Tag: 2015 ACS National Convention

Jarrett Adams Interview

Jarrett Adams is interviewed about the law, his involvement with ACS, and his advice to future lawyers at the 2015 ACS National Convention

Disparate Impact in the Crosshairs

As structural inequality persists and overt racial animus becomes rarer, the ability to attack policies that have a disproportionately adverse effect on racial and ethnic minorities is crucial. But while the disparate impact doctrine is vitally important for protecting equal opportunity, it is once again in the crosshairs. The Supreme Court has already rejected a private right of action to enforce the disparate impact standard under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and may do so this term under the Fair Housing Act in Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project. Conservatives have planned further attacks on disparate impact in other contexts, including employment and voting. How have advocates used the disparate impact standard to confront contemporary racial inequality, and how have litigators adapted to Supreme Court decisions limiting the availability of the disparate impact standard? 
 
Speakers:
  • Hon. Theodore McKee, Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
  • William Consovoy, Partner, Consovoy McCarthy PLLC
  • Elizabeth Julian, President, Inclusive Communities Project
  • Janai Nelson, Associate Director-Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
  • Neil S. Siegel, David W. Ichel Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science, Co-Director of the Program in Public Law, and Director of the D.C. Summer Institute on Law and Policy, Duke Law School

2015 National Convention - Student Chapter Awards

Awards for the Constance Baker Motley Writing Competition, ACS Student Chapters Awards, Reproductive Justice Award, and Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law are handed out at the 2015 ACS National Convention.

The Dangers of Injecting Secrecy into the Death Penalty

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

Janson Wu Interview

ACS interviews Janson Wu, executive director of Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), at the 2015 National Convention.