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DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20260924T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20260924T140000
DTSTAMP:20260625T213051Z
CREATED:20260609T152408Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260625T213051Z
UID:15403-1790251200-1790258400@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:2026 September Utah Fellows Lunch and Presentation
DESCRIPTION:Please join the Utah Fellows for a lunch celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States featuring a presentation of “Forming a ‘More Perfect Union’ in a Polarized Time” by Honorable Thomas B. Griffith (Ret.). \nThursday\, September 24\, 2026 \n12:00 PM MT \nUtah Law and Justice Center\n645 S. 200 E\nSalt Lake City\, UT 84111 \n$25 per person \nGuests are welcome! \nCancellations cannot be refunded after September 17\, 2026.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/2026-september-utah-fellows-lunch/
CATEGORIES:Fellows
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20260930T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260930T133000
DTSTAMP:20260918T185644Z
CREATED:20260723T205928Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260918T185644Z
UID:15708-1790769600-1790775000@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: 2026-28 Doctoral Fellows
DESCRIPTION:Organizational Responses to Political Pressures in Higher Education by Daniela Juarez \nUniversities are increasingly operating in politically contested environments where external actors are demanding them to change their organizational practices. This dissertation examines how educational organizations respond to these external pressures. It pays particular attention to how institutions interpret policies\, develop new strategies\, and negotiate tensions between external demands and internal institutional commitments. \nDaniela Juarez is an ABF/AccessLex Institute Doctoral Fellow in Legal and Higher Education. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. \n\nChallenging the State: Administrative Justice and Legal Mobilization in Kazakhstan by Alisher Juzgenbayev \nHow do institutions that enable citizens to challenge state action emerge under authoritarian rule\, and how might they reshape citizens’ understandings of themselves and the state? My dissertation examines these questions through Kazakhstan’s recent introduction of specialized administrative courts and reforms to its public complaint system. Bringing together the politics of institutional reform in autocracies and the study of legal consciousness\, the project investigates both the construction of administrative justice and its implications for individual legal empowerment. \n\nThe dissertation consists of two connected parts. The first draws on court case data\, legislative history\, and interviews to explain the emergence and implementation of administrative justice. It examines how international legal assistance\, bureaucratic competition\, and inherited judicial roles shaped the reform’s trajectory and the practical possibilities for challenging public authorities. The second draws on interview data to develop a survey experiment that investigates how encounters with courts and administrative complaint mechanisms might affect citizens’ confidence in their ability to pursue claims\, expectations of institutional responsiveness\, and beliefs about their standing as rights holders and the state’s obligations toward them. It asks whether legal empowerment can coexist with disappointment in state institutions. \nAlisher Juzgenbayev is an ABF/Northwestern Doctoral Fellow in Law and Social Science. He is currently a J.D/Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University. \n \nCash or Groceries? Leveraging Household Differences for Tax Design by Ana Vasilj \nWhy does the United States subsidize food? Thirty-two states exempt groceries from sales tax (roughly $50 billion a year foregone)\, and SNAP delivers another $100 billion a year in food benefits. These are very large programs\, and the usual rationales are that food is a necessity for poor families\, or that they should be nudged toward better nutrition. Yet standard economic theory says these programs shouldn’t exist: the government should just give these households cash and let them spend it as they choose. This prescription rests on an untested assumption that all households want the same things and differ only in how much they earn\,  so a food subsidy benefits everyone who buys food\, lower-income households no more than anyone else. Using new data on household spending\, I develop a method that tells apart what households can afford from what they actually prefer. If lower-earning households genuinely value grocery food relatively more—not just because they have less to spend—then food subsidies make sense under the standard theory itself. This would recast the existing programs as effective redistribution\, not mere paternalism—and point to ways of designing them better. I’ll also talk about where this fits in my broader empirical research on measuring differences across firms\, workers\, and households—and the theoretical work on how those differences can be leveraged for better tax design. \nAna Vasilj is an ABF/University of Chicago Doctoral Fellow in Law and Social Science. She is currently a J.D/Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago.  \n____________________________________________________________ \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org. 
