Join the American Constitution Society’s UHLC Chapter on Monday, November 13th, to hear remarks from Andrew R. Hairston, Education Justice Project Director at Texas Appleseed. Mr. Hairston will be providing insight into the Texas legislature’s recent and ongoing attacks on the state’s education system, his journey to becoming a civil rights attorney, and the role of attorneys in securing education justice. 

This event will take place in the Foundation Room from 5:00pm to 6:30pm. Dinner will be provided by Mendocino Farms, including vegetarian options. Please contact jvineyar@cougarnet.uh.edu with any questions.

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.

Join the American Constitution Society on Monday, November 13 at 12:30 p.m. in Room 5E for a panel discussion on the rights and challenges of Native Americans in the 21st century. We will be joined by Paul Brannen of the Georgia Indian Council and the Cherokee of Georgia Tribal Council, Anissa Patton, Child Welfare Law Specialist Attorney for Fulton County, and our own Prof. Douglas Waters and Prof. Jerry Bruce of the Barton Center and the Georgia Office of the Child Advocate. Topics will include federal and state tribal law, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), the recent Haaland v. Brackeen decision, and how Justice Gorsuch has shocked everyone by emerging as a particularly strident defender of Native rights. Lunch from Cava will be served.

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.

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.