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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261111T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261111T133000
DTSTAMP:20261109T172243Z
CREATED:20260629T192856Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261109T172243Z
UID:15617-1794398400-1794403800@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Rashmee Singh
DESCRIPTION:Since 2010\, specialized dockets self-identifying as ‘human trafficking courts’ (HTC) have proliferated throughout the United States. These recent iterations of the problem-solving court movement surfaced in response to twenty-first-century anti-trafficking and anti-prostitution panics\, which conflate sex work and sex trafficking. Despite their name\, HTCs are not courts dedicated to prosecuting individuals charged with trafficking offences. Rather\, these dockets draw on the logic of therapeutic jurisprudence to prosecute those the legal system has deemed ‘trafficking victims’—cisgender women criminalized for a range of offences that typically include drug-related charges\, property crimes\, and prostitution. In lieu of pursuing traffickers\, HTCs require women to change themselves via court mandated substance abuse recovery programs\, trauma-based counselling\, and life skills counselling to ‘prevent their victimization.’ \nDrawing on her twelve-year\, multi-sited study encompassing six U.S. cities\, court observations\, and over 100 interviews\, this talk examines how anti-trafficking panics are impacting criminal legal responses to system-involved women. Dr. Singh argues that once the ‘sex worker as victim’ narrative drives the formation of problem-solving courts\, the concept of human trafficking victimization materializes as a proxy for a range of experiences that the law identifies as problematic and aims to correct. Dr. Singh’s findings suggest that while these imaginaries result in net-widening\, court actors are also mobilizing them in unexpected ways to mitigate punishment. This project contributes to socio-legal scholarship on the fractured and contradictory impacts of carceral institutions by illustrating how criminal legal actors differentially use legal fictions of ‘trafficking victimization’ to administer state power. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n \nDr. 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.  
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:20261104T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261104T133000
DTSTAMP:20261103T160817Z
CREATED:20260629T192549Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261103T160817Z
UID:15614-1793793600-1793799000@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Camilo Arturo Leslie
DESCRIPTION:When the Stanford Financial Group imploded in 2009\, roughly 20\,000 depositors were left $7 billion poorer\, and the firm’s political\, corporate\, and celebrity backers were left with egg on their face. In the next year\, however\, crucial private and public regulators released mea culpas detailing their longstanding failures to diagnose and arrest the fraud. The fallout was severe\, with media figures\, defrauded investors\, and even members of congress accusing those regulators of complicity. Using internal SEC interview transcripts acquired via years of FOIA requests\, Dr. Leslie shows that the truth is both murkier and both revealing\, on two counts. First\, the Stanford fraud provides an emblematic case of “expert ignorance.” Second\, it makes the line between administrative discretion and corruption impossible to draw. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n \nDr. 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.
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:20261028T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261028T133000
DTSTAMP:20261027T212928Z
CREATED:20260629T192135Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261027T212928Z
UID:15610-1793188800-1793194200@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Amy Stambach
DESCRIPTION:On October 9\, 2026\, Reuters reported that the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) intends to expand equity investments in Africa\, including in critical minerals projects. The announcement illustrates a consequential change in U.S. foreign policy: As grant-based assistance continues to contract\, federal authority to finance and acquire commercial interests in overseas enterprises is expanding. Congress established the legal basis for this expansion through the DFC Modernization Reauthorization Act of 2025\, enacted as part of the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act. The legislation increased DFC’s maximum contingent liability from $60 billion to $205 billion\, expanded country eligibility\, and authorized a $5 billion revolving equity fund. Investment proceeds retained by that fund support further transactions\, while the BUILD Act separately provides for conditional dividend payments to the U.S. Treasury. These authorities connect overseas development financing to potential financial benefits for private investors and the U.S. