Social Justice Workshop
Spring 2013 Social Justice Workshop - Public Service and Social Justice Law Practice - taught by Professor Margaret Russell
This class will provide both an overview of the problems faced by indigent and otherwise disadvantaged communities and an introduction to lawyering skills needed to assist these clients. The course will focus on social justice lawyering theory and practice through a range of perspectives and approaches, including litigation, legislation, policy making, media education, community organizing, and coalition building. Students will have an opportunity to meet and learn from leading practitioners and scholars in key social justice areas, including immigrants’ rights, farmworkers’ rights, disability law, LGBT law, elder law, education law, civil rights, and civil liberties.
Events begin at noon, in Bannan 127.
January 31, 2013 (12:00 PM - 1:00 PM)
Spring 2013 Social Justice Visiting Practitioner
Dori Rose Inda (Watsonville Law Center)
“Turning Vision into Mission as an Accidental Leader”
Dori Rose Inda is the founder and executive director of the Watsonville Law Center (WLC). She earned a bachelor’s degree in social science at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1988 and earned a J.D. at Santa Clara University School of Law in 2000. While a law student, Inda assisted on a case in which many of the victims were from the Watsonville area. These clients were unable to obtain legal representation locally and this brought to light the critical gap in legal services in the Watsonville area. She then dedicated herself to establishing WLC in Watsonville. After graduation, Inda worked as a staff attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance and in 2002 founded the Watsonville Law Center. Since that time, with WLC’s team of staff, board, and partners, she developed the five projects that make up WLC’s services to the community: Economic Justice Partnership, Agricultural Workers’ Access to Health Project, Barriers to Employment, Consumer Protection, and Language Access to the Court.
February 14, 2013 (12:00 PM - 1:00 PM)
Susan Mizner (American Civil Liberties Union Disability Rights Project)
“A Valentine to the ADA: Why I Love Disability Rights Law and You Should, Too”
Susan Mizner is the director of the Disability Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. She served as director of the San Francisco Mayor’s Office on Disability from 2003 to 2011, and as deputy director for programmatic access from 2000 to 2003. Susan is a graduate of Yale University and Stanford Law School. A member of the disability community since the 1980s, she attended law school primarily from a cot. She has devoted her professional life to promoting equality of access for people with disabilities.
February 21, 2013 (12:00 PM - 1:00 PM)
Michael Adams (SAGE USA, Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders)
“Aging through an LGBT Lens: A Social Justice Perspective”
Michael Adams is the executive director of SAGE USA, Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders. SAGE is the oldest and largest organization in the country dedicated to transforming the LGBT aging experience. In 2009, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services selected SAGE to establish and run the country’s first and only National Resource Center on LGBT Aging. Before
joining SAGE, Michael was the director of education and public affairs for Lambda Legal, deputy legal director at Lambda Legal, associate director of the ACLU’s Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, and an attorney in private practice in San Francisco. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Stanford Law School.
March 14, 2013 (12:00 PM - 1:00 PM)
Margaret A. Burnham (Northeastern University School of Law)
“Civil Rights and Restorative Justice: Why the Past Still Matters”
Margaret A. Burnham joined the Northeastern University School of Law in 2002. Her areas of expertise are civil and human rights, comparative constitutional law, and international criminal law. She is the founder and director of the Center for Civil Rights and Restorative Justice, through which she trains law students to investigate and prepare cases from the 1960s civil rights era. Before joining the Northeastern faculty, she was a partner in a Boston civil rights firm with an international human rights practice, and a staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She was the first African-American woman to serve in the Massachusetts judiciary. A former fellow of the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College and Harvard University’s W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Studies, Professor Burnham has written extensively on contemporary legal and political issues.
March 28, 2013 (12:00 PM - 1:00 PM) TALK HAS BEEN CANCELLED ~ We hope to reschedule Professor Epperson's visits in the next academic year.
Lia Epperson (Washington College of Law, American University)
“Litigating and Legislating Inclusion in Public Education”
Lia Epperson is an expert in the areas of civil rights, constitutional law, and education policy. Before joining the law faculty at American, she taught at the Santa Clara University School of Law. She has also served as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Prior to entering academia, she was the director of education litigation and policy for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, an attorney with Morrison & Foerster, and a law clerk for the Honorable Timothy Lewis on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Stanford Law School.
April 18, 2013 (4:10 PM - 5:30 PM)
Anthony D. Romero (National American Civil Liberties Union)
“Leading the Charge: Protecting and Expanding Constitutional Rights in the Face of Popular Opposition”*
Anthony D. Romero is the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. He took the helm of the organization just four days before the September 11, 2001 attacks. Shortly afterward, the ACLU launched its national Keep America Safe and Free campaign to protect basic freedoms during a time of crisis, achieving court victories on the Patriot Act, uncovering thousands of pages of documents detailing the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. custody, and filing the first successful legal challenge to the Bush administration’s illegal NSA spying program. Romero also led the ACLU in establishing the John Adams Project, a joint effort with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to assist the under-resourced military defense lawyers in the Guantánamo military commissions. Romero is the ACLU’s sixth executive director, and the first Latino and first openly gay director in the organization’s history. With National Public Radio’s correspondent Dina Temple Raston, Romero is the co-author of In Defense of Our America: The Fight for Civil Liberties in the Age of Terror (2007). Born in New York City to parents who hailed from Puerto Rico, Romero
was the first in his family to graduate from high school. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Stanford Law School.
Previous Social Justice Workshops
Spring and Fall 2012 Social Justice Workshop Archives
Spring and Fall 2011 Social Justice Workshop Archives
Fall 2010 Social Justice Workshop Flyer (PDF)
Spring 2010 Social Justice Workshop Flyer (PDF)
Fall 2009 Social Justice Workshop Flyer (PDF)
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)
