Join the ACS Nashville, Austin, Chicago, Kentucky, Madison, Northeast Ohio, Oregon, Puget Sound, and Tampa Lawyer Chapters for a program with Michael Klarman to discuss his 2020 Foreword to the Harvard Law Review’s annual survey of the past term of the U.S. Supreme Court. Professor Klarman will describe his examination of the recent degradation of American democracy, his consideration of possible explanations for it, his review of the Supreme Court’s contribution to it, and his thoughts on ways to bolster American democracy in the face of these degradations.

Featuring:

Michael J. Klarman, Kirkland & Ellis Professor and ACS Faculty Advisor, Harvard Law School

Our Constitution's establishment of a racial caste system left a legacy that can be seen generations later in its impact on the health and well-being of communities of color. Exploitative scientific studies, inferior medical care, and discriminatorily designed infrastructure and environmental policy have wreaked havoc on the bodies of Black, Indigenous, and LatinX Americans. As we look to fight our latest urgent public health challenges, COVID-19 and climate change, what law and policy tools are available to address the disproportionate harms borne by communities of color? What new legal authorities are needed? And what can state and federal enforcement agencies do, more broadly, to help close the racial gap in our public health policy and to enhance environmental justice?

Opening Remarks:

Russ Feingold, ACS President

Featuring:

Christophe Courchesne, Assistant Attorney General, Massachusetts Attorney General's Office

Zinelle October, Executive Vice President, ACS, Moderator

Chandra Taylor, Senior Attorney and Leader of the Environmental Justice Initiative, Southern Environmental Law Center

Ruqaiijah Yearby, Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Institute for Healing Justice and Equity, St. Louis University School of Law

This event has been approved for 1 hour of California CLE credit.

Find reading materials here, as well as Evaluation Form, Certificate of Attendance, and Record of Attendance.

As the nation's leading progressive legal organization, ACS is committed to ensuring that all aspects of our events are accessible and enjoyable for all. If you require any accommodations, please contact us at info@acslaw.org. 

From 1788 to 2016, there were only two presidential impeachments. That number doubled when Donald J. Trump was impeached and tried twice in just 14 months. What lessons can we learn from those impeachments — and what do they teach us about the future of American governance? This discussion will explore the most important constitutional and strategic judgments made by the House of Representatives in both Trump impeachment proceedings. We'll also discuss what happened in the Senate: how the parties framed their trial strategy and how the Senate itself conducted the impeachment trials. We'll conclude by assessing whether the impeachments were ultimately successful or not, and whether the Constitution's impeachment power can serve as a meaningful, effective check against the abuse of presidential power.

Join the ACS Madison, Austin, Bay Area, Colorado, DC, Milwaukee, New York, and Northeast Ohio Lawyer Chapters for a discussion between Joshua Matz (who served as Impeachment Counsel for the second Trump impeachment trial and House Judiciary Committee counsel for the first Trump impeachment) and Kate Shaw (a legal scholar who has written extensively about impeachment and other mechanisms of constitutional accountability). 

Featuring:

Joshua Matz, Partner, Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP; Former Impeachment Counsel to the House of Representatives 

Kate Shaw, Professor of Law and ACS Faculty Advisor, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law; Co-Director, Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy

Please join the UChicago ACS Student Chapter for a discussion with the hosts of the Five Four Pod, "a podcast where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have blocked out America's sun, like a California brushfire."

5-4 is a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks. It is a progressive and occasionally profane take on the ideological battles at the heart of the Court’s most important landmark cases, and an irreverent tour of all the ways in which the law is shaped by politics.

Listen each week as hosts Peter, Michael, and Rhiannon dismantle the Justices’ legal reasoning on hot-button issues like affirmative action, gun rights, and campaign finance, and use dark humor to reveal the high court’s biases.

Presented by Slow Burn co-creator Leon Neyfakh, 5-4 is a production of Prologue Projects in partnership with Westwood One Podcast Network.

To attend this event, please click here.

Join the Florida ACS Lawyer Chapters for a discussion on HB 1. With Florida passing HB 1, described as an anti-protest law, everything from the right to protest to the content of police budgets has changed. Our distinguished panel will inform us about this new law, its constitutional challenges, and what we can expect going forward.

Featuring:

Melba Pearson, Policy Director, Center for the Administration of Justice, Florida International University

Berbeth S. Foster, Senior Staff Attorney, Community Justice Project

Andrew Warren, State Attorney, State Attorney's Office, 13th Judicial Circuit

Moderated by:

Quinn Smith, Managing Partner, GST LLP; Board Member, ACS South Florida Lawyer Chapter

Please join the Notre Dame Law ACS and APALSA Student Chapters and the SBA Diversity & Inclusion Committee, the Black Law Student Association, the Hispanic Law Student Association, and the LGBT Forum as we have a discussion with former prosecutor Judge Pamela Chen (EDNY), and two board members of the Asian American Bar Association of New York, Karen King and Chris Kwok, in discussing the rise of anti-Asian violence. At this event we will discuss the findings of a study done in conjunction with Paul Weiss in relation to the rise of anti-Asian incidences, the implementation of measures to combat racism--such as organizing Black-Asian unit rallies and forming undercover Asian police units to patrol Asian neighborhoods, and the difficulties in prosecuting these incidences as hate crimes.