The 24th Annual Federalist Society Student Symposium is beginning in just a few minutes, here at Harvard Law School.

We are expecting over 900 attendees, a record turnout.

The theme of this year's symposium is "Law and Freedom." When we began discussing this theme nearly two years ago, we knew that the expansion of freedom would be a necessary pillar of the war on terrorism. But we couldn't have known that President Bush would make it the cornerstone of his Second Inaugural Address, or that two days before the Symposium, he would become the first President to visit Slovakia. Yesterday in Bratislava, he spoke to thousands of enthusiastic Slovaks:

It took almost a decade after the [1989] Velvet Revolution for democracy to fully take root in this country. And the democratic revolutions that swept this region over 15 years ago are now reaching Georgia and Ukraine," he said to applause.

In a link that appeared aimed more at domestic audiences than at the shivering crowd, he went on to suggest that last month's election in Iraq was in the tradition of the East European revolutions over the past 15 years.

"In recent times we have witnessed landmark events in the history of liberty - a Rose Revolution in Georgia, an Orange Revolution in Ukraine and now a Purple Revolution in Iraq," he said, in a reference to the Iraqis who dipped their index fingers into purple ink to show they had voted.

This is a convention of law students and lawyers, of course, so we'll be focusing on the legal issues and debates about freedom. What a timely topic.

Ex Parte readers will be able to follow along throughout the symposium. As majordomo, I'll be posting the description of each panel as it starts. These posts will have commenting enabled. We have invited symposium attendees, and now, Ex Parte readers to weigh in and share their thoughts, reactions, and ideas after each panel in the "comments" section.

I have made the "Comments" link bigger for the duration of the symposium, to make it easier to find.

So if you're here at Harvard Law School, welcome to the Symposium. And welcome to Ex Parte!

While watching the Registration table this morning, talk turned to the record attendance at this year's Symposium and anticipated record attendance at the Banquet tonight. As of this morning, the banquet is sold out (that's over 550 Federalists), and just over 435 of them have decided upon filet mignon as their entree of choice. As there's an animal rights event at HLS today, we couldn't help but wonder --> for how many head of steer is the Federalist Society directly responsible for slaughtering? Well Google is a wonderful thing and thanks to our crack registration table research team, we determined that the typical steer yields about 15 filets. Divide 435 by 15, and yup, you got it, we've killed at least 29 steer. So, here's to you, our courageous bovine Federalists, thanks for doing your part to make this year's Symposium a success.

Update: Division corrected. Thanks to readers who pointed this out!