Social Justice Workshop
Fall 2009 Workshop: Sexuality and the Law
Professor Pat Cain will teach the Fall 2009 Social Justice Workshop: Sexuality and the Law. This workshop will begin with historical material that contextualizes the modern battle for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) rights. We will study key legal cases brought in federal and state court. Litigation topics include the constitutional right to privacy, marriage and other forms of recognition for same-sex couples and their children, equality claims to benefits, antidiscrimination law, and free speech. In addition to discussing legal doctrine, we will focus on the role of public interest litigators in civil rights movements generally and in the LGBT movement in particular. The Workshop includes a series of public lectures by key participants in this legal battle for LGBT equality. All speakers have been active in public interest organizations as well as in private legal practice representing LGBT clients. The first public event will include a recently completed film about an early legal battle, known as the "Gay Olympics Case,” argued before the United States Supreme Court by lesbian activist Mary Dunlap. The case was decided in 1987, just one year after Bowers v. Hardwick, and the film provides a sense of history for that period of the movement.
Lectures are open to members of the university community and the general public.
*All seminars and film to begin at 4:10 p.m. in Bannan 333
*Receptions will be held at 5:30 p.m. in Strong Common Room
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
"Claiming the Title: Gay Olympics on Trial” (2009) )[filmmakers: Jonathan Joiner and Robert H. Martin]
This film is a short-subject documentary that tells the story of the San Francisco athletic group that tried to hold a "Gay Olympics,” instigating a battle at the nation’s highest court and a challenge over the place of gays and lesbians in American society. The movie offers a rare glimpse behind the scenes at the Court through interviews with Court insiders, recently released papers and archival video. The case was San Francisco Arts & Athletics v. USOC, 483 U.S. 522 (1987) and the issue was whether Congress could give the U.S. Olympic Committee exclusive ownership of the word "Olympics” even if the USOC discriminated against minorities in deciding which groups could use the word.
Guest commentator: Maureen Mason, San Francisco
Maureen Mason is a lawyer and activist. She is the surviving partner of Mary Dunlap, a co-founder of Equal Rights Advocates and a civil rights lawyer, who argued the case before the Supreme Court. Ms. Mason was at the Supreme Court in person for the arguments in the case.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Kenneth Upton (Senior Staff Attorney, Lambda Legal Defense)
Public Lawyering for LGBT Rights: The Lambda Experience
Kenneth Upton is the supervising senior staff attorney in the Southern Central Regional Office of Lambda Legal. Licensed by both the State Bar of Texas and Oklahoma Bar Association, he has handled litigation in state and federal courts across the United States, including most of the eight states covered in the south central region. He also has received regular court admissions to the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit and several regional U.S. District Courts.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Abby Rubenfeld (Rubenfeld Law Office)
Lawyering for LGBT Rights From New York to Nashville
Abby R. Rubenfeld has a general law practice in Nashville with an emphasis on family law, sexual orientation, and AIDS-related issues. She currently serves on the board of directors of the ACLU of Tennessee, and she served on the board of directors of the Human Rights Campaign, a national civil rights organization and the largest lesbian and gay political organization in the world. Earlier in her career, she served as Legal Director of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Matthew Coles (Director, LGBT & AIDS Project of American Civil Liberties Union)
Lawyering for LGBT Rights: A 30 Year Perspective
Matthew Coles, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and AIDS Project of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation since 1995, has been a leader in the lesbian and gay civil rights movement for more than three decades. He wrote and helped lead the campaigns to pass many gay rights laws, including the first comprehensive law banning discrimination based on sexual orienta¬tion in California, California’s law barring employment discrimination based on sexual orientation statewide, and the nation’s first domestic partnership law. He was also one of the lead lawyers on Romer v. Evans, the U.S. Supreme court case that struck down Colorado’s Amendment 2, and on important cases on adoption, AIDS and "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Kate Kendell (Executive Director, National Center for Lesbian Rights)
Public Interest Lawyering: The NCLR Experience
Kate Kendell leads the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), a national legal organization com¬mitted to advancing the civil and human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their families through litigation, public policy advocacy, and public education. After earning her J.D. from the University of Utah College of Law in 1988, and a few years practicing corporate law, she became the first staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah. She directly litigated many high-profile cases focusing on all aspects of civil liberties, including reproductive rights, prisoners’ rights, free speech, the rights of LGBT people, and the intersection of church and state. She has been with NCLR since 1994.
Fall 2009 Social Justice Workshop Flyer (PDF)
Spring 2010 Workshop: Mass Media and Internet Law and Regulation;
Promoting Access and Protecting the Public Interest
This seminar, led by Catherine J.K. Sandoval, Assistant Professor, Santa Clara University School of Law, explores the intersections of law, regulation, technology, public access, and the public interest through an in-depth study of mass media and Internet law and regulation. U.S. regulation of electronic mass media (radio, television, satellite, cable and wireless communication) has been defined and divided by the means used to deliver the message. Regulation by conduit resulted in different constitutional and regulatory standards based on the medium. With the growth of the Internet and its convergence with traditional media forms, these regulatory distinctions have eroded but not disappeared. The Internet has also created new possibilities for communication, expanding opportunities to access information, though significant digital divides remain. Additionally, those who control access to the Internet have great technological capacity to track and potentially shape or limit communication unless bridled by law, regulation, competition, or public vigilance.
This seminar addresses many of the core issues that shape mass media and the Internet today including: the operation and role of spectrum and the justifications for its regulation in the public interest; the rise and fall of the fairness doctrine and its legacy for today’s balkanized media; structural regulation of control of the spectrum such as multiple ownership rules; an analysis of the role of antitrust laws as compared to communications regulation in the public interest; race and the media; children and the media; the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) regulations of the telephone and cable systems and their legacy for Internet regulation, privacy and net neutrality. The seminar explores case law, FCC rulemaking, and scholarship in both the fields of law and communications studies. The seminar speakers reflect multiple perspectives, drawn from the worlds of academia, advocacy, and legal practice in the U.S. and Canada.
Lectures are open to members of the university community and the general public.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Krista Jacobsen (Covington & Burling, LLP)
Understanding Spectrum Technologies and the Justification for its Regulation in the Public Interest
Dr. Jacobsen co-authored a book on Digital Subscriber Line technologies and holds 13 patents. She practices patent law, has worked on spectrum issues and served on several International Telecommunications Union committees establishing international spectrum policies and rights.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Leonard Baynes (St. John’s University School of Law)
Race and the Media
Leonard Baynes is a Professor of Law and Director of the Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development at St. John’s University Law School. He has written over twenty-five articles on race, racism and the law, communications law, business law and the intersection of those disciplines.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Allen Hammond, IV. (Santa Clara University School of Law)
Structural Regulation of Mass Media; Consolidation, Diversity and the Public Interest
Allen Hammond is a Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law where he holds the Phil and Bobbie Sanfilippo Chair and founded the Broadband Institute of California. He conducted a study for the FCC examining the effects of its multiple ownership policies on minority and women owned firms. He has submitted comments to the FCC on its multiple ownership rules and broadband policy.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Becky Lentz, Ph.D. (McGill University)
Linguistic Engineering; The FCC’s Computer Inquiries and their Legacy for Communications and Internet Regulation
Becky Lentz is an Assistant Professor in Media and Communications in the Department of Art History and Communications Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She wrote her dissertation at University of Texas at Austin on the FCC’s Computer Inquiries, then served for six years as the Ford Foundation’s first program officer for electronic media policy before joining the faculty of McGill.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Paul Ohm (University of Colorado Law School)
Wiretapping the Internet
Paul Ohm is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Law School at Boulder. Prior to joining the Colorado faculty, he was an Honors Program trial attorney in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Lee Tien (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
Campaign Ethics and Financing
The Law and Policy of Internet Privacy
Lee Tien is a Senior Staff Attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He specializes in free speech law and its intersections with intellectual property and privacy law.
Previous Social Justice Workshops
Fall 2008 Social Justice Workshop Flyer (PDF)
Fall 2007 Social Justice Workshop (Law and Labor in the Global Economy) Flyer (PDF)
Fall 2006 Social Justice Workshop (Race, Economics, and Education) Flyer (PDF)
Fall 2005 Social Justice Workshop (Health Policy and the Law) Flyer (PDF)
Fall 2004 Social Justice Workshop (Transitional Justice) Flyer (PDF)
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