Panels Workshops Screenings

...then when you click through on each it changes the content below while maintaining this menu in the top. I’ve listed the content for each sub-page below.

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The program for RebLaw2014 is not yet available. In the meantime, click on type of session above to more about the panels at last year’s conference.

Panels content sub-page:

List of panels - each should be bookmarked link to the fuller description below (I can do this once you set up the page since it’s tedious and not expertise-related):

RebLaw2013 Panels

Grassroots Legal Reform: The Barefoot Lawyer in China

Reforming Eyewitness Identification: The Role of Social Science in Criminal Law

Immigration Detention: The Legitimacy Crisis at Our Border

Juvenile Justice and Sentencing Reform in Connecticut: A Look at Ongoing Advocacy Efforts

Child Sex Trafficking in the United States: Reforms to End the Criminal Prosecution of Child Victims

Formalizing the Achievement Gap: Race-Based Standards in Education

How the Affected and Underrepresented are Ending the Death Penalty

Who Controls Your Birth Control? : Contraception Access, Advocacy, and Litigation Today

Occupy, Stop-and-Frisk, and Militarization of Urban Policing: Building Coalitions Against Police Brutality

Can Unions Still Win? Problems and Possibilities in Labor Movement Lawyering

Safe Words? Legal Restrictions on Consent and Sex Radicalism

Lawyering for Social Enterprise: The Legal Landscape of Alternative Corporate Structures and Triple Bottom Lines

Crisis Pregnancy Centers: Fraud, False Advertising, and the First Amendment

Land Use Conservation Techniques: Protection or Managed Consumption?

The DREAM Movement: Life on the Intersections

Voting Rights at Large and at Small: Perspectives on Local Election Administration and How People Really Vote

Captive Customers: The Movement for Prison Phone Justice

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Grassroots Legal Reform: The Barefoot Lawyer in China

Blind, and self-taught in the law, Chen Guangcheng, the "barefoot lawyer" advocated for women's rights, land rights, and the welfare of the poor in rural China before being placed under house arrest. Jerome Cohen is one of the world's leading experts on Chinese law and legal reform and was instrumental in bringing Mr. Chen to the U.S. after his escape from detention. They, along with Ira Belkin, director of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute, will discuss grassroots legal reform in China.

Reforming Eyewitness Identification: The Role of Social Science in Criminal Law

By now it is a clichéd part of every crime drama: a witness points to a suspect and says "That’s him!" But how accurate are eyewitnesses really? And are there ways in which we can change the legal system to reduce the impact of mistaken identifications? Panelists will discuss the impact of mistaken eyewitnesses on wrongful convictions and the way in which social science research can inform policy in this area.

Immigration Detention: The Legitimacy Crisis at Our Border

This panel critiques immigration detention practices in the United States. It brings together leaders in legal advocacy, academia, and activism to ask how we might challenge the presumptions underlying American border control. How does immigration detention relate to democratic legitimacy? What can lawyers do to contest detention regimes? What is immigration detention actually like? The panel explores each of these difficult questions. In the process, it encourages a rebellious discussion about how lawyers can translate theoretical and ethical concerns about detention into a practical movement for a less carceral world.

Juvenile Justice and Sentencing Reform in Connecticut: A Look at Ongoing Advocacy Efforts

In Connecticut, children as young as 14 can be transferred to adult court and receive adult penalties, even life without parole. Currently, there are 272 individuals serving sentences of 10 years or more for crimes that occurred when they were under 18. This spring, the state legislature will consider a bill that would provide "second look" sentence review for these individuals. This panel will describe the current state of juvenile sentencing and highlight ongoing efforts for reform. Advocates will describe diverse strategies for change - from litigation to legislative advocacy to coalition building - and highlight primary arguments for reform, including the effect of the most recent Supreme Court decisions on juvenile sentencing. Attendees will learn about opportunities to get involved in ongoing reform efforts in Connecticut and nationally.

Child Sex Trafficking in the United States: Reforms to End the Criminal Prosecution of Child Victims

Child sex trafficking occurs anytime a child under the age of 18 is induced to engage in commercial sex. In the United States, as many as 100,000 children are at risk of being exploited in the commercial sex industry each year, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Although children cannot legally consent to sex, in many states child sex trafficking victims can be arrested and prosecuted for prosecution. This panel will address reform efforts underway around the country to enact "safe harbor" laws so that commercially sexually exploited children are treated as victims in need of special services rather than being criminally prosecuted. Panelists will discuss the role of safe harbor laws in the effort to end child sex trafficking, the progress that has been made in implementing these reforms, and the challenges that remain for advocates.

Formalizing the Achievement Gap: Race-Based Standards in Education

Virginia and Florida have recently passed strategic plans that set race-based academic goals in public schools. For example, in Florida, 86% of white students, but only 74% of black students, are expected to meet grade level mathematical goals in 2018. This panel will discuss the school and community impact of such goals, and more broadly, the power of expectations in public education. Can race-based expectations improve school performance? What does such an approach offer in addressing issues of de facto school segregation or the opportunity gap?

How the Affected and Underrepresented are Ending the Death Penalty

Victims' family members of color and law enforcement of color have up until recently been nearly invisible in most death penalty repeal work. As these voices have emerged, they have rapidly changed the terrain of how this work is talked about, while also de-mystifying the dialogue as it has been shaped in previous victim/offender binaries. This panel will include such voices, people who have varying degrees of experience working on the issue, but whose voices have already contributed to the evolution of the discourse and work itself. The question of affected communities comes up a lot when discussing change, and it’s not a simple one. The very channels of communication are usually shaped by the forces that have supported the systems that marginalize and which we seek to reimagine and re-shape.

Who Controls Your Birth Control? : Contraception Access, Advocacy, and Litigation Today

From the Affordable Care Act to state personhood amendments, contraception was all over the news in 2012. This panel will explore recent contraception-related policy and legal developments, advocacy efforts, and the state of contraception access today. How do ongoing legislative developments, litigation and advocacy efforts relate to the realities faced by health-care providers on the ground? Panelists doing diverse work in multiple arenas of reproductive rights and health care will discuss their current projects, exploring connections across their fields and discussing legal and non-legal strategies for improving access to contraception.

Occupy, Stop-and-Frisk, and Militarization of Urban Policing: Building Coalitions Against Police Brutality

In November 2011 the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a nationwide crackdown on Occupy protests from Oakland to NYC. For many communities of color in these cities, such police brutality and mass arrest or harassment have become routine. This panel brings together scholarly, legal, and activist perspectives on how "anti-terrorist" technologies and funding, inter-city coordination, and militarization has shaped police department priorities and responses. It aims to contribute to developing connections between legal and activist responses to police suppression of protest and to the harassment and brutalization of poor communities of color in the same cities to challenge these modes of policing.

Can Unions Still Win? Problems and Possibilities in Labor Movement Lawyering

Less than 7% of American workers in the private sector belong to unions today. A recent report found that the percentage of workers in unions had fallen to its lowest point in 93 years. But rising inequality and wage stagnation make protecting workers through union organizing and bargaining more essential than ever. On this panel, we will hear from a union activist and two labor lawyers about the difficulties they face in securing workplace protections and strategies they've used to win.

Safe Words? Legal Restrictions on Consent and Sex Radicalism

Bans on sodomy may be a thing of the past, but the law continues to regulate consensual sexual behaviors and place limits on how, where, and under what circumstances we can get it on. Are such laws needed to keep us safe and maintain a civilized society, or do they restrict our agency and right to pleasure? This panel will engage speakers from both the BDSM community and the legal world who find themselves on the edge of America's sexual frontiers. Addressing topics such as play parties, consent and sex work, panelists will challenge audience members to rethink the sexual norms they take for granted and revisit the role law should play in role play, sex work, and other sexual "deviancies."

Lawyering for Social Enterprise: The Legal Landscape of Alternative Corporate Structures and Triple Bottom Lines

This panel will explore the legal architecture of innovative corporate structures, including Benefit Corporations and Flexible Purpose Corporations. As advocates for social mission-driven businesses press for state legislation to allow businesses to incorporate with the dual purposes of delivering social value to community stakeholders and profit to shareholders, this panel will open a conversation on the work lawyers can do to advance such alternative organizations. This discussion will also allow law students to explore how to navigate a legal education to develop the knowledge and understanding to become a part of this evolving field.

Crisis Pregnancy Centers: Fraud, False Advertising, and the First Amendment

In recent years, "Crisis Pregnancy Centers" have sprung up around the country. In public advertisements these organizations offer counseling and related services to pregnant women, often by deceptively representing themselves as professional facilities that provide neutral medical information. In reality they are ideological opponents of abortion and they have been known to offer misleading or inaccurate information to the women they purport to serve. Several cities, including Baltimore and San Francisco, have responded to these centers by enacting municipal ordinances requiring truthful disclosure from these centers. The constitutionality of those ordinances have in turn been challenged in court. In this panel we will be discussing ways that local governments and nonprofit agencies can collaborate to confront these Centers and stop them from misleading pregnant women.

Land Use Conservation Techniques: Protection or Managed Consumption?

Preservation for purely altruistic motivations is becoming a thing of the past. Today, we tend to conserve land specifically for managed consumption or human enjoyment. This approach is not necessarily wrong, but it does raise the question: how do we determine where to draw lines in land-use policy? Is "progress" in land conservation defined as setting aside more land to remain free from human touch, or simply defining the ways in which humans may best interact with the natural world? If the latter, what is the role of law in delineating permissible land use?

The DREAM Movement: Life on the Intersections

Over the past decade undocumented youth -- DREAM Warriors -- have emerged from the shadows and claimed their space, fearlessly advocating for just and progressive legislation to make their dreams a reality. The work has been intentional. The approach has been intersectional. This panel will interactively explore the intersectionalities of various identities in the DREAM movement and showcase the power of bringing every story to light. Undocumented and Unafraid, Queer and UNASHAMED!

Voting Rights at Large and at Small: Perspectives on Local Election Administration and How People Really Vote

Does a voter ID law really determine who is asked to show ID? What does federal or state election law say about a poll worker who tries to strangle a voter? What does a small Detroit suburb actually do when told they have to provide voting materials in Bengali? This panel will consider the tricky questions of how our elections are actually run, focusing on issues that we might miss with a single-minded focus on statutes and judicial opinions. Issues that aren't frequently in the news but crucially shape our voting process include challenges to voters at the polling place, the nitty-gritty mechanics of different voter registration schemes, the decentralized nature of local election administration, and legal requirements such as the Voting Rights Act's provisions to help language minorities.

Captive Customers: The Movement for Prison Phone Justice

Individuals who are incarcerated or detained depend on telephone access to maintain contact with their families and loved ones. Regular contact ensures the well-being of family members separated by the incarceration system, and fosters the successful reintegration of individuals upon release. Maintaining family contact comes at a cost, however. The telephone system within state prisons and immigration detention centers exploit the most vulnerable among us by charging exorbitant rates. The high rates are the result of a commission system, under which a substantial portion of phone revenue is paid from the phone company to the state or local government. In some states, the commission is as high as 65 percent. Panelists will discuss the national campaign for prison phone justice, including the recently issued Notice of Proposed Rulemaking by the FCC; lessons from local efforts, with an emphasis on successful campaign in New York; and the impact of unjust phone rates on immigrant detainees.

Workshops sub-page content:

RebLaw2013 Workshops

Faith and Social Justice: A Values-Based Approach

Many of us choose to do public interest and non-profit work because we believe that social justice matters and that people matter. But it's so easy to lose sight of this in the day-to-day grind. Come to this workshop to reflect on the values that led you to the work you're doing, and to discuss concrete ways to put those values into practice at your workplace. Dr. David Anderson will share his experiences putting Christian values into practice at Safe Families, the faith-based children's organization he founded, and discuss how to use values to mobilize volunteers from faith communities. Following that, he will facilitate a workshop about how to design programs and institute practices that reflect your values.

Firmly Refuse: Building a National Movement to Disrupt the Sell-Out Machine (aka Law School)

We’ve all got our own law school struggles. Our own administrative battles and curricular challenges. Our own sell-out funnels and corporate cultures. In 2011, Firmly Refuse was started with the belief that we don't need to fight these battles on our own. That it’s time for law students across the country to begin the national conversation about changing the legal profession, about taking back our law schools, and about bringing justice and dignity to our work. Come join us for a workshop to discuss efforts students have already taken at their schools and to share ideas about what could work at yours. Learn about successes and setbacks other students have faced in challenging their school cultures and administrations. More than anything, come help us start a national movement to breathe strength, courage, and unity into the battles we’ve been fighting alone, at each of our schools, for far too long.

Justice for All: Working Within the Latino Community Against Childhood Sexual Abuse

The US constitution is a generous document, affording and guaranteeing rights to both citizens and non-citizens alike. Despite this fact, many communities remain underserved and victimized with little access to--or even knowledge of--their legal rights. For justice-seeking practitioners of the law, these chronically-affected communities present special challenges that need to be overcome to be better served. In the Latino community specifically, questions of immigration status and fear of deportation are often at the forefront of this group’s mindset when attempting to seek the legal protections constitutionally afforded to them. Additional challenges arise when the crimes committed against members of the Latino community are sexual in nature and involve children, as these fields are often ripe with culturally-reinforced stigma and taboo that too often result in silence and inaction for many victims. Join California Senator Martha Escutia (ret.) and attorney John C. Manly for a discussion about their work to end childhood sexual abuse within Latino communities and the obstacles such work can present.

The International Investment Regime and Human Rights

The regime governing international investments is shaped by a number of factors: domestic administrative law regimes, contract, torts and property law regimes, investment agreements between host states and investors, bilateral investment treaties, multilateral treaties, general international law, as well as investor-state arbitration. The panel aims to examine whether and how these different factors are related to one another and to understand how they can be brought to bear on developing a transparent regime that attracts investments and contributes to the progressive development of human rights in host countries. The panel will be conducted in a workshop format. While Peter Rosenblum shall focus on human rights aspects and transparency in the context of investment agreements, Lise Johnson will concentrate on transparency and the relevance of international human rights law in the context of Investor-State arbitration.

Screenings sub-page content:

RebLaw2013 Film Screenings

Unequal Justice: The Relentless Rise of the 1% Court

Unequal Justice: The Relentless Rise of the 1% Court explores the growing pro-corporate bias in key Court decisions and their real-world impact on ordinary Americans. Steadily and relentlessly, the Court has been transformed into an institution that frequently serves the interests of the wealthiest one percent.Taking judicial activism to new levels, these justices have rendered a series of pivotal cases to fundamentally change the balance of power in American society, favoring business interests and limiting access to legal remedies for everyone else. These decisions threaten to undermine the core concept of fairness that is embodied in the motto carved into the Supreme Court building, turning Equal Justice Under Law into Unequal Justice Under Law.