EDWARD HAWKINS SISSON (http://gallery.me.com/sissoed #gallery) posts film reviews on Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and on amazon.com under the name "sissoed;" his focus recently has included TV adaptations of Jane Austen novels, such as the new "Sense & Sensibility." Born in Washington, D.C., he attended seven elementary and middle schools across the US before becoming a boarding student at St. Albans, the private high school in Washington D.C. affiliated with the National Cathedral. At Pomona College he studied English, Philosophy, and Filmmaking before transferring to MIT to earn a bachelor of science in Architectural Design (1977). Finding the practice of architecture less stimulating than he had hoped, he turned down his acceptance to MIT's Master of Architecture program and became a producer of experimental multi-media theater, based in San Francisco and on tour. In San Francisco he presented foreign groups from Europe, Japan, and the US. His best-known production for Antenna, "Vacuum," played the Rhode Island School of Design and New York City's Performing Garage, earning raves from the New York Times, the Village Voice, and the SoHo Weekly News. His many Bay Area productions for George Coates toured overseas to France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Spain, and in the US to Los Angeles, Seattle, the American Music Theatre Festival (Philadelphia), and to the Brooklyn Academy of Music "Next Wave" series; his last production for George Coates, Actual Sho [sic] (1987) was selected by the State Dept. to represent the US at festivals in Yugoslavia and Poland, and then played the Kennedy Center Opera House (1988). After these successes he decided to earn a law degree, graduating magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center (1991). His first brief, while a law student, was in the U.S. Supreme Court; his side won 5-4 in Thurgood Marshall's last decision (Burns v. US, 1991). He then married the daughter of a former state Governor. With her (since divorced), he has two children, a son and a daughter. After clerking for a federal judge, he joined the large law firm Arnold & Porter, and was elected partner in 2000. He specialized in suing the government; his largest commercial victory was $401 million (American Savings v. US, 2006; reduced on appeal to $55 million). He also maintained an extensive pro bono practice, including for the Clinton Administration transition (1993) drafting ethics rules; for D.C. government reform efforts; and for indigent minority clients, including a postal worker, a shooting victim, and a drug dealer; in March, 2008, his efforts to win a pardon from the Governor of Virginia for Ollin Renaye Crawford, sentenced to an unjustly-long 70 years for bank robbery, achieved success with Ms. Crawford's release. He also assisted human-rights activists in Iran, the former Yugoslavia, and North Korea, and worked to obtain the first-ever posthumous Presidential pardon, issued by President Clinton (1999) to clear an unjust, racially-motivated court-martial in 1881 of the first African-American graduate of West Point, Lt. Henry Ossian Flipper (class of 1877). Also as part of his pro bono practice, in 2004 and 2005 he assisted university science professors -- most notably, Dr. Caroline Crocker (featured in the Ben Stein film "Expelled") and other science Ph.D's who find scientific merit in the pro-intelligent design critique of mainstream evolution, and who suffer government-directed discrimination as a result. At the 2005 Kansas "evolution hearings" he was slated to cross-examine the science witnesses for the majority view, but they boycotted the proceedings. His activities resulted in an interview on CNN, mention in Time Magazine, participation in a Boston University debate and a Greenville, South Carolina, symposium, a front-page article in the Washington, D.C. Legal Times, and contribution of an essay to the book Uncommon Dissent (Intercollegiate Studies Institute ISI Press 2004). He left Arnold & Porter in January, 2006, and suspended his legal practice to pursue a number of theatrical and literary projects, including a series of plays and historical novels.