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-2026-28-doctoral-fellows/
LOCATION:ABF Offices\, 750 N Lake Shore Drive\, 4th Floor Chicago\, IL
CATEGORIES:ABF Speaker Series,News
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261002T090000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261002T110000
DTSTAMP:20260826T192052Z
CREATED:20260819T190148Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260826T192052Z
UID:15913-1790931600-1790938800@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:People-Centered Justice\, Marginalization\, and Empowerment
DESCRIPTION:Failures of access to justice do more than just leave people’s legal problems unresolved. They also deny people the ability to exercise their rights and hold institutions accountable\, disproportionally burdening already marginalized communities. This webinar will consider legal empowerment as a people-centered justice framework\, exploring people-centered justice\, marginalization\, and empowerment through the justice experiences of children and people with disabilities. Panelists will discuss existing evidence as well as gaps in evidence that affect our understanding how people-centered justice can inform more effective approaches to justice policy and practice. \nPresenters:\nJennifer Davidson \nProfessor and Executive Director\, Institute for Inspiring Children’s Futures at the University of Strathclyde \nProfessor Jennifer Davidson is the Executive Director of the award-winning Institute for Inspiring Children’s Futures at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland\, which works to reveal and help resolve the structural barriers to children in adversity reaching their potential. Jennifer seeks to drive meaningful and sustainable change with and for children\, supporting the implementation of effective government policy to reach children’s day-to-day lives. Drawing on children’s human rights and the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals\, she works closely with governments and international agencies\, most recently as lead of the Global Working Group on SDG 16 Justice for Children\, and as a member of the high-ambition multi-sectoral Justice Action Coalition. She was founder and Director of the Centre for Excellence on Children’s Care and Protection in Scotland\, she co-founded the Observatory of Children’s Rights\, and previously led a series of international projects implementing the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children. \n  \nAbigail Moy \nManaging Director\, Namati \nAbigail Moy is Managing Director at Namati\, an international organization that advances justice by building a movement of people who know\, use\, and shape the law. At Namati\, Abigail led the launch and growth of the Grassroots Justice Network\, the world’s largest community of justice defenders\, representing 4000+ organizations from 190 countries. Prior to joining Namati\, Abigail worked with access to justice programs at the World Bank\, The Asia Foundation\, Fundación Soros-Guatemala\, and Timap for Justice. She clerked in the Northern District of Illinois\, served in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the United States Department of State\, and worked in the New York office of White & Case\, LLP. Abigail was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship\, graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School\, and holds a master’s degree in law and development from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. \n  \nQudsiya Naqui \nAssistant Professor of Law\, University of the District of Columbia David A. Clark School of Law \nQudsiya Naqui is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law. Her work aims to center disability justice as a tool to catalyze transformative cultural\, legal\, and policy change for a more just\, accessible\, and equitable society. Prior to joining UDC\, Professor Naqui served as Senior Counsel in the Office for Access to Justice at the U.S. Department of Justice\, where she developed the first-ever federal learning agenda on access to justice to drive evidence-based policymaking across federal agencies. Prior to federal service\, she was an Officer with The Pew Charitable Trusts Courts and Communities project\, where she led empirical research on the intersection of courts and technology. Professor Naqui also leverages media-making to advance civic engagement. She created\, produces and hosts Down to the Struts\, an acclaimed podcast about disability\, design\, and intersectionality. Professor Naqui was recently selected as a 2025-2026 USC Annenberg Innovation Lab Civic Media Fellow. Her work has appeared in Vox\, Oxford University Press\, the UCLA Law Review\, and the Disability Visibility Project. She holds a JD from Temple University Beasley School of Law and a BA in political science and human rights from Barnard College. \n  \nModerator:\nMatthew Burnett \nDirector of Research and Programs for the Access to Justice Research Initiative\, American Bar Foundation \nMatthew Burnett is Director of Research and Programs for the Access to Justice Research Initiative at the American Bar Foundation (ABF)\, a visiting scholar with the Justice Futures Project at Arizona State University\, and an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to joining the ABF\, Matthew was Senior Policy Officer at Open Society Foundations (OSF)\, where he worked to advance access to justice and legal empowerment through research\, advocacy\, litigation and grantmaking in Africa\, Asia\, Latin America\, Eastern Europe\, and the United States. Earlier in his career he helped to launch and led the Immigration Advocates Network and served as law clerk to Justice ZM Yacoob of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. Matthew’s research on access to justice has been funded by the National Science Foundation\, the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics\, the World Bank\, and Canada’s International Development Research Centre. He currently serves as an advisor to the National Center for Access to Justice and is co-founder\, with Rebecca Sandefur\, of Frontline Justice and the Justice Worker Lab.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/people-centered-justice-marginalization-and-empowerment/
CATEGORIES:Access to Justice
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261007T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261007T133000
DTSTAMP:20260921T211256Z
CREATED:20260721T172626Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260921T211256Z
UID:15690-1791374400-1791379800@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Pariroo Rattan
