Distinguished Professor Alan E. Garfield was recently honored with the 2012 Delaware Press Association’s Communication Contest Award in the category of Personal Opinion Column for “Honest debate at core of the Constitution.” The column was part of the monthly “Bench Press” opinion column that Garfield writes for the News Journal.“I think that it is vitally important that the public be better educated about the Constitution and constitutional jurisprudence and the Supreme Court’s role,” says Professor Garfield, who began writing the “Bench Press” column for the paper in October of 2009 after working with the paper since 2006 on an annual Constitution Day Project that celebrates the September holiday with a collection of essays.For 2011, Professor Garfield’s entry in the same category received a second place award, and at that time, the competition judges described “Bench Press” as “Intelligently reasoned columns dealing with topical issues in a manner that educates readers while allowing them to draw their own informed conclusions.”“I’m not just trying to write about the cases,” explains Garfield. “What I’m trying to do is translate those complicated cases into language that lay people can understand so that they can grasp the issues being discussed.”