Reblaw 2010

PANELS

 

ROUND 1: Friday 4:00PM - 5:30PM

Juvenile Justice From South Africa to the South Side

This panel will examine children’s rights particularly in the criminal justice system. The focus will be on impact litigation in a comparative context. The panel will discuss national and international
trends and will look at the efforts of various groups to defend children’s rights. How do different constitutional rights and
procedural rules facilitate or undermine efforts to advocate for youth in different jurisdictions? In what ways is the US leading/falling
behind other countries in the field of juvenile rights? What litigation or non-litigation strategies have been most successful and
how can we learn from each other's experiences to be more effective advocates in our home jurisdiction?

Panelist and moderator info coming soon!

Balancing the Measurable and Immeasurable in School Reform

Since the passage of No Child Left Behind, schools and school districts have been increasingly focused on data and measurably increasing student achievement. In this drive to move our students forward, it can be easy to forget about other values that are harder to measure: the benefits of integration, involving communities in schools, and ensuring that students are engaged and energized. Come hear how practitioners and lawyers are fighting to balance the demands of furnishing students with both an excellent education and an excellent educational experience.

Panelists:

Domestic Remedies for Human Rights Violations Abroad: The Future of ATS Litigation

This panel brings together the leading Alien Torts Statute litigators, providing us with an opportunity to reflect on the past, present and future of ATS litigation at a time where the jurisprudence seems to be in flux. The doctrine has global implications. For human rights advocates, ATS is the main remedy for international human rights violations available in domestic courts. Expansions of ATS liability towards an aiding and abetting has made ATS a key tool for corporate responsibility advocates. Recently, Royal Dutch/ Shell settled $15.5 million in compensation to Nigerian Activists in a suit charging company with complicity in the torture, killing, and other abuses in Nigeria. The Second Circuit is hearing cases about a slew of American, European and Canadian corporations dealing with apartheid South Africa, and eleven Indonesian citizens are suing ExxonMobil in the D.C Circuit for kidnapping, torture, and murder and other abuses, allegedly committed by security guards ExxonMobil hired from the ranks of the Indonesian military.

Come and have a conversation with the panelists - all practitioners who have extensive experience in ATS litigation - as they evaluate their strategies and discuss the emerging issues in ATS, particularly in the context of the new administration. Panelists will have a chance to discuss the impact of these suits domestically, on the communities where the violations took place, on the way corporations do business abroad, and on other human rights strategies pursued in and out of courts.

Panelist and moderator info coming soon!

ROUND 2: Saturday 10:00AM - 11:30AM

The Legal Black Hole of Short-term Detention: 72 Hours Devoid of Liberty, Accountability and Justice

Last year, U.S. Border Patrol apprehended over 700,000 migrants near the U.S.-Mexico border. Many of these individuals were detained for up to 72 hours in makeshift prisons before being deported. Human rights groups report that many detainees suffered horrendous abuses while in Border Patrol custody, including severe beatings, sleep deprivation, denial of food and water, and the forced holding of strenuous conditions for no apparent reason other than to humiliate. These migrants' stories have largely gone untold by mainstream media. Even as the Obama Administration has promised to improve custody standards for the long-term detention of immigrants by late 2009, to date no uniform regulations exist for short-term detention. This panel will ask border rights advocates and experts on immigration law and policy about what can be done to protect the human rights of migrants in short-term custody.

ROUND 3: Saturday 11:30AM - 1:00PM

Communities Left Behind: Mass Incarceration and Those Who Suffer

In the United States, ex-prisoners typically face great obstacles once they leave prison and return to free society. In light of this problem, this panel will bring together experts from social science, criminology, and the legal world to discuss the challenges that ex-prisoners deal upon release, as well as the efforts that rebellious lawyers, legal professionals, and concerned citizens can make to address these concerns.

Panelists:

Muslim Americans and the Legal Profession After September 11

This panel seeks to discuss the transformation of the legal profession in the eyes of the Muslim American community after September 11, 2001. Though the events of 9/11 have been cited as an impetus for American Muslims’ increased interest in studying and practicing law, there has been little research on the subject to date. Panelists will examine if, in fact, there has indeed been an increase in interest, and even if not, whether Muslim Americans’ motivations for applying to law school changed. We hope to portray the aftermath of a terrorist attack in the United States through its impact on Muslim Americans’ civic activism, political engagement, and attitude toward a historically non-traditional career.

Panelists:

Redefining Discrimination After Ricci v. DeStefano

This panel will use Ricci v. DeStefano as a point of departure for examining the use of disparate impact claims to address workplace discrimination and as a point of reference in a broader discussion about the changing definitions of what discrimination means.  Given that society generally condemns discrimination today,  discrimination is likely to be less overt and more discreet—either as a result of simple ignorance, unconscious adoption of prevailing stereotypes, or systemic or structural inequalities in society.  Because of this, disparate impact claims might more aptly and more often match the circumstances of employment discrimination in America today, than a traditional employment discrimination claim.

Given that context, the Redefining Discrimination panel will focus on what function disparate impact claims serve in challenging and rectifying workplace discrimination and how Ricci has changed, or will change, that function. This panel seeks to answer questions such as: Should disparate impact claim be made available in a broader spectrum of situations and play a larger role in employment discrimination litigation? Is the current legal, and perhaps societal, definition of discrimination too narrow?  Does the current legal definition fail to aptly capture real-life instances of discrimination?  Should the law distinguish between different types of discrimination, espousing more of an anti-subordination principle than an anti-classification principle?