DESCRIPTION:After decades of mobilization by social movements in India\, the Street Vendors Act 2014 marked a historic shift by legally recognizing the right to vend and protect livelihoods. Yet even after a decade\, street vendors continue to face immense precarity and harassment. Why are progressive\, bottom-up laws unable to secure the transformations they promise\, and what forms of political order emerge through their limits? I argue that politics is refracted through the epistemic limits of law: the boundaries of what the law can know and render legible. Drawing on ethnography in Delhi\, I show how political and historical conditions shape the standards of legal evidence\, categorization\, procedure\, and closure that become authoritative. Simultaneously\, the epistemic limits of the law configure power by redirecting authority in the market and shaping the political registers through which vendors engage the state. Politics does not operate outside the law but is refracted by its categorical grids and evidentiary demands. Law and politics are\, therefore\, inseparable from struggles over knowledge-making. Attending to the epistemic limits of the law illuminates where legal instruments are (in)effective\, how politics is produced at the boundaries of legal procedure\, and the relationship between democratic ends and its institutional means. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n \nDr. Pariroo Rattan is a Weinberg College Postdoctoral Fellow in Science in Human Culture and the Department of Sociology at Northwestern University. She will also be teaching at the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern. Pariroo is a recent PhD graduate from Harvard University\, where she was a long-standing Fellow at the HKS Science\, Technology and Society (STS) program and received a secondary field in Music. Her doctoral dissertation is titled “A Marketplace for Populism: The Moral Politics of Digitization in India’s Informal Economy” and studies the relationship of the digital economy with mediating state institutions and nation-building in India\, through an ethnography of street vendors in New Delhi using digital biometric ID Aadhaar and payment system Unified Payments Interface.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-pariroo-rattan/
LOCATION:ABF Offices\, 750 N Lake Shore Drive\, 4th Floor Chicago\, IL
CATEGORIES:ABF Speaker Series,News
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20261008T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20261008T200000
DTSTAMP:20260802T170921Z
CREATED:20260609T191632Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260802T170921Z
UID:15443-1791482400-1791489600@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:2026 October Connecticut Fellows Dinner and Presentation
DESCRIPTION:Please join the Connecticut Fellows for a complimentary Connecticut Fellows dinner buffet and presentation by ABF Executive Director & Research Professor and Northwestern University Board of Lady Managers of the Columbian Exposition Chair and Professor of Sociology\, Laura Beth Nielsen. \nHarris Beach Murtha\n280 Trumbull Street\, 12th Floor\nHartford\, CT 06103 \n6:00 PM ET – Networking Reception\n6:30 PM ET – Presentation \n“Representations of Vengeance\, Justice\, Expertise\, and Emotion in True Crime Podcasts” \nTrue crime podcasts rank among the most-consumed digital media\, with millions of weekly downloads. More than entertainment\, they function as vernacular trials that invite audiences to deliberate on crime\, culpability\, and punishment. Analyzing 30 episodes (~36 hours) from five top podcasts in 2022 (Crime Junkie\, Morbid\, Dateline\, Small Town Murder\, Sword & Scale)\, Professor Nielsen identifies three patterns. First\, persona-driven storytelling shifts attention from “whodunit” to what kind of person could do this. Second\, hosts place perpetrators on a moral spectrum progressing from weird to creepy to evil to monster. The spectrum naturalizes dehumanization. Third\, gestures toward mitigation (psychosis\, intellectual disability\, trauma\, youth) typically collapse into demands for harsh punishment. This presentation will document the punitive turn within sympathetic narration and argue that these podcasts both reflect and produce legal consciousness: they teach listeners how to evaluate culpability\, weigh mitigation\, and imagine justice. \nThe Fellows gratefully recognize event host:
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/2026-october-connecticut-fellows-dinner-and-presentation/
CATEGORIES:Fellows
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261013T173000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261013T193000
DTSTAMP:20260821T163749Z
CREATED:20260821T163749Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260821T163749Z
UID:15928-1791912600-1791919800@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:2026 October Louisiana Fellows Reception and Presentation
DESCRIPTION:Please join the Louisiana Fellows for a reception and presentation of” The Crucial Question – Deny Legal Help or Allow Some Help by Non-Lawyers” by ABF Research Professor\, Emeritus\, Stephen Daniels. \nTuesday\, October 13\, 2026\n5:30 pm – 7:30pm CT \nOffice of Breazeale Sachse\nOne American Place\n301 Main Street\, Suite 2300\nBaton Rouge\, LA 70801 \n\nLike Marely’s Ghost in A Christmas Carol\, with the chains and metal boxes of his economic past weighing on him\, the challenge of unmet civil legal needs haunts the American legal system to its core. Many Americans\, and not just the poor\, find it impossible to take advantage of the rights and remedies the law provides. This reflects a permanent tension within a legal system grounded in deeply held notions of justice and legitimacy. This Fellows program explores an evolving innovation in the states responding to that challenge. A bold and controversial innovation with far-reaching potential for the delivery of legal services. The innovation redefines who can deliver legal services if not licensed attorneys. The program is about states as laboratories for what is\, admittedly\, an access to justice experiment. As then Washington State Chief Justice Barbara Madsen said in the 2012 order creating the Limited License Legal Technician\, the first such non-lawyer program\, “No one has a crystal ball … There is simply no way to know the answer to this question without trying it.” In 2026\, the question now is what have we learned? \nThe Fellows gratefully recognize event sponsor:
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/2026-october-louisiana-fellows-reception-and-presentation-2/
CATEGORIES:Fellows
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261014T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261014T133000
DTSTAMP:20260812T201449Z
CREATED:20260629T185950Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260812T201449Z
UID:15604-1791979200-1791984600@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Traci Burch
DESCRIPTION:Dr. Traci Burch (she/her) is a Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation and a Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University.   \nShe is the author of Trading Democracy for Justice: Convictions and the Decline of Neighborhood Political Participation (University of Chicago Press\, 2013)\, and coauthor of Creating a New Racial Order (Princeton University Press\, 2012). Trading Democracy for Justice won multiple awards\, including the American Political Science Association’s Ralph J. Bunche Award\, Urban Section Best Book Award\, and Law and Courts Section C. Herman Pritchett Award in 2014.   \nHer work has also been featured in Political Behavior\, Law and Society Review\, and Criminology and Public Policy. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org. 
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-traci-burch/
LOCATION:ABF Offices\, 750 N Lake Shore Drive\, 4th Floor Chicago\, IL
CATEGORIES:ABF Speaker Series,News
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20261019T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20261019T193000
DTSTAMP:20260915T161427Z
CREATED:20260827T161759Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260915T161427Z
UID:15984-1792432800-1792438200@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:2026 October New York Fellows Reception Honoring ABA President-Elect Laura V. Farber
DESCRIPTION:Please join the New York Fellows for a reception honoring ABA President-Elect\, Laura V. Farber. \nMonday\, October 19\n6:00 pm – 7:30 pm ET \nOffices of Wachtell\, Lipton\, Rosen & Katz\n51 W. 52nd Street\nNew York\, NY 10019 \nLaura Farber is the President-Elect of the American Bar Association (ABA) and will serve as President from August of 2027 until August of 2028. Laura has dedicated her legal career to employment and commercial litigation\, with a primary focus on counseling clients in employment disputes. A partner of the litigation and employment departments at Hahn & Hahn LLP in Pasadena\, CA\, Laura is an accomplished trial lawyer who has been recognized in the “Top 50 Women Lawyers in Los Angeles” list by the Los Angeles Business Journal\, the Daily Journal’s “Top Labor and Employment Lawyers\,” Los Angeles Magazine’s “Best of L.A. Legal: Top Attorneys in Employment Los Angeles\,” and “Leaders of Influence: Labor & Employment Attorneys” by the Los Angeles Business Journal. \nShe is the immediate past California State Delegate to the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates\, a member of the ABA Day Planning Committee\, an advisory member of the Council for the Fund for Justice and Education\, a California Lawyers Association Delegate to the House of Delegates\, and has been actively involved in numerous leadership roles since 1994. Laura has also served as chair of the 2024–25 American Bar Foundation Fellows\, a global honorary society of attorneys\, judges\, law faculty\, and legal scholars dedicated to the highest principles of the legal profession and to supporting the research of the ABF focusing on how law and society intersect. She is a proud Patron Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. \nLaura also served as President of the Tournament of Roses Association overseeing the January 1\, 2020\, 131st Rose Parade and the 106th Rose Bowl Game. She also served as Chair of the Rose Bowl Management Committee\, overseeing and negotiating the Rose Bowl Game’s entry into the College Football Playoff. \nA native of Argentina\, Laura was honored as the recipient of the Mary V. Orozco Abriendo Caminos Award in 2023 by the Latina Lawyers Bar Association for her outstanding leadership\, excellence in the legal field\, and commitment to public service and to her communities. She has also been awarded the 2022 National Latina Woman of the Year by the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation (MAOF)\, the 2022 Woman of the Year selected by U.S. congressional Representative Judy Chu representing the 27th Congressional District of California\, the Power of Leadership Award from the League of Women Voters Pasadena Area in 2020\, Woman of the Year representing the 41st Assembly District of California in 2019\, KTLA’s 2019 Honoree in “Hispanic Heritage Month Visionaries\,” the NAACP Pasadena Branch President’s Award in 2019 at the Ruby McKnight Williams Awards Dinner\, the Judge Harry Pregerson Award at the 2019 Roybal Legacy Gala from the Edward Roybal Foundation\, the Aspires Role Model Award in 2020 from Aspires-West Pasadena\, and the Asian Pacific American Bar Association’s 2020 Trailblazer Award. \nThe Fellows gratefully recognize event host:
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/2026-october-new-york-fellows-reception-honoring-aba-president-elect-laura-v-farber/
CATEGORIES:Fellows
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261021T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261021T133000
DTSTAMP:20260629T190453Z
CREATED:20260629T190417Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260629T190453Z
UID:15607-1792584000-1792589400@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Amelia Frank-Vitale
DESCRIPTION:Amelia Frank-Vitale studies how people manage and make sense of an ever-expanding US border regime in the Americas. Vitale’s body of work connects regional immigration and security policies\, organized crime\, state violence\, and strategic immobility as a survival strategy in Honduras and in migration. \nVitale’s research trajectory began with a focus on transit migration in and through Mexico. There\, they document the dangers facing mostly Central Americans who were attempting to migrate through an increasingly hostile landscape as immigration enforcement and collateral consequences of Mexico’s so-called drug war put migrants in the cross hairs of both legal and illicit authorities. As part of this research\, Vitale explored the various strategies that people employ to navigate this minefield\, including coming together to migrate en masse\, in the form of caravans\, and making use of smugglers. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org. 
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-amelia-frank-vitale/
LOCATION:ABF Offices\, 750 N Lake Shore Drive\, 4th Floor Chicago\, IL
CATEGORIES:ABF Speaker Series,News
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20261022T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20261022T213000
DTSTAMP:20260918T203730Z
CREATED:20260827T154729Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260918T203730Z
UID:15980-1792695600-1792704600@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:2026 October New England Fellows Dinner
DESCRIPTION:Please join the New England Fellows for a dinner in conjunction with the New England Bar Association Annual Meeting. \nThursday\, October 22\, 2026 \nTIQA – Pan Mediterranean Dining\n327 Commercial Street\nPortland\, Maine 04101\n7:00 pm \nRefunds cannot be honored after October 15\, 2026 \nThe Fellows gratefully recognize dinner Silver Sponsor:
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/2026-october-new-england-fellows-dinner/
CATEGORIES:Fellows
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261028T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261028T133000
DTSTAMP:20260804T203842Z
CREATED:20260629T192135Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260804T203842Z
UID:15610-1793188800-1793194200@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Amy Stambach
DESCRIPTION:Professor Amy Stambach is a cultural anthropologist whose research examines the production and mobilization of environmental knowledge. Her anthropological work began with studying Tanzanian education programs designed to build a post-colonial and post-socialist national citizenry. That work led to her interest in U.S. evangelical religious groups’ involvement in providing education to students in Kenya\, Tanzania\, and Uganda and\, more recently\, to the study of China-Africa educational programs as seen from the perspectives of Tanzanian\, Kenyan\, and Rwandan university students and higher education professionals. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org. 
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/abf-speaker-series-amy-stambach/
LOCATION:ABF Offices\, 750 N Lake Shore Drive\, 4th Floor Chicago\, IL
CATEGORIES:ABF Speaker Series,News
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261104T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261104T133000
DTSTAMP:20260804T204400Z
CREATED:20260629T192549Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260804T204400Z
UID:15614-1793793600-1793799000@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Camilo Arturo Leslie
DESCRIPTION:Dr. Camilo Arturo Leslie works in the areas of economic sociology and the sociology of law\, with a comparative focus on the U.S. and Latin America. Theoretically\, Leslie examines the institutional and ideational supports of legitimacy\, trust\, and ignorance. Leslie’s main line of research surveys the rise and fall of the Stanford Financial Group fraud\, a decades-long Ponzi scheme that left roughly 20\,000 victims with $7.2 billion in losses. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org. 
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-camilo-arturo-leslie/
LOCATION:ABF Offices\, 750 N Lake Shore Drive\, 4th Floor Chicago\, IL
CATEGORIES:ABF Speaker Series,News
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261111T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261111T133000
DTSTAMP:20260804T204302Z
CREATED:20260629T192856Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260804T204302Z
UID:15617-1794398400-1794403800@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Rashmee Singh
DESCRIPTION:Dr. Rashmee Singh (she/her) was a 2025-26 Visiting Scholar at the American Bar Foundation. She is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo. Her research interests include feminist legal theory\, feminist criminology\, specialized courts\, gender-based violence\, and the governance of sex work.   \nHer primary research project is a five-year comparative study examining the impact of criminal legal reforms on adult sex workers in the wake of anti-trafficking and anti-prostitution panics in the United States and Canada. The project\, which is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) examines specialized prostitution and human trafficking courts in multiple American cities and anti-trafficking movements in Southern Ontario.   \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org. 
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-rashmee-singh/
LOCATION:ABF Offices\, 750 N Lake Shore Drive\, 4th Floor Chicago\, IL
CATEGORIES:ABF Speaker Series,News
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261118T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261118T133000
DTSTAMP:20260721T173310Z
CREATED:20260629T193057Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260721T173310Z
UID:15619-1795003200-1795008600@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Janice Nadler
DESCRIPTION:We all know each other’s projects and publications. The more intriguing story is surely the elusive big picture. In this series\, we invite colleagues who have arrived at a certain career stage to take us through the “arc” of their scholarship: how they began; new opportunities\, directions\, obstacles\, and impasses; how the pieces fit together (or don’t); why they asked certain questions and not others; what puzzles have hounded them; and so on. We are confident that such self-reflection will be illuminating for all of us. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nDr. Janice Nadler (she/her) is a Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation and the Nathaniel L. Nathanson Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. Before joining the ABF as a Research Professor\, she was an American Bar Foundation Doctoral Fellow from 1998 to 2000.   \nNadler’s scholarship and teaching focuses mainly on the intersection of law and psychology. Her current projects include the influence of emotionally evocative and gruesome visual evidence can have on the psychology of jurors’ decision-making processes\, as well as how public opinion is shaped in reaction to corporate adoption of practices that are the subject of political contestation.   \nHer research has appeared in journals such as Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy\, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies\, and Oxford Handbook on Law and Language.   \n 
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/abf-speaker-series-janice-nadler/
LOCATION:ABF Offices\, 750 N Lake Shore Drive\, 4th Floor Chicago\, IL
CATEGORIES:ABF Speaker Series,News
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261120T090000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261120T110000
DTSTAMP:20260826T192151Z
CREATED:20260819T190849Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260826T192151Z
UID:15918-1795165200-1795172400@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Making Justice Infrastructure More People-Centered
DESCRIPTION:Creating an enabling environment for justice systems that are accessible and effective for everyday people requires robust people-centered justice infrastructure. This includes approaches to justice data\, financing\, and technology that both reinforce and amplify people-centered justice. Panelists in this webinar will explore what we know and what remains to be understood about these core justice infrastructure needs\, including people-centered approaches to collecting and using justice data\, examples of effective and impactful justice financing\, and insights and innovative approaches to justice technology. \nPresenters:\nMartin Gramatikov \nDirector of Knowledge and Research\, HiiL \nDr Martin Gramatikov is an expert in empirical legal research\, with a focus on access to justice\, dispute resolution\, and human rights. He holds a law degree and a PhD in political science from Sofia University. His work centers on large-scale justice needs studies\, measuring public perceptions of justice\, and evaluating the impact of access to justice and dispute resolution programs. Dr Gramatikov develops and applies innovative quantitative and qualitative methods to measure justice as people experience it. His research is widely used to assess justice gaps and progress towards improving access to justice and making justice more people centered. He currently serves as Director of Knowledge and Research at HiiL\, where he sets the organization’s research agenda and leads the internalization and externalization of knowledge on access to justice and people-centered justice. \n  \nClare Manuel \nSenior Research Associate\, ODI \nClare Manuel is a UK lawyer and Senior Research Associate for the Politics and Governance program at ODI. Her research focus is on financing and budgeting for access to justice. She has co-authored pioneering papers on domestic and external financing for justice\, costing SDG16.3\, scaling up innovative front-line approaches to delivering people centered justice for all\, and lessons from global funds. \nPrior to joining ODI\, Clare was founder and director of The Law & Development Partnership an international development consultancy firm which she ran for 20 years\, until the sale of the business. She led projects and provided policy advice for DFID\, World Bank\, EU and other donors on access justice\, business enabling environment\, women in business\, institutional strengthening\, legal reform and adaptive programming in the UK\, Africa\, Aisa\, the Caribbean and the South Pacific. She supported the Governments of Uganda\, Rwanda\, Kenya and Sierra Leone to develop cross-sectoral justice reform strategies. From 2015-2017 she was program director of DFID’s innovative LASER (Legal Assistance for Economic Reform) Program. \nClare previously worked as an embedded legal / justice adviser in Uganda and Fiji. Her career began as a commercial litigator in a city law firm\, and then a UK government lawyer specializing in company investigations\, policy work and legislative drafting. \n  \nMarcus Manuel \nSenior Research Associate\, ODI \nMarcus Manuel is a Senior Research Associate for ODI. His current research is on financing access to justice. He has published pioneering papers on domestic and external financing for justice\, costing SDG16.3 and scaling up innovative front-line approaches to delivering people centered justice for all. Previous research has also included addressing extreme poverty and financing development in fragile states and at sub-national level. Marcus Manuel’s former ODI roles advising on budget reforms. \nPrior to joining ODI\, Marcus held a number of senior management roles within the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) from 2002 to 2010 responsible for offices and program in Africa and Asia\, with annual budgets up to $400 million a year. \nBefore working at DFID\, Marcus worked at HM Treasury\, initially as macroeconomic adviser. His final role was head of the newly created department responsible for advice on all aspects of international development. Between 1996–2000\, Marcus was seconded to work as the Senior Adviser in the Ugandan Ministry of Finance\, Planning and Economic Development where he advised on the national budget\, taxation and sector spending strategies\, including the pioneering Justice\, Law and Order Strategy\, the first of its type in the world. \nMarcus has a MSc in Economics from London University\, after graduating from Oxford University. \n  \nJason Tashea \nFounding Director of the Judicial Innovation Fellowship\, Georgetown University Law Center \nJason Tashea is a writer and entrepreneur exploring justice and technology. A lawyer by training\, he is the court innovation fellow at Renaissance Philanthropy and the courts and AI fellow at Georgetown Law. He is also the co-founder of the Court Innovation Roundtable. \nHe was previously the founding director and a co-founder of the Judicial Innovation Fellowship program at Georgetown Law\, a consultant for the World Bank on access to justice and technology issues\, and a product manager at multiple justice technology startups. He’s also the author of the Justice Tech Download\, a weekly industry newsletter. He’s currently a member of the Legal Services Corporation’s Leaders Council and a senior advisor to the AI and Justice Consortium. He received his JD from the University of Oregon School of Law and has a BA in history from Linfield College. \nModerator:\nRebecca Sandefur \nProfessor\, Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics\, Arizona State University\nFaculty Fellow\, American Bar Foundation \nRebecca L. Sandefur is Professor in the Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics and (by courtesy) in the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University\, where she previously served as Director of the Sanford School. Her research focuses on access to civil justice\, examining how legal services are delivered and experienced; how civil legal aid systems are organized; the role of pro bono; and the comparative effectiveness\, sustainability\, and scalability of lawyers\, helpers who are not licensed attorneys\, and digital tools. She also studies how ordinary people understand and attempt to resolve their justice problems. \nSandefur is a Faculty Fellow at the American Bar Foundation\, where she founded the Access to Justice Research Initiative in 2010. She serves on the Arizona Commission on Access to Justice by appointment of the Supreme Court of Arizona. She is co-founder\, with Matthew Burnett\, of Frontline Justice and the Justice Worker Lab\, initiatives dedicated to expanding access to civil legal help through community-based justice workers. \nHer honors include a MacArthur Fellowship (2018)\, the National Center for State Courts’ Warren E. Burger Award (2020)\, and election to the Sociological Research Association (2024). Born in Oklahoma\, she is an enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/making-justice-infrastructure-more-people-centered/
CATEGORIES:Access to Justice
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261201T080000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261201T100000
DTSTAMP:20260826T192254Z
CREATED:20260819T191204Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260826T192254Z
UID:15920-1796112000-1796119200@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:What Works? Exploring the Evidence for People-Centered Justice Solutions
DESCRIPTION:A critical — and perennial — question for people-centered justice policy and practice is\, what works? Through the lens of promising approaches like alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and health justice partnerships\, as well as human-centered approaches to researching and designing solutions\, panelists will explore both the knowledge we have and the data we need for effective people-centered justice solutions. \nPresenters:\nMaurits Barendrecht \nProfessor of Innovation of Justice Systems(Emeritus)\, Tilburg University\nR&D Advisor\, Hague Institute for the Innovation of Law \nProf. Maurits Barendrecht is Professor Innovation of Justice Systems (emeritus) at Tilburg University (Netherlands) and R&D advisor at the Hague Institute for Innovation of Law. He specializes in evidence-based innovation in the justice sector. His work focuses on integrating interdisciplinary know how on dispute resolution in formal\, mandatory legal procedures. He worked on innovating resolution pathways for divorce\, personal injury\, day to day crime\, disputes with government agencies and more. He published extensively on outcome metrics\, regulation and financing of justice pathways\, using a people-centered perspective. Most of his work is internationally comparative. He holds a PhD in Law from Tilburg University. \n  \nMichele Leering \nVisiting Scholar\, Queen’s University Faculty of Law \nMichele Leering (PhD\, CM) is a Visiting Scholar at Queen’s University Faculty of Law in Canada. As the former Executive Director of the Community Advocacy & Legal Centre\, she practiced as a community lawyer and over three decades led numerous participatory action research projects to tackle issues of local poverty\, homelessness\, unmet civil legal needs\, and rural and remote access to justice. Her work focused on transforming legal services to be more holistic and evidence-based\, addressing the multifaceted and intersecting needs of clients and marginalized communities. Michele promotes a diversity \nof legal service delivery approaches\, including early intervention and prevention\, proactive and systemic advocacy\, and robust community legal education initiatives. Her research contributes to building a people-centered justice ecosystem that values legal literacy\, capability\, and empowerment; and the contributions of trusted intermediaries\, paralegals\, and community justice workers. Her recent research includes health justice partnerships\, imperatives for legal education reform (reflective practice as meta-competency)\, and designing more robust professional competency frameworks. She has collaborated with organizations like Namati and the Open Society Foundations to advance community-based legal clinics as a vibrant model for enhancing access to justice and legal empowerment globally. \n  \nZainab Malik \nSenior Policy and Advocacy Advisor\, The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) \nZainab Z. Malik is a human rights lawyer and international development professional with over 15 years of experience driving transformative change in the global justice landscape. She currently serves as a Senior Policy and Advocacy Adviser at The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL)\, where she leads the development of global policy and advocacy strategies to advance people-centered justice and strengthen justice systems worldwide. \nHer work has focused on expanding access to justice and addressing critical human rights issues\, including sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV)\, fair trial rights\, and the abolition of capital punishment and torture. Previously\, Zainab was Head of Policy and Advocacy at Justice Project Pakistan (JPP). \nZainab also brings international program experience from her role as a Program Development Specialist at the International Development Law Organization (IDLO)\, where she designed rule of law and access to justice initiatives across Africa and the MENA region. An LL.M. graduate of Harvard Law School and an experienced litigator\, she has represented survivors of SGBV\, police torture\, and prisoners with mental illness. She has also trained lawyers and judges on defending vulnerable clients and applying international law in domestic litigation. Zainab remains deeply committed to justice systems that are inclusive\, humane\, and responsive to people’s needs. \n  \nModerator:\nMatthew Burnett \nDirector of Research and Programs for the Access to Justice Research Initiative\, American Bar Foundation \nMatthew Burnett is Director of Research and Programs for the Access to Justice Research Initiative at the American Bar Foundation (ABF)\, a visiting scholar with the Justice Futures Project at Arizona State University\, and an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to joining the ABF\, Matthew was Senior Policy Officer at Open Society Foundations (OSF)\, where he worked to advance access to justice and legal empowerment through research\, advocacy\, litigation and grantmaking in Africa\, Asia\, Latin America\, Eastern Europe\, and the United States. Earlier in his career he helped to launch and led the Immigration Advocates Network and served as law clerk to Justice ZM Yacoob of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. Matthew’s research on access to justice has been funded by the National Science Foundation\, the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics\, the World Bank\, and Canada’s International Development Research Centre. He currently serves as an advisor to the National Center for Access to Justice and is co-founder\, with Rebecca Sandefur\, of Frontline Justice and the Justice Worker Lab.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/what-works-exploring-the-evidence-for-people-centered-justice-solutions/
CATEGORIES:Access to Justice
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261202T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261202T133000
DTSTAMP:20260804T204054Z
CREATED:20260721T172850Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260804T204054Z
UID:15693-1796212800-1796218200@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Aviv Caspi
DESCRIPTION:Dr. Aviv Caspi is a Research Lead at the Rhode Center and Wachtell Fellow of Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School. \nAviv was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Regulation\, Evaluation\, and Governance Lab (RegLab). He holds a PhD in economics from Cornell University and a Master of Legal Studies from the University of Chicago Law School. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org. 
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-aviv-caspi/
LOCATION:ABF Offices\, 750 N Lake Shore Drive\, 4th Floor Chicago\, IL
CATEGORIES:ABF Speaker Series,News
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261209T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261209T133000
DTSTAMP:20260804T203952Z
CREATED:20260629T193251Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260804T203952Z
UID:15622-1796817600-1796823000@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Rahim Kurwa
DESCRIPTION:Dr. Rahim Kurwa (he/him) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology\, Law\, and Justice and the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois Chicago. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California\, Los Angeles. \nKurwa’s research is focused on how municipalities use policing to reproduce racial segregation in an era governed by fair housing law. His work explores the history and consequences of the policing of subsidized housing\, and the work of tenants and legal advocates to resist that policing. He is currently writing a manuscript exploring these topics\, titled Apartheid’s Afterlives: Policing Black Life in the Antelope Valley. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org. 
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/abf-speaker-series-rahim-kurwa/
LOCATION:ABF Offices\, 750 N Lake Shore Drive\, 4th Floor Chicago\, IL
CATEGORIES:ABF Speaker Series,News
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR