To strengthen their work to protect voting rights, ACS and the Campaign Legal Center unveiled the next phase of their Voting Rights Institute (VRI) project at the National Press Club on October 2. The event formally announced that the voting rights trainings that ACS and the Campaign legal center have been conducting across the nation for more than a year will now have a permanent home at Georgetown University Law Center.
Featured Speakers:
Wendy Davis, former Texas State Senator
Caroline Fredrickson, President, American Constitution Society
J. Gerald Hebert, Executive Director & Director of Litigation, Campaign Legal Center
William Treanor, Dean, Georgetown University Law Center
On Monday, Sept. 28, ACS hosted a panel discussion at the National Press Club where a diverse group of experts offered insights on the 2015 Supreme Court Term. They discussed key cases on the Court’s docket and suggested areas to follow as the Term unfolds.
Caroline Fredrickson, president of the American Constitution Society for Law & Policy, provided the introduction to the afternoon’s discussion, and SCOTUSblog’s Amy Howe moderated the panel.
The panelists included: Deborah N. Archer, professor of law, co-director of the Impact Center for Public Interest Law, dean of diversity and inclusion and director of the Racial Justice Project at New York Law School; David D. Cole, Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy at Georgetown Law; Ann C. Hodges, professor of law, University of Richmond; Alan B. Morrison, Lerner Family Associate Dean for Public Interest and Public Service Law at The George Washington University; and Kannon Shanmugam, partner at the law firm of Williams & Connolly.
On July 1, ACS hosted its annual panel discussion at the National Press Club to review the 2014 Supreme Court Term. Leading experts discussed the Court’s noteworthy decisions and analyzed emerging trends.
Panelists:
- Thomas C. Goldstein, Moderator, Partner, Goldstein & Russell, P.C.; co-founder and publisher, SCOTUSblog
- William Eskridge, Jr., John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence, Yale Law School
- J. Gerald Hebert, Executive Director and Director of Litigation, The Campaign Legal Center
- Cynthia Jones, Associate Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law
- Nadine Strossen, John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law, New York Law School; Former President, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 1991-2008
- Jeffrey B. Wall, Special Counsel and Co-head of Appellate Litigation, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
Jarrett Adams is interviewed about the law, his involvement with ACS, and his advice to future lawyers at the 2015 ACS National Convention
The Supreme Court has responded to Oklahoma's botched execution of Clayton Lockett by agreeing to hear the first lethal injection case since 2008's Baze v. Rees, which held Kentucky's lethal injection protocol constitutional. Since Baze, makers and suppliers of lethal injection drugs have increasingly refused to sell their products to death penalty states, forcing the few states that actively seek to execute death row inmates to adopted untested lethal injection protocols. These states have also developed a new tool to ward off legal challenges: secrecy laws barring access to information about lethal injection drug sources or protocols. Are critics right that these laws violate the First, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments by curtailing the media's access to information, forcing corrections staff to inflict pain on inmates, and violating the due process rights of the executed? Is the use of untested lethal injection protocols constitutional? How do these debates more generally reflect the continued viability of capital punishment in the United States?
Speakers:
- Adam Liptak, Supreme Court Correspondent, The New York Times
- Mark Earley, Founder and Principal, Earley Legal Group; Member, Death Penalty Committee, The Constitution Project
- Tanya Greene, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union
- Megan McCracken, Eighth Amendment Resource Counsel, Death Penalty Clinic, University of California, Berkeley School of Law
- Katie Townsend, Litigation Director, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Currently, 95 colleges and universities are under federal investigation for alleged violations of Title IX based on the mishandling of sexual assault complaints on campus. Academic institutions have ramped up efforts to investigate sexual assaults, and the Obama Administration has announced a task force to tackle the issue and make campuses safer. Meanwhile, some have expressed concern that the due process rights of the accused are not always sufficiently protected. Can universities crack down on sexual violence without violating the due process rights of either the accused or the accusers? How can schools follow through on the promise of Title IX so that women can function as equals in the academic environment while maintaining fairness in the investigation and prosecution of the accused? What would a model policy for dealing with campus sexual assault look like?
Speakers:
- Ari Melber, Chief Legal Correspondent and Co-Host of "The Cycle," MSNBC
- Alexandra Brodsky, Founding Co-Director, Know Your IX; Editor, Feministing.com; Student, Yale Law School
- Seth Galanter, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Department of Education Office for Civil Rights
- Hon. Nancy Gertner, (Ret.) Senior Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School
- Fatima Goss Graves, Vice-President, Education & Employment, National Women's Law Center
- Meredith Raimondo, Associate Professor and Title IX Coordinator, Oberlin College
