Into the Breach: Relying on State Courts and Constitutions to Safeguard Rights

Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., observing in 1977 that his more conservative Supreme Court colleagues were under-enforcing the guarantees of the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment, urged state courts to “step into the breach” and to scrutinize constitutional claims vigorously because “[w]ith federal scrutiny diminished, state courts must respond by increasing their own.” Now, with the federal courts moving ever more to the right under the current administration, it may be increasingly important for progressive advocates to look to state courts and state constitutions to advance civil rights and protect individual liberty. Which types of rights might receive stronger protection under state constitutions? What might be at risk with such a strategy? Where the federal and state constitutions contain substantively the same text, is it legitimate for state courts to reach different conclusions than the U.S. Supreme Court about constitutional questions? As progressives look at an increasingly inhospitable federal judicial landscape, are state courts and constitutions the answer?

SPEAKERS

Richard Schragger, Perre Bowen Professor of Law & Joseph C. Carter, Jr. Research Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law; Moderator

Mary Bonauto, Civil Rights Project Director, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD)

Hon. Anita Earls, Associate Justice, North Carolina Supreme Court

Hon. Caitlin Halligan, Partner, Selendy & Gay PLLC

Hon. Goodwin Liu, Associate Justice, California Supreme Court

Alice O’Brien, General Counsel, National Education Association

Hon. Jeffrey Sutton, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit