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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20260415T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260415T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20260129T174720Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260129T182555Z
UID:14545-1776254400-1776259800@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Shari S. Diamond
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. \n\n\n\nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nShari Seidman Diamond (she/her) is a Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation and the Howard J. Trienens Professor of Law at Northwestern University Pritzker Law School. An attorney and social psychologist\, she is one of the foremost empirical researchers on jury process and legal decision making\, including the use of science by the courts. She has authored or coauthored more than 150 publications in law reviews and behavioral science journals\, including the Reference Guide on Survey Research in the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence (4th ed. in press) and The Multiple Dimensions of Trial by Jury: Studies of Jury Behavior (2016\, in Spanish)\, and is completing a book on juries based on a field experiment in which cameras recorded real jury deliberations.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-shari-diamond-2/
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:20260408T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260408T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20251219T185010Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260225T230043Z
UID:14309-1775649600-1775655000@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Ashley Rubin
DESCRIPTION:Socio-legal studies has grown rapidly over the last six decades. As the field has expanded\, however\, it seems the pace of field-defining research (most notably\, high-quality theoretical work\, especially with aspirations toward grand or general theorizing) has waned\, and a regime of normal science currently dominates. For some scholars\, this state of affairs gives the impression of treading water\, an incoherent field\, or even theoretical stagnation. Using the subfield of punishment and society as a case study\, we argue that the field suffers from a kind of stalled academic dialecticism. We argue that various factors have worked together to impede a standard dialectical process of theoretical growth by dissuading scholars from moving onto a new stage of innovative research and incentivizing them to continue to pursue smaller-scale\, less innovative studies. However\, precisely because the field has a rich\, diverse array of scholarship available to glean\, synthesize\, and use to make next-generation insights\, the field is poised for breakthrough research—particularly\, generalizable theories of legal phenomena—if only scholars are willing to pursue them. (Paper published in Law & Social Inquiry (2025) and was coauthored with Alena K. Shalaby.) \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nDr. Ashley Rubin is an interdisciplinary social scientist specializing in the study of criminal punishment as a social phenomenon; their work\, described more below\, sits at the intersections of criminology\, history\, sociology\, and sociolegal studies. Dr. Rubin is an associate professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She holds a PhD in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from UC Berkeley\, where she graduated in 2013. Dr. Rubin’s primary intellectual homes are the interdisciplinary fields of law and society and punishment and society. From 2023 to 2026\, she is co-editor (with Shauhin Talesh and Katharina Heyer) of the Law & Society Review\, the flagship journal of the Law and Society Association. In an effort to generate more locally relevant research\, Dr. Rubin founded the Hawai‘i Crime Lab\, which uses social science to provide useful information to Hawai‘i’s residents\, visitors\, and policymakers about crime and criminal justice on O‘ahu.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-ashley-rubin/
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:20260401T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260401T130000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20251219T184857Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260330T184842Z
UID:14307-1775044800-1775048400@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Soledad Álvarez Velasco
DESCRIPTION:Transborder migrant transits through the Americas have become a prominent and deeply political phenomenon. This talk examines the contemporary condition of inhabiting transit—the experience of being forced to restart journeys and to dwell in a geography of uncertainty\, living in a permanent state of (im)mobility while searching for safety. Drawing on digital and multi-sited ethnography\, historical research\, and a migrant-centered approach\, it reconstructs the journeys of fourteen migrants from Syria\, Iraq\, Nigeria\, Zimbabwe\, Haiti\, Cuba\, and Venezuela\, whom I met in Quito\, Metetí\, and Houston between 2016 and 2022. Their trajectories from their countries of origin to Ecuador\, Colombia\, and Brazil transformed into prolonged\, repeated transit across South American cities and borders before heading toward the U.S.—and\, in some cases\, back south as part of contemporary reverse transit. The talk analyzes how these South–South\, South–North\, and North–South movements are shaped by and collide with violence\, uneven geographical development\, and racialized\, exclusionary border regimes. At its core\, it centers migrants’ flights and fights—their struggles for movement\, survival\, and belonging. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nDr. Soledad Álvarez Velasco is a social anthropologist and human geographer whose research analyzes the interrelationship between mobility\, control\, and spatial transformations across the Americas. She holds a Ph.D. in Human Geography from King’s College London. Before joining the University of Illinois Chicago in January 2023 as an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Latin American and Latino Studies\, she was an Assistant Professor at Heidelberg University. She is the author of Frontera sur chiapaneca: El muro humano de la violencia (Mexico: CIESAS-UIA\, 2016). Her research has been published in Geopolitics\, the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology\, Studies in Social Justice\, Antipode\, Migration and Society\, the ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science\, and other academic journals in both English and Spanish. In the 2025–26 academic year\, she is a Fellow at the Institute for the Humanities at UIC\, where she is completing her second manuscript\, Inhabiting Transit: Migrant Struggles from Global South America to the U.S. and Back Again.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-soledad-alvarez-velasco/
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:20260311T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260311T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20260305T180621Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260309T202742Z
UID:14866-1773230400-1773235800@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Natasha Strassfeld
DESCRIPTION:This talk will offer a comprehensive overview of the laws that govern service delivery to juvenile youth within the juvenile legal system\, while also exploring the limitations of these established legal safeguards. Second\, this talk will center youth with disabilities—who constitute an overwhelming majority of the population of youth in the juvenile legal system—within the national conversation on addressing systemic disparities\, such as disproportionate recidivism rates for racialized and ethnic minority youth and the school-to-prison pipeline phenomenon. Finally\, this talk will detail the disproportionate representation of system-involved youth with disabilities\, critically examine how law and policy shape youth transition from the juvenile legal system to community release\, and will review current\, inclusive research methodologies for working with and studying this population. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nNatasha Strassfeld is an associate professor in the Department of Special Education at The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to joining The University of Texas at Austin faculty\, she was an assistant professor of special education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at NYU and associated assistant professor of public service at NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. She obtained her J.D. from the University of Wisconsin School of Law and her Ph.D. in Special Education from the Pennsylvania State University.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-natasha-strassfeld/
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:20260304T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260304T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20251219T184326Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260303T163828Z
UID:14305-1772625600-1772631000@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Atinuke Adediran
DESCRIPTION:In 2020\, when it was economically beneficial to do so\, companies proclaimed the importance of equity and diversity. But as Fordham Law Professor Atinuke Adediran shows in her book DISCLOSURELAND: How Corporate Words Constrain Racial Progress (Cambridge University Press\, January 2026)\, five years later and with Trump back in office\, those recent promises have significantly softened or been eliminated altogether. Adediran examines why this type of lip service surged\, why the commitments crumbled\, and what their unraveling means for shareholders\, employees\, customers and for the future of racial fairness in the corporate world.  \nAnalyzing data from more than 2\,000 companies—including Amazon and Walmart\, the two largest corporate employers in the world—Adediran explores the issue from three angles. First\, she illustrates how business pledges are opportunistic when they’re not grounded in historical facts about past corporate inequality. Second\, she reveals how companies use public statements to deflect accusations of racial inequality in their businesses. And third\, she highlights how under the Trump administration\, many companies choose one of two paths: softening their progressive language or scrubbing race from their messaging entirely. All of these approaches reflect the same calculation: how to protect their reputation with politicians\, shareholders\, customers\, and employees today\, while hedging against financial and reputational risks down the road. Nowhere in this equation are genuine concerns about how race intersects with their business practices and the lives of the employees and customers they depend on. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nProfessor Atinuke Adediran uses empirical sociological methods to study the relationship between business\, law\, and society. Her work spans a range of ideas with reputational\, financial\, social\, and political consequences for the private sector and society\, including environmental and social issues\, stakeholder welfare\, diversity and inclusion\, race relations\, philanthropy\, corporate social responsibility\, and pro bono legal services. \nIn addition to Disclosureland\, she has published articles and essays in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed journals\, including the California Law Review\, Columbia Law Review\, Law and Social Inquiry\, Northwestern Law Review\, Virginia Law Review\, and UCLA Law Review. Her work has also been featured in popular outlets like Agenda (Financial Times)\, Bloomberg Law\, Fortune\, and The Wall Street Journal. \nProfessor Adediran’s work has won many awards\, including from the Center for Racial Justice at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy\, the Ford Foundation\, and the Russell Sage Foundation. In 2023\, she received the university-wide Distinguished Research Award for Interdisciplinary Studies at Fordham University. \nBefore joining Fordham\, Professor Adediran was the David and Pamela Donohue Assistant Professor of Business Law at Boston College Law School\, and an Earl B. Dickerson Fellow & Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago. Prior to entering academia\, she was an Associate in the New York office of Cadwalader\, Wickersham & Taft LLP\, where she represented clients in complex commercial business disputes with a focus on securities litigation and maintained active pro bono practice. \nProfessor Adediran holds Ph.D. and MA degrees in Sociology from Northwestern University and received her JD degree from Columbia Law School.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-atinuke-adediran/
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:20260218T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260218T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20260114T191333Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260217T222754Z
UID:14437-1771416000-1771421400@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Jill Horwitz
DESCRIPTION:Recent crises—the pandemic\, natural disasters\, and political targeting—have caused enormous suffering\, sparing no one\, including charities. Even over the past few years\, they have faced extreme revenue losses\, leading to reductions in programming that advance their purposes\, staff layoffs\, and bankruptcy. Amid these crises\, a lot of money has sat in endowments. It has been largely unavailable to alleviate harms to charities\, their beneficiaries\, employees\, and their purposes. During the pandemic\, for example\, regulators across the country reminded charities that legal constraints on the use of endowment funds still applied\, including restrictions mandating that assets be held for investment\, as well as other specific spending restrictions. Charities must observe restrictions on charitable assets\, even during a crisis. \nDo these rather inflexible restrictions make sense? Using the pandemic and other recent crises as examples\, this article examines the question and\, largely\, answers it in the affirmative. In doing so\, it engages decades of scholarly debate on the justification for adhering to restrictions in general\, with particular attention to endowment restrictions\, and uses the most recent crises as a stress test of the law. It considers the wisdom of changing rules during crises more generally. In a discussion of the legal concept of waste\, it concludes that\, possibly excepting the most extreme cases\, both practical evidence and theory point towards maintaining restrictions. It re-examines traditional arguments for allowing donors to restrict the use of donations as applied in the context of emergencies. \nThe article concludes that the arguments for granting charities unilateral ability to release restrictions\, even during a crisis\, are largely wanting. Existing law almost always provides sufficient tools for charities to respond to needs\, even to crises. Understanding that the goal of charities law is to protect specified charitable purposes rather than particular charities\, the case for upholding restrictions becomes even stronger. Nevertheless\, there are exceptions. The article suggests that the Trump administration’s targeting of some charities\, particularly universities\, may well be one of them. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nJill Horwitz previously served as the David Sanders Professor in Law and Medicine at UCLA School of Law and Professor of Public Affairs (by courtesy) at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and Jack N. Pritzker Visiting Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. She was the Vice Dean for Faculty and Intellectual Life at UCLA School of Law for the academic years 2019-2021. Professor Horwitz holds appointments as Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and Adjunct Professor of Economics at the University of Victoria Department of Economics in British Columbia\, Canada. Prior to joining UCLA in 2012\, she was on the law faculty at the University of Michigan\, where she was the Louis and Myrtle Moskowitz Research Professor of Business and Law and Co-Director of Law and Economics. She also held joint appointments at Michigan with the School of Public Health and the Ford School of Public Policy.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-jill-horwitz/
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:20260211T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260211T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20251219T184222Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260209T234952Z
UID:14302-1770811200-1770816600@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: katrina quisumbing king
DESCRIPTION:In 1898 the United States became a formal overseas empire and claimed sovereignty over the Philippine islands\, justifying its rule in explicitly racial terms. Less than fifty years later\, in 1946\, Philippine independence was recognized by the United States\, even as it continued to exert influence over the domestic and foreign affairs of the newly decolonized Republic. Despite some differences\, U.S. control remained racial and imperial. In this talk\, I show how U.S. federal state actors translated their ideas of race into state structures. Through innovating constitutional law\, bureaucratic administration\, and legislation\, state actors built a durable and flexible system of racial-imperial rule that not only lasted beyond the period of formal empire but continues to this day. I trace debates among U.S.  presidents\, federal legislators\, administrators\, and court justices about what kind of state the United States should be\, the place of nonwhite people in the polity\, and the best way to maintain U.S. white hegemony. in charting how state actors’ positions—some nativist\, isolationist\, and protectionist and others expansionist\, interventionist\, and imperialist—evolved\, I identify key moments when they cemented racial ideas into law and reshaped the terms of U.S. racial-imperial formation.  \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nkatrina quisumbing king studies racial classification and exclusion from a historical perspective that foregrounds the state’s authority to manage populations. She is particularly interested in the ways state actors conceive of and make decisions around race and citizenship. Her research recenters empire as a key political formation. In the U.S. context\, she focuses especially on how the state defines colonized populations and how these people fit into the U.S. racial order.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-katrina-quisumbing-king/
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:20260204T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260204T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20251219T184050Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260105T211534Z
UID:14300-1770206400-1770211800@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Reuben Jonathan Miller
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\nReuben Jonathan Miller (he/him) is an ABF Research Professor and an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work\, Policy\, and Practice and in the Department of Race\, Diaspora and Indigeneity. In 2022\, he was named a MacArthur Fellow for his work tracing the long-term consequences that incarceration and reentry systems have on the lives of individuals and their families.  
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-reuben-j-miller/
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:20260128T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260128T130000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20251219T183955Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260127T223113Z
UID:14298-1769601600-1769605200@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Stephanie Holmes Didwania
DESCRIPTION:Asset forfeiture laws allow law enforcement agencies to permanently take property that is thought to be connected to criminal activity. Every year\, federal and state governments acquire billions of dollars’ worth of property (such as cash\, electronics\, homes\, and vehicles) through asset fofeiture\, and often use this money and property to fund law enforcement activities. The Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment prevents the government from conducting an asset forfeiture that is grossly disproportional to the gravity of the defendant’s offense. However\, little case law clarifies what it means for a forfeiture to be excessive enough to violate the Eighth Amendment\, and\, in practice forfeitures are virtually never overturned on Eighth Amendment grounds. \nThis Article provides the first evidence of how ordinary people view the fairness of asset forfeiture across a variety of hypothetical scenarios motivated by real-life forfeiture practice. We find that the public’s perceptions of forfeiture converge in some ways and diverge in others from the approaches taken by law enforcement agencies and courts in conducting and evaluating asset forfeiture. We conclude by offering both concrete and broad guidance for courts\, advocates\, law enforcement agencies\, and property owners. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nStephanie Holmes Didwania writes and teaches about criminal law and criminal procedure. Her scholarship uses empirical methods to study the criminal legal system. She is primarily interested in understanding how prosecutors exercise discretion in criminal cases and in federal pretrial detention. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in peer-reviewed journals such as the American Law and Economics Review\, the Journal of Law and Economics\, and the Journal of Legal Studies\, as well as in student-edited law journals such as the Northwestern University Law Review\, the Southern California Law Review\, and the Stanford Law Review.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-stephanie-holmes-didwania/
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:20260121T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260121T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20251219T183832Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260120T224640Z
UID:14296-1768996800-1769002200@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Jessica Greenberg
DESCRIPTION:This talk draws from Greenberg’s recent ethnographic monograph: Justice in the Balance: Democracy\, Rule of Law and the European Court of Human Rights. Greenberg will discuss the practices\, ideologies and normative frameworks that define the rule of law\, and whether and how these can weather a moment of profound crisis in Europe and beyond.  \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nJessica Greenberg is a professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  Her first book\, After the Revolution: Youth\, Democracy\, and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia (Stanford University Press 2014) analyzes the temporal and affective experience of democracy in the shift from popular resistance to political institutionalization. Her most recent book\, Justice in the Balance: Democracy\, Rule of Law and the European Court of Human Rights (Stanford 2025) asks why and how people channel visions of social change and justice through international legal institutions. In 2017\, Greenberg earned a Masters in Law as a University of Illinois Fellow for Study in a Second Discipline. She has served as co-editor of the Political and Legal anthropology review (PoLAR)\, and is the recipient of multiple grants and awards\, including two Fulbright Fellowships\, and an NSF in Law and Science.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-jessica-greenberg/
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:20260114T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260114T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20251219T183012Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260105T200733Z
UID:14294-1768392000-1768397400@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Bryant Garth
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\nBryant Garth (he/him) is an Affiliated Research Professor and the ABF’s Interim Executive Director\, beginning September 2\, 2025. He is a Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at University of California\, Irvine School of Law\, where he codirects the Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession. He also served as University of California\, Irvine School of Law’s Interim Dean for the 2021–22 academic year. Previously\, Garth served as Interim Executive Director of the ABF from 2022 to 2023\, Dean of Southwestern Law School from 2005 to 2012\, Executive Director of the American Bar Foundation from 1990 to 2004\, and Dean of the Indiana University Bloomington School of Law from 1986 to 1990.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-bryant-garth/
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:20251203T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20251203T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20250618T150655Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251022T153954Z
UID:13173-1764763200-1764768600@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Jose Atiles
DESCRIPTION:Crisis by Design offers an interdisciplinary sociolegal analysis of the role of law\, emergency powers\, and anticorruption mobilizations in Puerto Rico’s ongoing multilayered crisis. From the 2006 public debt crisis and the government’s bankruptcy in 2016 to the devastation of Hurricanes Irma\, María\, and Fiona\, the 2020 earthquakes\, the COVID-19 pandemic\, and the anticorruption uprisings of 2019\, Puerto Rico’s recent history has been shaped by overlapping crises that have deepened inequality and citizen vulnerability. Rather than viewing these crises as isolated events\, this talk argues that they are integral to the legal structure of colonialism\, which actively produces and sustains disaster conditions. \nDrawing on eight years of qualitative research—including ethnography\, semi-structured interviews\, archival analysis\, and policy review—Crisis by Design examines the legal and political mechanisms that manufacture and manage crisis in Puerto Rico. The book introduces three key concepts: the colonial state of exception\, which frames US colonialism as a permanent legal structure of inclusion/exclusion; colonial legality\, which captures the legal practices\, policies\, and economic frameworks sustaining Puerto Rico’s crisis management; and legal interruptions\, which describes civil society efforts to mobilize transparency laws and accountability measures as a form of resistance. These mobilizations\, together with grassroots demonstrations\, or what I term colonial ruptures\, challenge the repetitive temporality of colonial legality\, underscoring a radical possibility for rendering the colonial legal structure in Puerto Rico ineffective. \nBy critically engaging with law\, power\, and resistance in Puerto Rico\, Crisis by Design contributes to global debates on colonialism\, legal governance\, and crisis management in the Global South. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nJose Atiles is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and College of Law (by courtesy) at the University of Illinois\, Urbana-Champaign. His sociolegal and criminological research focuses on the colonial context of Puerto Rico\, aiming to elucidate the role of state and corporate crimes\, law\, and emergency powers during periods of crisis. He is the author of Crisis by Design: Emergency Powers and Colonial Legality in Puerto Rico (Stanford University Press\, 2024)\, and Islands of Exception: Law\, Empire\, and Offshore Finance in the Caribbean (Cambridge University Press\, 2026). Atiles currently serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crimes and is a member of various other editorial boards. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Law and Society Association.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-jose-atiles/
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:20251119T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20251119T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20250618T150359Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251022T213033Z
UID:13168-1763553600-1763559000@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Gino Pauselli
DESCRIPTION:How does institutional design affect non-state actors’ preferences for international organizations (IOs)? We develop a theory of strategic forum shopping\, where non-state actors choose the most advantageous venue for litigation. While existing research highlights the importance of IO activity\, it often treats non-state actors as exogenous and their involvement as given. In contrast\, our approach considers these actors as strategic decision-makers\, choosing where to engage based on the costs and benefits associated with institutional design. We compare the Inter-American and the UN human rights treaty systems. Our findings show that actors are more likely to file petitions with organizations offering legally binding decisions and less likely with alternatives. Non-governmental organizations weigh time differently than individual petitioners and are more willing to wait for a binding decision. However\, longer wait times deter individual petitioners from filing complaints. This research shows the importance of considering outside options in regimes with overlapping institutions. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nGino Pauselli is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois\, Urbana-Champaign\, specializing in the intersection of human rights\, global governance\, and transnational advocacy. Previously\, Pauselli was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University (2023-2024). \n\n\n\n\nPauselli’s research uses rigorous statistical methods to analyze the dynamics of norms adoption and resistance within global governance systems\, with a focus on how international actors (including NGOs\, intergovernmental organizations\, and transnational networks) shape policy reform and accountability mechanisms.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-gino-pauselli/
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:20251112T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20251112T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20250618T150019Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251029T154052Z
UID:13165-1762948800-1762954200@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Shauhin Talesh
DESCRIPTION:Despite the massive costs associated with data breaches\, ransomware\, viruses\, and cyberattacks\, most organizations remain thoroughly unprepared to safeguard consumer data. Over the past two decades\, the insurance industry has begun offering cyber insurance to help organizations manage cybersecurity and privacy law compliance\, while also offering risk management services as part of their insurance packages. These insurers have thus effectively evolved into de facto regulators — yet at the same time\, they have failed to effectively curtail cybersecurity breaches. \nDrawing from interviews\, observations\, and extensive content analysis of the cyber insurance industry\, this book reveals how cyber insurers’ risk management services convey legitimacy to the public and to insureds but fall short of actually improving data security\, rendering them largely symbolic. Speaking directly to broader debates on regulatory delegation to nonstate actors\, Prof. Talesh proposes a new institutional theory of insurance to explain how insurers shape the content and meaning of privacy law and cybersecurity compliance\, offering policy recommendations for how insurers and governments can work together to improve cybersecurity and foster greater algorithmic justice. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nShauhin Talesh is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work spans law\, sociology\, and political science. His research interests include the empirical study of law and business organizations\, dispute resolution\, consumer protection\, insurance\, and the relationship between law and social inequality. Professor Talesh is considered one of the leading scholars on organizational responses to law and compliance and the relationship between insurance\, regulation and inequality. \nTalesh’s empirical research addresses the intersection between organizations\, risk\, and consumer protection laws\, focusing on private organizations’ responses to and constructions of laws designed to regulate them\, consumers’ mobilization of their legal rights and the legal cultures of private organizations. His most recent research focuses on how cyber insurance and insurance companies shape cybersecurity and privacy law compliance among private organizations. He previously published multiple articles on how insurance companies\, through employment practice liability insurance\, construct the meaning of compliance with anti-discrimination laws.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-shauhin-talesh/
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:20251029T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20251029T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20250618T145713Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251002T171755Z
UID:13160-1761739200-1761744600@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Mugambi Jouet
DESCRIPTION:Why is abortion being recriminalized in the United States in sharp contrast to the historical evolution of reproductive rights? This presentation will explore how abortion exemplifies American exceptionalism in the original sense of the phrase that America is an “exception\,” especially within the Western world. Yet exceptionalism should not be misunderstood as historical determinism or cultural essentialism. By the early 1970s\, America was converging with peer Western democracies in liberalizing abortion. This process of convergence was ultimately halted by the mounting influence of the U.S. pro-life movement in an age when tolerance or support for reproductive rights increasingly became the norm abroad. \nWhile abortion is often analyzed in isolation\, this multidisciplinary article focuses on its interrelationship with wider features of American exceptionalism. A distinctive religious landscape sheds light on the intensity of opposition to abortion among the substantial minority of Americans who share a traditionalist worldview. This unique social environment has contributed to the resilience of the U.S. anti-abortion movement\, which has an outsized impact due to the exceptional weight of lobbying by special interests over American government. Organized opposition to abortion instead declined elsewhere in the West concurrently with the decline of organized religion\, especially traditionalist conceptions of Christianity. Modern America is now an outlier\, refighting and relitigating an endless battle over abortion. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nMugambi Jouet’s research focuses on American exceptionalism\, criminal justice\, and comparative history from a multidisciplinary perspective. He is an expert on the distinctive historical evolution of American law\, government\, and sociopolitical culture compared to other Western democracies. \nHis scholarship has notably analyzed the death penalty\, mass incarceration\, juvenile justice\, guns\, abortion\, and the historiography of key concepts\, from “American exceptionalism” to the “Western world.” In 2022\, he won the Brophy Prize for the article that “most significantly breaks new ground and adds new insights to the study and understanding of United States legal history.” In 2025\, he received the William A. Rutter Distinguished Teaching Award.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-mugambi-jouet/
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:20251022T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20251022T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20250925T165222Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251021T211308Z
UID:13801-1761134400-1761139800@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Grigory Gorbun
DESCRIPTION:Moot courts—competitive legal simulations where law students argue fictitious cases before panels of judges—have experienced remarkable global growth in recent decades. They have become arenas of international prestige\, with law firms investing heavily in organizing and sponsoring competitions\, legal educators promoting them as powerful tools for reshaping professional culture\, and international institutions using them to advance their jurisdictional claims. My book project asks: why have these seemingly trivial role-play exercises become so central to global legal education\, and what does this tell us about how the authority of law itself is being reimagined in the world today? \nThis talk focuses on the book’s central theoretical contribution. I argue that moot courts shift the grounds of law’s authority away from state sovereignty and toward a transnational legal professional community. Drawing on ethnographic research at Russian moot court competitions\, I demonstrate how\, in a context where state legal institutions face crises of legitimacy\, legal professionals use these competitions to sustain their commitment to law as worth preserving and performing correctly. Moot courts become sites where international interactional professionalism defines what “good” law looks like\, in explicit contrast to failing state institutions. I call this dynamic “moot jurisdiction\,” a process of authorizing law in institutions that have no legal authority or political power. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nGrigory Gorbun (he/him) is a legal and linguistic anthropologist studying how the authority of law is produced and contested beyond conventional legal and political institutions. His research relies on ethnography\, interviews\, and interactional analysis to reveal how attitudes toward law are transferred\, upheld\, and anchored in socially recognizable patterns of communication. Gorbun completed his MA in Anthropology of Law from Université Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne and a PhD in Anthropology at the University of Chicago.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-grigory-gorbun/
CATEGORIES:ABF Speaker Series,News
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20251015T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20251015T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20250915T203303Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251014T203614Z
UID:13799-1760529600-1760535000@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Kris Rosentel\, Anna Fox
DESCRIPTION:Kris Rosentel  \n \n\nCovalent Logics: Policing\, Family Values\, and the Reproduction of Inequality by Anna Fox \nHow do organizations justify their role in reproducing inequality when established institutional logics have been delegitimized? Police have historically relied upon seemingly colorblind logics of danger and criminality to frame their work\, yet mass movements like Black Lives Matter have revealed the racism implicit in these logics\, forcing police to adopt alternative frameworks to justify and legitimize police racism\, misconduct\, and violence. Drawing on interviews with 52 Chicago police officers and data from 552 police complaint files\, this article illustrates how police make use of a surprising framework—family values. Police compared the department to an idealized family to demand loyalty and suppress whistleblowing among police; blamed families of color for social disorder to displace responsibility for police violence; and framed themselves as surrogate parents to civilians to justify disciplinary intervention. By using family values\, police legitimized instances of police violence\, naturalized police power\, and obscured institutional racism and gender inequality. I argue that institutional actors may strategically deploy overlapping institutional logics—a phenomenon I term “covalent logics”–to obscure inequality and maintain legitimacy in the face of large-scale contestation.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-kris-rosentel-anna-fox/
CATEGORIES:ABF Speaker Series,News
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20251008T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20251008T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20250925T165317Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251006T215745Z
UID:13797-1759924800-1759930200@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series:  Ellie Frazier
DESCRIPTION:Over the past three decades\, programs training nonlawyers\, such as limited licensed practitioners (LLPs) and community justice workers (CJWs)\, have arisen in the United State in response to access to justice gaps. This project will address two central questions about nonlawyer professionals in the United States: (1) How do they view formal legal education in relation to their justice work\, particularly when compared to other educational pathways for achieving access to justice and community activism goals? (2) How do structural\, socioeconomic\, and interpersonal factors shape their perceptions of and engagement with the legal profession? Expanding on comparative research in South Africa and Sierra Leone on nonlawyer programs\, this research will draw on theoretical frameworks from literatures on the legal profession\, access to justice\, legal consciousness\, and state capacity to move beyond describing what non-lawyers do to examine how they understand and articulate their position within the legal system. It aims to generate meaningful points of comparison between different categories of nonlawyers to illuminate how different professionalization pathways shape nonlawyers’ perceptions of their roles relative to attorneys and their connections to community activism and political change. The study’s findings will seek to contribute to scholarship on access to justice interventions\, professionalization processes\, and ongoing debates about legal education value and regulatory frameworks for nonlawyer practice. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nEllie Frazier (she/her) a political science and sociolegal studies scholar whose research and teaching focus broadly on access to justice\, social movements\, and comparative politics. Her dissertation investigates the political\, social\, and legal processes through which nonlawyer services emerged and evolved across colonial\, authoritarian\, and democratic state building in South Africa. By shedding light on these dynamics\, Frazier’s dissertation seeks to clarify the opportunities and challenges of integrating non-lawyers into democratic institutions as part of access to justice initiatives; it also broadly highlights how these forms of sociolegal assistance both challenge and reinforce the boundaries of the legal profession.  
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-ellie-frazier/
CATEGORIES:ABF Speaker Series,News
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20251001T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20251001T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20250925T165256Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250925T220921Z
UID:13795-1759320000-1759325400@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Christopher Robertson & Jane Y. Jeong
DESCRIPTION:Christopher Robertson \n \nAt the Borders of Belonging: Asian American Immigrant Families\, Disability\, and the Governance of Conditional Futures by Jane Y. Jeong \nAsian American immigrant students with disabilities and their families remain an understudied population in the sociolegal landscape of U.S. special education.  Their experiences are shaped by complex institutional dynamics: legal mandates\, administrative practices\, and shifting policy priorities converge to determine how rights are interpreted\, how services are delivered\, and how futures are envisioned. Yet\, little is known about how families navigate and make sense of this process — or how they respond when procedural requirements\, institutional expectations\, and family knowledge do not align. This dissertation examines how Asian American immigrant students with disabilities and their families encounter\, negotiate\, and contest the governance of transition planning as defined under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Conceptualizing transition as a legal and bureaucratic process — one that organizes access to federally guaranteed supports and shapes postsecondary trajectories — this study draws on sociolegal theory\, cultural citizenship\, and border epistemologies to understand how families engage with and reinterpret the state’s categories and procedures. By revealing how legal mandates are operationalized in practice\, this project advances a sociolegal account of transition planning as a site where governance\, institutional logics\, and family agency intersect. \n\nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org. 
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-christopher-robertson-jane-jeong/
CATEGORIES:ABF Speaker Series,News
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20250924T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20250924T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20250618T145225Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250917T151323Z
UID:13153-1758715200-1758720600@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Gabriel Winant
DESCRIPTION:This presentation opens a new angle of inquiry on the brittleness of the institutions of the welfare state constructed during the New Deal. Whereas the traditional account of those institutions holds that they were the product of a “culture of unity” among the New Deal’s mass base\, and were vitiated at the elite level\, this paper explores a more complex and fractious dynamic at both levels of the liberal coalition. This approach suggests that the institutional contradictions that ultimately led to the defeat of New Deal liberalism were not external impositions only (from business or from the Dixiecrats)\, but arose in important ways from divisions within the “culture of unity” itself—the mass base of urban industrial workers in the North. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nDr. Gabriel Winant is a historian of the social structures of inequality in modern American capitalism. His work approaches capitalism as an expansive social order—not confined to the market alone but rather structurally composed of multiple\, heterogeneous spheres. He focuses on the relationship between economic production and formal employment on the one hand\, and the social reproduction and governance of the population on the other. Broadly\, he is interested in transformations in the social division of labor and the making and management of social difference through this process.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-gabriel-winant/
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:20250917T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20250917T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20250618T142605Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250910T153701Z
UID:13147-1758110400-1758115800@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Michelle Brown
DESCRIPTION:In the United States\, the formation and ongoing articulation of tribal sovereignty has been inseparable from the logics and institutions of the settler colonial carceral state. This convergence—where Indigenous governance\, legal recognition\, and carceral power intersect—is not an aberration but rather a foundational structural nexus of U.S. law and carceral chokeholds\, and therefore of significance broadly for our understandings of US carceral power and social movement struggles aimed at transformation. The landmark decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020)\, which affirmed nearly half of Oklahoma as tribal territory\, exemplifies this paradox: sovereignty is recognized but on the terms of the carceral state and its expansion. Drawing on sociolegal analysis grounded in critical Indigenous studies\, carceral studies\, and abolitionist thought\, this paper traces how jurisdictional contests in Indian Country obscure the possibilities of ongoing Indigenous forms of governance rooted in relationality\, non-punitive accountability\, and deep forms of community safety. These legal border skirmishes raise urgent questions: What kind of sovereignty is affirmed when granted by the settler carceral state? How can Indigenous resurgence leverage sovereignty against carceral expansion? And what forms of justice might continue to emerge when Indigenous traditions and abolitionist geographies converge to imagine governance beyond and before the carceral state? \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \nTo read the related paper for Dr. Brown’s presentation\, reach out to Sophie Kofman or Dianna Garzón. \n\nDr. Michelle Brown is a criminologist and sociolegal scholar with a joint PhD in Criminal Justice and American Studies. A Professor of Sociology in the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Tennessee\, Knoxville\, Dr. Brown also serves as Co-Director of the Appalachian Justice Research Center. Her research and teaching areas include abolition and emergent forms of justice; carceral studies; law & society; and media\, theory\, and digital culture. Her work focuses on the rise of the carceral state and attendant social movements directed at ending mass incarceration\, building more effective forms of community safety\, and shifting media narratives on crime and punishment. Dr. Brown is the author of The Culture of Punishment(NYUP); co-editor of The Routledge International Handbook of Visual Criminology\, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Crime\, Media\, and Popular Culture\, the Palgrave MacMillan Crime\, Media and Culture Book Series\, and she is the former editor of the leading journal on crime and media: Crime Media Culture. Dr. Brown also has a forthcoming volume\, Under the Gun: Criminology Goes Back to the Movies (NYUP). She was named Critical Criminologist of the Year in 2016 by the Division of Critical Criminology and Social Justice of the American Society of Criminology. She is a first generation student: an enrolled citizen of Cherokee Nation (Tahlequah\, OK) and of English-Scottish descent\, with deep lineages in Appalachia on both sides of her family.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-michelle-brown-2/
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:20250910T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20250910T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20250618T141424Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250908T210900Z
UID:13143-1757505600-1757511000@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Zhandarka Kurti and Jarrod Shanahan
DESCRIPTION:In 2019\, after unyielding pressure from activists\, New York City seemed poised to close the detested Rikers Island penal colony. The local press dutifully reported that the end of Rikers was imminent\, and New Yorkers celebrated the closure of the country’s largest urban jail\, condemned as a moral stain on an otherwise great city. The problem\, however\, was that the city had not actually committed to closing Rikers. And at the same time\, it laid the groundwork for the construction of more jails\, a network of skyscraper facilities amounting to the largest carceral construction the city has seen in decades. \n\n\nHow did this happen? Scholars and organizers Jarrod Shanahan and Zhandarka Kurti detail how progressive forces in New York City appropriated the rhetoric of social movements and social justice to promise “downsized” and “humane” jails. The principal advocates of these new jails were not right-wing politicians\, but prominent city activists and progressive non-profit organizations. The story is at once a case study and a cautionary tale for what will be coming to cities and towns across the United States and beyond. \n To register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\n \nDr. Zhandarka Kurti is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Loyola University Chicago. Dr. Kurti received her PhD degree in Sociology from the State University of New York at Binghamton. Her research and teaching areas include race and criminalization\, mass supervision and contemporary politics of criminal justice reforms. She is the co-author of Skyscraper Jails: The Abolitionist Fight Against Jail Expansion in New York City (Haymarket 2025)\, and States of Incarceration: Rebellion\, Reform and the Future of America’s Punishment System (Field Notes/Reaktion 2022). \n \nDr. Jarrod Shanahan is the author of Captives: How Rikers Island Took New York City Hostage (Verso\, 2022) and Every Fire Needs a Little Bit of Help: A Decade of Rebellion\, Reaction\, and Morbid Symptoms (PM Press\, 2025)\, and the co-author of States of Incarceration: Rebellion\, Reform and America’s Punishment System (Field Notes/Reaktion\, 2022)\, City Time: On Being Sentenced to Rikers Island (NYU Press\, 2025) and Skyscraper Jails: The Abolitionist Fight Against Jail Expansion in New York City (Haymarket\, 2025). He works as an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Governors State University.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-zhandarka-kurti-2/
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:20250521T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20250521T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20241028T144334Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250327T175538Z
UID:11053-1747828800-1747834200@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Jedidiah Kroncke
DESCRIPTION:The life of Chinese legal scholar Wu Jinxiong has long attracted the attention given his diverse intellectual interests and high profile in Chinese judicial politics and constitutional reform during the 1930s and 1940s. Like many of his generation\, Wu’s education combined traditional Confucian schooling with study at multiple Western-influenced institutions. During his first law degree\, he converted to Christianity and his religious journey ultimately led him to become one of the most notable Catholic Chinese intellectuals of this era. Episodes of his transnationalized life have been well-studied—from his relationship with Oliver Wendell Holmes to his engagement with numerous other Western intellectuals. \nYet\, Wu’s life after the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 has received less attention. During this period\, Wu spent fifteen years in the United States primarily teaching law at Seton Hall University before returning to Taiwan for the final years of his life. While the least studied time of his life\, Wu’s post-1949 life in the United States was a critical juncture in his ongoing quest to reconcile his Confucian sympathies with his Catholic faith and was a significant contributor to debates both about natural law and the relationship of Vatican II to Catholic legal thought. In particular\, he became closely associated with prominent Catholic scholars who fervently promoted Edmund Burke’s ideas\, such as Russell Kirk and Peter Stanlis\, and influenced his post-World War II elevation in conservative American legal thought. \nYet\, Wu’s return to Taiwan was impacted by the complications of these debates crosscut by Cold War geopolitical tensions and related racial politics. Recovering the transnational significance of this episode of Wu’s life is revealing not only as an example of the challenges diasporic Chinese intellectuals faced during this era but also how his relatively unique intellectual commitments shed light on less emphasized tensions in Catholicism and American Cold War geopolitics of this era. Amidst rising contemporary Sino-American tensions and renewed debates over the role of Catholic legal thinking in US politics\, Wu’s complex American experience as a transnational intellectual is newly provocative and probative. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nDr. Jedidiah Kroncke is an associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong\, joining the faculty in August of 2018. He currently teaches property\, equity and trusts\, as well as courses in common law reasoning for civil law students. \nPreviously\, he was a professor at FGV Sao Paulo School of Law\, and before this he was the Senior Fellow at the East Asian Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School. Dr. Kroncke garnered a range of awards and fellowships as he earned a B.A. in Asian Studies and Legal Studies from the University of California Berkeley\, a J.D. from Yale Law School\, and a Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Anthropology also from the University of California\, Berkeley. After graduate school\, he was awarded the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fellowship at Yale Law School\, the Samuel I. Golieb Fellowship in Legal History at NYU Law and the Berger-Howe Fellowship in Legal History at Harvard Law School. He has been a visitor at the International University College of Turin and the National University of Singapore. \nDr. Kroncke’s research centers on international legal history and the comparative study of alternative labor and property institutions. His interdisciplinary work draws on the US\, Chinese and Brazilian legal experiences\, and is devoted to the productive indigenization of comparative legal analysis. He routinely presents his work at leading law schools across the globe\, and is a reviewer for several leading international journals as well as the university presses of Oxford and Cambridge.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-jedidiah-kroncke/
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:20250514T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20250514T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20241120T200106Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250428T155602Z
UID:11287-1747224000-1747229400@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Xin He
DESCRIPTION:How to understand the operation of Chinese courts\, especially after Xi Jinping took power and thoroughly reformed its judiciary? To what extent is it different from other judicial systems? Dr. Xin He presents a governance model. The courts have two overarching characteristics under this model: supporting the state’s goals of policy implementation and legitimacy enhancement. The various policies that the courts are tasked with implementing and the approaches the courts use for enhancing the judiciary’s legitimacy—and by extension\, that of the state—have played key roles in the courts’ evolution. This governance model is distinct from the dualism and order-maintenance theses which have been used to understand the Chinese legal system in the past. It also challenges the conventional wisdom of the rule-by-law and rights-based approaches to understanding the Chinese court system. Engaging extensively with the literature in law and politics\, law and society\, and institutional economics\, The Judicial System of China provides an understanding of the inner workings and day-to-day realities of the Chinese judicial system. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \nTo read the related chapter for Dr. He’s presentation\, reach out to Sophie Kofman or Dianna Garzón. \n\nProfessor Xin He studies China’s legal systems empirically. He is interested in supervising Ph.D. students in the fields of judicial process (criminal justice in particular)\, legal consciousness\, and law and gender in China. \nHis English monographs are: \nThe Judicial System of China (Oxford University Press\, 2024) \nDivorces in China: Institutional Constraints and Gendered Outcomes (NYU Press\, 2021) \nEmbedded Courts: Judicial System of China (coauthored with Kwai Hang Ng\, Cambridge University Press\, 2017) \nHe also published a Chinese book 《街頭的研究者：法律與社會科學筆記》(The Researcher in the Street) (Peking University Press 2021). \nAn avid Pingpong player\, he was the champion (men’s single) of the Central and Western District of his age group in 2019.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-he-xin/
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:20250507T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20250507T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20241029T164937Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250505T191715Z
UID:11109-1746619200-1746624600@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Alexandra Huneeus
DESCRIPTION:This paper analyzes the arguments used to advance claims of non-human rights (or rights of nature) in Latin America\, the region where they first emerged and have undergone the most development. Most studies to date treat rights of nature as a single movement. A review of judgments\, laws\, and social movements\, however\, reveals that justifications for extending legal rights beyond humans fall into three categories. First are claims based on the species-level attributes of an animal or other creature: there is a quality of the being in question that demands a certain type of ethical treatment. Second are claims based on legal pluralism. Law in a multicultural state should give voice to the views of indigenous and tribal peoples as well as Western legal traditions. If indigenous or other peoples so request\, states should grant legal personhood and rights to natural features or “earth beings” that non-Western peoples hold as persons\, or kin\, and with whom they live in relation. Third are claims based on a new ontology: Some argue that it is time to rethink the most fundamental commitments of Western thought and\, specifically\, to give a different moral meaning to the distinction and relation between humans and non-humans\, as well as the distinction and relation between the living and non-living. Each of the three types of claims is advanced by distinct social movements and plays out in different ways in its relationship to existing laws. While the first and second can be cast as extensions of existing human rights doctrine\, the third aims to radically shift our major premises but is struggling to find legal coherence. The chapter’s main contribution is to introduce a typology of nature rights and use it to analyze the relation of nature rights and human rights. Scholarship needs to consider these differences in the argumentative structure because they have implications for many of the questions that we are asking of this emerging body of law\, including questions of effectiveness\, implementation\, and impact on other areas of law. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \nTo read the related paper for Dr. Huneeus’s presentation\, reach out to Sophie Kofman or Dianna Garzón. \n\nAlexandra Huneeus’ scholarship focuses on international law and human rights\, with emphasis on Latin America. Her work has appeared in the American Journal of International Law\, Harvard International Law Journal\, Law and Social Inquiry\, Yale Journal of International Law\, Leiden International Law Journal\, and by Cambridge University Press. She is Evjue Bascom Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Law\, Society and Justice at the University of Wisconsin\, Madison. She received her PhD\, JD and BA from University of California\, Berkeley\, and was a post-doc at Stanford University’s Center on Development\, Democracy and the Rule of Law. \nIn 2017\, Professor Huneeus was named to serve a ten-year term as Foreign Expert Jurist in the Colombian Jurisdicción para la Paz (JEP)\, a court created as part of the Colombian peace process. At UW\, Professor Huneeus currently serves as Director of the Center for Law\, Society and Justice. She is Co-Chair of the University of Wisconsin Human Rights Program\, which she co-founded\, and Director of the Global Legal Studies Program. She is a member of the American Society of International Law and the Law and Society Association. She has served on the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law\, and of Law and Social Inquiry. Previously\, she has served on the Board of Trustees of the Law and Society Association and the American Society for Comparative Law\, and as section chair for the Midwest Political Science Association (Law and Courts) and for the ASIL Midwest Interest Group on International law.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-alexandra-huneeus/
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:20250430T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20250430T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20241029T164246Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250424T194651Z
UID:11100-1746014400-1746019800@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Kamaria Porter
DESCRIPTION:Black and Latina women experience higher rates of unwanted sex\, assault\, and harassment\, yet rarely report these incidents to police or campus officials (Harris\, 2023: Slatton & Richard\, 2020; Washington\, 2001). To date\, most research on campus sexual assault reporting focuses on white\, heterosexual\, cis-gendered women at elite institutions (Brubaker et al.\, 2017; Sabina & Ho\, 2014). In this study\, Dr. Porter examined factors that influenced Black and Latina women and non-binary students’ decision to report sexual assault to police and/or university officials. Dr. Porter used a conceptual framework that combines intersectionality and the theory of legal consciousness. Instead of examining the effects of racism or sexism in isolation\, intersectionality holds that these systems of power interlock and shape each other (Crenshaw\, 1989\, 1991). Black women\, being marginalized by anti-Black racism and sexism\, experience particular forms of exclusion at the intersection of racism and sexism (P. H. Collins\, 2000; Crenshaw\, 1991). The theory of legal consciousness explores how people perceive the legal system and use concepts associated with the law to interpret everyday experiences\, particularly when they are harmed (Ewick & Silbey\, 1995; Marshall\, 2003). This presentation focuses on the 15 of 66 participants who entered a criminal or university grievance process\, exploring their evaluation of reporting processes based on interactions with police\, complaint officers\, the legal system\, and Title IX policy procedures. This research has implications for policy implementation and exploring legal cynicism among university student survivors.  \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nKamaria B. Porter\, PhD. (she/her) joined the Office of the Ombudsperson as Associate Ombudsperson in July 2024. Prior to joining Northwestern University\, Kamaria served as an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at Penn State University. There she taught a range of courses related to higher education\, including administration and organizational theory\, history and critical issues in higher education\, and research methods. Kamaria’s research broadly explores inequities in higher education\, focusing on faculty experiences on the tenure track\, graduate student success in STEM departments\, and Title IX policy. She earned her PhD in Higher Education at the University of Michigan. While there\, she managed a research lab on university policy responses to sexual harassment and assault\, investigated practices to prevent harassment in academic units\, and organized interdisciplinary learning and mental health programming for graduate students.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-kamaria-porter/
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:20250423T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20250423T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20241107T194600Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250307T214519Z
UID:11168-1745409600-1745415000@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Shitong Qiao
DESCRIPTION:Based on six-year fieldwork across China including over 200 in-depth interviews\, this book provides an ethnographic account of how hundreds of millions of Chinese homeowners practice democracy in and beyond their condominium complexes. Using interviews\, survey data\, and a comprehensive examination of laws\, policies and judicial decisions\, this book also examines how the party-state in China responds to the risks and benefits brought by neighborhood democratization. Moreover\, this book provides a framework to analyze different approaches to the authoritarian dilemma facing neighborhood democratization which may increase the regime’s legitimacy and expose it to the challenge of independent organizations at the same time. Lastly\, this book identifies conditions under which neighborhood democratization can succeed. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nShitong Qiao is Professor of Law and the Ken Young-Gak Yun and Jinah Park Yun Research Scholar at Duke Law School. He also holds the title of Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong and is a core faculty member of the Asia/Pacific Studies Institute at Duke University. He was previously a tenured professor at the University of Hong Kong\, a Law and Public Affairs (LAPA) fellow at Princeton University\, and the inaugural Jerome A. Cohen Visiting Professor of Law at NYU. \nHe is primarily interested in the relationship between political power\, law\, and private ordering. His first monograph\, Chinese Small Property: The Co-Evolution of Law and Social Norms (Cambridge University Press\, 2017)\, investigates how a real estate economy took off without legal titles. His second monograph\, The Authoritarian Commons: Neighborhood Democratization in Urban China (Cambridge University Press\, forthcoming 2025)\, provides an ethnographic account of how hundreds of millions of Chinese homeowners practice democracy in and beyond their condominium complexes\, within and beyond the boundaries of law. \nProfessor Qiao has also published numerous articles in top American and Chinese law journals. In addition\, he has served as an expert witness on the Chinese property regime in China\, Canada\, and the U.S. He holds degrees from Wuhan University (LL.B.)\, Peking University (MPhil)\, and Yale University (LL.M.\, J.S.D.). \n 
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-shitong-qiao/
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:20250416T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20250416T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20241028T144319Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250410T184431Z
UID:11050-1744804800-1744810200@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Jerry Kang
DESCRIPTION:At a time when the Right attacks implicit bias as liberal propaganda and some on the Left dismiss it as a distraction from structural racism\, this Article [to be discussed] offers a different take: implicit bias actually helps us see and respond to structural racism. It is a powerful diagnostic and prescriptive tool. Kang and Carbado argue that the supposed tension between individual and structural accounts of racial inequality is misguided. Implicit bias\, Kang and Carbado contend\, both reflects and reinforces structural racism. More than that\, implicit bias education—when done right—can catalyze structural reform. \nPart I begins with what most readers already know about implicit bias but then adds a surprising twist: when we aggregate individual bias scores across cities\, counties\, and states\, we discover striking correlations with racial disparities in everything from health outcomes to police violence. This recent “structuralizing” of implicit bias data has escaped the attention of legal academics. \nPart II tackles head-on the Left’s concern that implicit bias isn’t “structural enough.” Kang and Carbado agree that structural forces are primary and introduce the concept of “racial sedimentation” to make that point clear. However\, they push back against the puzzling claim that implicit bias frameworks reinforce the “intentional discrimination” mindset that Critical Race Theory has long criticized and show that just the opposite is true. \nPart III showcases how implicit bias education can advance structural reform in three important domains. Theoretically\, it provides empirical support for Critical Race Theory’s claim that race is socially constructed. Practically\, through what Kang and Carbado call the “Quadrants of Responsibility” framework\, it motivates law firms to tackle structural barriers they’d otherwise write off as beyond their institutional responsibility and control. And doctrinally\, it nudges courts to think more structurally about everything from capital punishment to jury selection. Kang and Carbado think this matters. By showing how implicit bias operates as both symptom and cause of structural racism\, they offer a new way to understand—and do something about—America’s enduring racial hierarchy. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \nTo read the related paper for Professor Kang’s presentation\, reach out to Sophie Kofman or Dianna Garzón. \n\nJerry Kang is the Ralph and Shirley Shapiro Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA. He graduated magna cum laude from both Harvard College (physics) and Harvard Law School\, where he was a supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review. After clerking for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals\, he started his professorship at UCLA in 1995. A leading scholar on implicit bias\, critical race studies\, and communications law\, Professor Kang collaborates broadly across disciplines and industries on scholarly\, educational\, and advocacy projects. An inspiring teacher\, he has received UCLA’s highest recognition: the Eby Art of Teaching Distinguished Teaching Award. During 2015-20\, he served as the UCLA’s Founding Vice Chancellor for Equity\, Diversity and Inclusion.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-jerry-kang/
