Rex S. Heinke is an Appellate Counsel at the California Appellate Law Group. He is an accomplished appellate litigator that has briefed hundreds of appeals, writs and trial court motions in nearly every aspect of civil law. His areas of experience range from Supreme Court and Appellate practice and Complex Commercial Litigation, to Energy Litigation and Insurance Litigation among others.
He has received various awards for his years of service that include, but are not limited to, the following:
– Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, Litigation: Appellate, 2012 to 2019.
– Beacon of Justice Award, Friends of the Los Angeles County Law Library, 2019.
– National Law Journal’s 2018 Appellate Hot List.
– The Best Lawyers in America for Appellate Practice, Litigation – First Amendment and Media Law, 2013 to 2019, and listed in The Best Lawyers in America since 1991.
After reading the article by Dick Winfield (Co-founder of ISLP, Head of the Media Law Working Group) that appeared in the January/February 2020 issue of Experience Magazine, and being familiar with Dick’s previous free speech cases and seminars, Rex immediately reached out to volunteer.
In February 2020, Rex was sent to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe to deliver a training, in partnership with the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), on media law and strategic litigation. Participants in the workshop were local lawyers practicing in Bulawayo. The objectives of the training were to equip local lawyers with an understanding of media freedoms and to provide the local lawyers with strategic litigation skills to defend media professionals. The purpose of this training was also to support the democratic principle of freedom of speech—a fundamental component in the preservation of democratic spaces that is a useful tool in transparency and accountability monitoring. As a collaborative training, Rex heard from the Zimbabwean lawyers’ perspective through a “great presentation on Zimbabwean free speech law.” He was “struck by the similarities between their [(Zimbabwean)] and our [(US)] law.”
With ample experience in litigation cases relating to free speech, Rex believes that “protecting the right to speak freely is central to democracy and to facilitating peaceful change,” and considers himself “lucky to have the opportunity to do such work and be able to make a living doing it.” He recognizes that “every lawyer has a duty to do pro bono work [and] ISLP is a great example of lawyers fulfilling that duty and helping defend the rule of law, which is essential to a free and democratic society.” He hopes that other lawyers will get involved in ISLP and its “very worthwhile projects.”
Rex’s ISLP mission in Zimbabwe produced a remarkable outcome. He was invited to appear on national television in neighboring South Africa. A prominent TV presenter interviewed Rex at length about his history as an American undergraduate at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. An outspoken opponent of apartheid and President of the Student Government, Rex led a huge march with fellow students against the government. In 1971 Rex was deported for his activism. This volunteer opportunity with ISLP allowed Rex to return to Southern Africa for the first time after nearly 50 years.