Rabble? Meet Rouser.
Register for RebLaw 2010: February 19-21

Who: Rabbles + Rousers
What: The Sixteenth Annual Rebellious Lawyering Conference. The RebLaw Conference is an annual, student-run conference that brings together practitioners, law students, and community advocates from around the country to discuss innovative, progressive approaches to law and social change.
Where: Yale Law School, New Haven, CT.
When: Friday, February 19–Sunday, February 21, 2010
Cost: Standard registration is $30. Registration is free for members of the Yale, UConn, New Haven, and Quinnipiac communities.

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Sign up for e-mail updates about the conference. For info on previous conferences and panels, please visit our archives or read the Reblawg.

Keynote Speakers

Bryan Stevenson

Bryan Stevenson is the Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery, Alabama and also a Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law. He is widely acclaimed as one of the most effective public service lawyers in America. A graduate of both the Harvard Law School, where he was awarded the Harvard Fellowship in Public Interest Law, and of the Harvard School of Government, where he was awarded the Kennedy Fellowship in Criminal Justice, Mr. Stevenson has devoted his life to helping disadvantaged people in the deep south. He and his staff have been largely responsible for reversals or reduced sentences in over 65 death penalty cases.

In 1985 Mr. Stevenson joined the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia as a staff attorney.  From 1989-1995, he represented capital defendants as the Executive Director of the Alabama Capital Representation Resource Center.  As Executive Director of EJI, Mr. Stevenson represents indigent defendants, death row prisoners and juveniles who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system.  Mr. Stevenson is committed to informing policymakers in the critically important work of reforming the administration of criminal justice, and he assists counsel representing death row inmates by providing training materials and consultation.

Mr. Stevenson’s work on behalf of condemned prisoners has attracted national recognition  and acclaim from the Washington Post, the New York Times, People Magazine, LIFE Magazine and several national television programs including Nightline and 60 Minutes, which featured a case where he and his staff achieved the release of a death row prisoner who spent six years on death row for a crime he did not commit.

In 1995, Mr. Stevenson  was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship Award for his work.  He has also received many other national honors.  In 1989, he received the Reebok Human Rights Award along with the Chinese student leaders at the Tiananmen Square massacre.  In 1991, he received the National Medal of Liberty from the American Civil Liberties Union after he was nominated by United States Supreme Court Justice John Stevens.  Mr. Stevenson was named the 1996 Public Interest Lawyer of the Year by the National Association of Public Interest Lawyers.  In 1999, he was awarded the Gleitsman Foundation’s National Citizen Activist Award and in 2000, he received the Olaf Palme Prize in Stockholm, Sweden for international human rights.  The American Bar Association has honored Mr. Stevenson with its John Minor Public Service and Professionalism Award.  In 2002, he received the Alabama State Bar Commissioners Award.   In 2003, the SALT Human Rights Award was presented to Mr. Stevenson by The Society of American Law Teachers.  In 2004, he received the Award for Courageous Advocacy from the American College of Trial Lawyers and also the Lawyer for the People Award from the National Lawyers Guild.  In 2006 New York University presented Mr. Stevenson with its Distinguished Teaching Award.  In 2008, Mr. Stevenson received the Katharine & George Alexander Law Prize from Santa Clara University School of Law.  In 2009, Mr. Stevenson won the Gruber Foundation International Justice Prize.  Mr. Stevenson has additionally received honorary degrees from Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Washington University, Eastern University, City University of New York School of Law, Metropolitan College of New York, The Bank Street College of Education, Bard College, Villanova University, Santa Clara University School of Law, Fairfield University and the University of San Francisco.

Lani Guinier

In 1998, Lani Guinier became the first woman of color appointed to a tenured professorship at Harvard Law School and is now the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law. Before her Harvard appointment, she was a tenured professor for ten years at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Educated at Radcliffe College and Yale Law School, Guinier worked in the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice and then headed the voting rights project at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the 1980s.

Guinier has published many scholarly articles and books, including The Tyranny of the Majority (1994); Becoming Gentlemen: Women, Law School and Institutional Change (1997) (with co-authors Michelle Fine and Jane Balin); Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback into a New Vision of Social Justice (1998); and The Miner's Canary:Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy (2002) (co-authored with Gerald Torres); Meritocracy, Inc.: How Wealth Became Merit, Calss Became Race and Higher Education Became a Gift From the Poor to the Rich (forthcoming Harvard University Press 2007). In her scholarly writings and in op-ed pieces, she has addressed issues of race, gender, and
democratic decision making, and sought new ways of approaching questions like affirmative action while calling for candid public discourse on these topics.

Guinier's leadership on these important issues has been recognized with
many awards, including the Champion of Democracy Award from the National Women's Political Caucus; the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award from the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession; and the Rosa Parks Award from the American Association of Affirmative Action, and by ten honorary degrees, including from Smith College, Spelman College, Swarthmore College and the University of the District of Columbia.

Her excellence in teaching was honored by the 1994 Harvey Levin Teaching Award from the graduating class at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the 2002 Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence from Harvard Law School.

Gerald Torres

Professor Torres is former president of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). A leading figure in critical race theory, Torres is also an expert in agricultural and environmental law. He came to University of Texas Law School in 1993 after teaching at The University of Minnesota Law School, where he also served as associate dean. Torres has served as deputy assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., and as counsel to then U.S. attorney general Janet Reno.

His latest book, The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2002) with Harvard law professor Lani Guinier, was described by Publisher's Weekly as "one of the most provocative and challenging books on race produced in years." Torres' many articles include "Translation and Stories" (Harvard Law Review, 2002), "Who Owns the Sky?" (Pace Law Review, 2001) (Garrison Lecture), "Taking and Giving: Police Power, Public Value, and Private Right" (Environmental Law, 1996), and "Translating Yonnondio by Precedent and Evidence: The Mashpee Indian Case" (Duke Law Journal, 1990).

Torres has served on the board of the Environmental Law Institute, the National Petroleum Council and on EPA's National Environmental Justice Advisory Council. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Law Institute. Torres was honored with the 2004 Legal Service Award from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) for his work to advance the legal rights of Latinos. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard and Stanford law schools.