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:20250409T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20250409T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20241120T152413Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250401T142523Z
UID:11277-1744200000-1744205400@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Taisu Zhang
DESCRIPTION:This article argues that legal professions\, regardless of socioeconomic\, political\, cultural\, or ideological context\, naturally drift towards jurisprudential internalism. Zhang defines “legal internalism” as a behavioral paradigm in which legal actors treat legal rules as normative\, epistemologically self-contained\, and systemically coherent. Such a paradigm is deeply controversial within the legal academy: formalists embrace it as objectively “correct\,” whereas realists reject it as empirically false and conceptually incoherent. \nRegardless of what scholars believe\, he argues—first at the level of behavioral theory\, then through empirical illustration—that internalism naturally appeals to lawyers and judges due to the socioeconomic incentive structures they face. Once socially accepted\, internalism greatly increases the legal knowledge gap between specialists and non-specialists\, rendering legal comprehension easier for trained lawyers and but more difficult for laymen. This enhances the legal profession’s functional dominance over legal interpretation\, which in turn enhances its prestige\, sociopolitical stature\, and earning power. As a result\, legal professionals will tend to behaviorally embrace internalism regardless of its intellectual merits. Legal scholars\, in contrast\, have different incentive structures that significantly dilute the appeal of internalism. \nThese are universalist theoretical claims that should apply in nearly every socioeconomic and political context. Although a full empirical proof is clearly impossible in a single article\, we demonstrate their applicability to six of the world’s most important legal systems: the United States\, China\, Germany\, England\, Japan\, and India. In all six countries\, which otherwise diverge dramatically in wealth\, size\, politics\, culture\, and institutions\, legal professionals behaviorally drift towards internalism over time. They do so despite some significant political and intellectual obstacles\, and often in an explicitly self-interested manner. In contrast\, legal scholars in several of these countries are visibly more skeptical towards internalism. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nTaisu Zhang is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School and works on comparative legal and economic history\, private law theory\, and contemporary Chinese law and politics. He is the author of two books\, The Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation: Belief Systems\, Politics\, and Institutions (Cambridge University Press\, 2023)\, and The Laws and Economics of Confucianism: Kinship and Property in Pre-Industrial China and England (Cambridge University Press\, 2017). These are the first two entries in a planned trilogy of books on the institutional and cultural origins of early modern economic divergence. He is currently writing two other books: the first\, The Authoritarian Functions of Law (And Their Application to Contemporary China)\, is under contract with Harvard University Press and examines the political and socioeconomic logic of legalization in China. The second\, tentatively titled The Cultural-Legal Origins of Economic Divergence\, completes the trilogy mentioned above. Zhang’s academic articles and essays have recently appeared in journals such as the Journal of Legal Studies\, the Journal of Legal Analysis\, the Yale Law Journal\, and the Harvard Law Review. His work has won awards and prizes from a number of academic organizations. \nZhang is a Global Faculty member at Peking University Law School and holds secondary appointments at Yale in the History Department and the Jackson School. He has also taught at the Duke University School of Law\, the University of Hong Kong\, Brown University\, and the Tsinghua University School of Law. He serves as co-editor of Studies in Legal History\, the book series of the American Society for Legal History (published by Cambridge University Press). He is a regular commentator on law and politics in media outlets\, in both English and Chinese.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-taisu-zhang/
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:20250402T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20250402T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T083118
CREATED:20241028T144302Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250328T205701Z
UID:11047-1743595200-1743600600@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Tristin Green
DESCRIPTION:In February 2025\, the Trump Department of Education issued a Dear Colleague letter to universities and K-12 schools in which it insisted that teachings that trigger feelings of guilt or “moral burden” because of race amount to discrimination by “deny[ing] students the ability to participate fully in the life of a school.” Several years earlier\, the Executive Office of the President under then-president Donald Trump issued a letter directing all federal agencies to “cease and desist” in their workplaces from funding diversity training sessions that teach “divisive concepts\,” including any trainings “suggesting that any individuals should feel discomfort\, guilt\, anguish\, or any other form of psychological stress on account of his or her race.” The common idea across these directives is that teaching about racial bias\, systemic racism\, racial history\, or injustice amounts to discrimination against whites solely because it imposes harms related to race in the form of psychological stress or emotional anguish. Feeling badly about race\, in other words\, renders the teachings discriminatory without any further inquiry. \nThese directives build from a larger shift in antidiscrimination law over the past several decades toward measuring individual harm in determining whether discrimination occurred. The shift\, what Tristin Green calls “centering personal offense\,” is particularly evident in the area of employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Judges during this time began to see and emphasize individual\, psychological harm as a principal discrimination harm and at the same time to raise concerns about claims for mere trifles\, creating legal doctrines designed to protect employers from liability through judgments about individuals’ harms where no such doctrines existed before. \nAs the anti-DEI directives so starkly illustrate\, centering personal offense in antidiscrimination law deforms and decontextualizes the discrimination inquiry by burying normative determinations in individualized measurements of harm. In this way\, it dovetails with (though is distinct from) calls for formal equality and colorblindness. What’s more\, once measuring harm is part of the discrimination inquiry\, it appears natural for judges to weigh individual harms against each other in deciding whether discrimination took place: One individual’s judicially declared affront to dignity is put up against another individual’s judicially declared much ado about nothing. \nIn this project\, Tristin Green exposes the turn in antidiscrimination law toward centering personal offense (a turn that has been implicitly embraced by progressives and conservatives alike) and illustrates why it is problematic. Looking to the future\, she then shows how a seemingly narrow recent Supreme Court decision\, Muldrow v. City of St. Louis\, can be understood to upend it. With antidiscrimination law under attack\, re-centering institutions and normative debates about what amounts to discrimination and why is more crucial than ever. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n\nTristin Green is a sociolegal scholar interested in the role of institutions—such as workplaces\, educational systems\, and legal frameworks—in perpetuating discrimination. Her work critically examines how prevailing ideologies about discrimination shape legal doctrines and\, in turn\, influence the potential for law to effect substantive and meaningful social change. Her work pushes against narrow frames of discrimination to instead emphasize institutional and organizational decisions\, especially as they affect the context for day-to-day relations. \nProfessor Green is the author of dozens of scholarly journal articles and book chapters\, as well as two books: Racial Emotion at Work: Dismantling Discrimination and Building Racial Justice in the Workplace (University of California Press\, 2023) and Discrimination Laundering: The Rise of Organizational Innocence and the Crisis of Equal Opportunity Law (Cambridge University Press\, 2017).
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-tristan-green/
LOCATION:ABF Offices\, 750 N Lake Shore Drive\, 4th Floor Chicago\, IL
CATEGORIES:ABF Speaker Series,News
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END:VCALENDAR