Tag: 2017 ACS National Convention

Amid growing protest by Americans of all political persuasions in response to increasing economic inequality and a disappearing middle class, the current administration resembles a gathering of corporate tycoons, serving to highlight the intimate connection between economic power and political power. Despite a federal antitrust regime designed to prevent centralized corporate power, increasingly we see the consolidation of industry (retail, airlines, hospitals, etc.) due to what many experts believe is decades of under-enforced antitrust law. What does the concentration of corporate power and wealth portend for the health of our democratic society and individual liberties? Can antitrust laws be used to diffuse the concentration of wealth, improve the strength of the middle and working classes, and restore the democratic promise of America, particularly under a Trump Administration?

Reproductive rights have seen significant new and renewed protections during the past several years, as the Affordable Care Act guaranteed full coverage of all FDA-approved contraceptives for women and Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt reaffirmed and strengthened the constitutional right to abortion. On the other hand, there have been some setbacks, as the contraceptive mandate has been limited by successful religious objections in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell and Congress threatens to repeal the Affordable Care Act and strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood. This panel will discuss the current state of protections for reproductive rights and will consider existing and future threats to those rights. Will politicians continue to attack the right to abortion despite the Supreme Court’s recent rebuke? Will religious accommodations and exemptions swallow rules guaranteeing the provision of contraception, abortion, and other reproductive services? With the executive branch, both houses of Congress, and a majority of the states under Republican control, might anti-choice legislators make changes in the law for which they lack popular support? If so, how should pro-choice advocates most effectively respond both inside and outside of the courts? 

Across the country, federal, state and local governments have used “redlining” and other discriminatory policies with the explicit intent to segregate cities and towns. As a result, black communities have been hobbled by a lack of economic investment, depressed property values, underfunded schools, and violence. Perhaps more than any other single cause, state-sanctioned segregation has contributed to the crisis in policing, gun violence, the school-to-prison pipeline and a host of other devastating effects that an ascendant group of activists has mobilized to rectify. How does housing segregation’s role as a root cause of current racial disparities impact efforts to design effective solutions to these problems? 

During the first night of the 2017 ACS National Convention, June 8, 2017, United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer sat down for a conversation with George Washington University Law School Associate Dean Alan Morrison. Hon. Ketanji Brown Jackson of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia introduced the discussion. 

ACS President Caroline Fredrickson welcomed convention attendees by speaking about the weekend's schedule and new ACS projects.