Tuesday, November 14, 2023 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM, Room 125

RSVP for Lunch here: https://forms.office.com/r/PZTRQwJ3n1 

Arizona Elections Administrators have been at the front lines of the democratic process. The panelists have unique experiences witnessing election law in action and the effect it has on administering elections at the local and state levels. Their backgrounds and current roles offer insight into the effects of political polarization on the electoral process and how lawyers can participate in the preservation of democracy.

Amy B. Chan was admitted to the Arizona State Bar in 1999 and serves as the General Counsel to the Arizona Secretary of State's Office. Chan is also a Commissioner for the Arizona Citizens for Clean Elections.

Colleen Connor is the Arizona State Elections Director. Connor was admitted to the Arizona State Bar in 1994, has over 25 years of election law experience, and is a Certified Election Officer.

Lisa Marra serves as the Deputy Director of Elections for Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes. Lisa joined the executive team in March 2023, after serving as the Director of Elections in Cochise County, Arizona where she was Community Relations Administrator for the Board of Supervisors overseeing legislative affairs, public relations, and management of federal grant funds before being appointed Director of Elections in 2017.

The Law and Democracy Series involves several speakers and events occurring at the College of Law that address the degradation of democracy, the deep polarization in our political culture, and the role of lawyers in preserving and thinking about democracy and the rule of law. This Series is provided by generous support from Ron and the late Barb Schaefer.

Please join the ACS Southwest Ohio Lawyer Chapter for a happy hour with ACS’s Senior Director of Chapter Peggy Li. Join us to learn more about ACS and connect with local student and lawyer leaders.

Limited food and drinks will be provided.

Speakers Paul Smith from CLC, Sonali Seth from the Brennan Center, and Professor Richard Briffault from Columbia Law School come together to discuss the current state of voting rights in the United States. The discussion focuses on the two past summer term voting rights cases, while also talking about the effects that voting rights cases have on local redistricting. The Columbia Law School Democrats are cosponsoring this event.

Please join ACS for a conversation with Judge Theodore D. Chuang on his experience in public service and now on the bench! We will hear from him on his path through public service and on his ultimate nomination by President Obama.

Judge Chuang is a Federal District Court Judge for the District of Maryland. Judge Chuang has a long history of working in public service. Starting in 1995, he worked as a trial attorney for the DOJ in the Civil Rights Division. He then served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Massachusetts before returning to DC. For several years, Judge Chuang served as Investigative Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives for the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and then for the Committee on Energy and Commerce. After working in the House, he served as Deputy General Counsel for the Department of Homeland Security. In 2013, he was nominated by President Obama to serve as a Federal District Court Judge and has served in Maryland since then.

Co-Hosted with: Georgetown Federalist Society. Panelists: Marcus Childress (House Investigative Counsel), Mary McCord, Will Chamberlain, and Mushtaq Gunja. We held this event with the goal in mind to open the FedSoc silo to what really happened on January 6th and its ongoing effects on our democracy.

ACS, cosponsored with the Federalist Society and the Supreme Court and Appellate Society hosted a debate on affirmative action with Professors Geoffrey Stone and Adam Mortara.

Professor Adam Mortara graduated from the University of Chicago Law School with highest honors in 2001. Following graduation, he clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and then for Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States. After his clerkships, he was a Temple Bar Scholar of the American Inns of Court. From 2003 to 2020, Mr. Mortara was with Bartlit Beck LLP where he tried high stakes intellectual property cases and, more notably, Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard, and in 2020 founded Lawfair LLC, a civil and voting rights firm. He has been a Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School since 2007, where he teaches Federal Habeas Corpus, Federal Jurisdiction, Criminal Procedure, and Writing for the Judiciary. 

 

Geoffrey R. Stone is the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. Mr. Stone joined the faculty in 1973, after serving as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. He later served as Dean of the Law School (1987-1994) and Provost of the University of Chicago (1994-2002). He is an esteemed Constitutional law scholar and was appointed by President Obama to serve on the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, which evaluated the government’s foreign intelligence surveillance programs in the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks. He has written amicus briefs for constitutional scholars in a number of Supreme Court cases, including Obergefell v. Hodges, Whole Woman’s Heath v. Hellerstedt, Lawrence v. Texas, United States v. Windsor, United States v. Stevens, and Rasul v. Bush. He was also one of the lawyers who represented President Bill Clinton in the Supreme Court in Clinton v. Jones.