Mountaintop Removal Mining in Appalachia: Legal Grassroots Battles Through Three Administrations

This panel will examine the history of litigation against mountaintop coal mining practices in Appalachia through the perspective of both lawyers in the field and community organizers.  The panelists will discuss the changing legal strategies during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations as well as the changing perceptions of the issue both locally and nationally.  The panel will seek to educate students about the scale of environmental destruction incurred by this type of coal mining while also looking at the obstacles faced by those who wish to bring about change.  Finally, the panel will discuss various judicial, regulatory, and legislative strategies for the future, and the likelihood that those strategies will succeed.

Clinical Legal Education in the Middle East: New Challenges and Opportunities for International Collaboration

This panel will discuss recent efforts at promoting clinical and practical legal education opportunities in the Middle East, both as a means of promoting superior legal education and as a way to strengthen civil society and address the needs of underserved communities. As most participants in RebLaw come from the United States, we will have a special emphasis on ways that U.S. legal institutions support these efforts and collaborate with clinical and practical legal education programs in the region. In significant part, we hope to discuss many of the unique challenges facing these programs -- such as the need for institutional buy-in, cultural and linguistic barriers, and existing trends in Middle Eastern legal education -- and the limitations these place on the scope and ambition of such programs. Finally, we wish to recognize the Middle East as a new frontier for clinical legal education, and to learn from the experiences of earlier efforts in other regions. Consequently, we hope each of our panelists will be able to draw from their earlier experiences with transnational clinical legal education in other regions to provide us some historical perspective on such efforts.

ROUND 4: Saturday 3:00PM - 4:30PM

Reducing Drug Crime Without Putting People in Prison: The High Point Initiative

Panelists will discuss the creation and implementation of "The High Point Initiative" and what the future of this program and similar programs might look like. The High Point Initiative is designed to permanently eliminate overt drug markets (street sales, drug houses, etc,); reduce the violent crime and disorder associated with those markets; reduce incarceration and other harmful effects of law enforcement; and heal the rift between law enforcement and the minority communities in which overt markets are found. Central to the strategy is frank talk between law enforcement and communities about the ineffectiveness and unintended community harms of traditional drug enforcement.

Panelists:

Locked Up and Locked Out: The Experiences of LGBT Prisoners

The goal of the panel is to examine the issues and struggles faced by LGBT prisoners while incarcerated and upon release.  We will discuss transgender issues, including housing decisions; the denial or neglect of hormone therapy; disciplinary actions taken against prisoners who refuse to conform to their assigned gender; and general harassment of transgender prisoners.  We will also grapple with the question of how homelessness and other challenges that tend to lead to incarceration are informed and shaped by sexuality and gender identity for LGBT people.  Finally, we will discuss legislative, judicial, and other remedies.

Panelists:

When Counter-Terrorism Becomes State Terrorism: Case Study of Sri Lanka

This panel seeks to discuss how the Global War on Terrorism has enabled countries such as Sri Lanka to adopt methods of violence against civilians that can be deemed “terrorism”. This panel will explore the events of earlier this year, when the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) launched an intense military offensive against territory controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), causing upwards of 20,000 Tamil civilian casualties. The GoSL used aerial bombardment, heavy artillery shelling and cut off the region from international aid and media as it concluded its final offensive – successfully. This panel will explore the ramifications of the tacit compliance of the international community in allowing the GoSL to prosecute its WoT with disregard for international norms and standards. The panelists will discuss what changes need to occur within the international system to prevent such atrocities in the future.

Identity Construction and the Law: How Civic, Racial, Gender, and Sexual Identity Operate and Converge in the Legal Arena

This panel seeks to explore the interaction of civic, racial, gender and sexual identities with each other and the law. The panelists will discuss how one formulates these identities as individuals, as members of groups, as well as on a national and global level. They will analyze how these identities achieve dominance within a particular setting, group, or circumstance; how they are manifested; and their ramifications of said manifestation. They will further investigate how these identities intersect and interact with each other and the law. They will discuss the ways in which legal theory illuminates the court’s and by extension society’s treatment of these identities. I expect that this panel will address broader issues of assimilation and agitation, varying modes of activism, and the historical and contemporary conceptions of civic, racial, gender, and sexual identity. 

Domestic Violence and New Interventions: Theory and Case Studies From the Field

This panel will introduce new and emerging approaches to domestic violence. Traditional legal approaches are often inadequate to address the wide-ranging needs of individuals, couples, and families to stop abuse, prevent intergenerational patterns of violence from continuing, and promote healthy communication and healing. The panelists will discuss how these traditional approaches are lacking and evaluate the potential of certain new interventions to better meet client needs. The panelists will focus on different types of innovative approaches including batterer’s intervention programs, peacemaking circles, self-initiated violence recovery programs, and creative legal advocacy.

Organized Labor in Our Age: Is There Still a Seat at the Table for Unions in the Future of the American Workforce?

As American jobs have transitioned away from manufacturing, union membership has declined. Yet, unions can still play a vital role in safeguarding the wellbeing of working people as the country climbs out of recession and high unemployment rates. Growing and emerging sectors like the service industry and green jobs are increasing in numbers even as manufacturing sectors decline. As technology and the landscape of American jobs evolve, the ability of employers to exploit and mistreat their workers lives on, and the need persists for working people to pool their strength to defend their rights and interests. Panelists will reflect on the role of unions in the heyday of American manufacturing and how labor has transitioned since then, and discuss the role that labor – union organizers and the workers who comprise union membership – will play in determining the future of the American workforce. The panel will also discuss whether existing labor and employment laws are equipped to handle the challenges these laws will be tasked with in the future, and what role lawyers might play in those challenges.