January 30, 2023
Southwestern Law School
The Southwestern Law School ACS chapter is humbled and honored to be chosen as the ACS Student Chapter of the Week.
Southwestern Law School’s ACS student chapter was re-chartered for the 2022-2023 school year after several years of inactivity, and quickly grew to 59 members in its first semester.
During this past semester, the Southwestern ACS student chapter was privileged to co-sponsor a Constitution Day event with the Office of the President and Dean of Southwestern Law School. The event discussed the dangers of originalist Constitutional interpretation from renowned legal scholar and educator Erwin Chemerinsky.
In addition, the chapter sponsored a “Constitutional Conversations” event where Sophia Lin Lakin, with the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, discussed the protections of the 15th Amendment amid the recent efforts to suppress voting rights.
As a compliment to ACS’s “Run. Vote. Work.” project, the Southwestern ACS Student Chapter partnered with the law school’s Public Service Program to provide law students an opportunity to receive pro bono hours as election protection poll monitors for California Common Cause on Election Day 2022.
Plans for this spring semester include: co-sponsorships of panel events on the crisis of housing and homelessness in Los Angeles with the student chapters of the National Lawyers Guild and the Homelessness Prevention Law Project; participation with student groups that form the Southwestern Law School Public Service Coalition in a public interest externship day; and a continuation of the “Constitutional Conversations” events that focus on legal experts presenting the real life legal challenges that result from recent SCOTUS decisions.
The Chapter is extremely grateful to Faculty Advisor Richard Jolly for his support in restarting the chapter!