel J. Papillion as plaintiffs’ attorney Morris Dees and Federal Public Defender Claude Kelly as antagonist Louis Beam, the college-educated Grand Dragon of the Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Chief Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown read from the Southern District of Texas’s early-1980s opinions enjoining the Klan’s unlawful threats and intimidation tactics against the Vietnamese fishermen around Galveston and closing Beam’s private paramilitary training programs in Texas. 

The Symposium continued with a panel discussion led by U.S. Magistrate Judge Eva Dossier on the elusive concept of the rule of law – what it is, what it means for practitioners, and how it’s been historically challenged. The Rubin Symposium concluded with a reception in the lobby of the courthouse featuring a variety of delicious Vietnamese foods catered by Thanh Thanh Restaurant of Gretna. 

Additional Photographs of the play can be seen here.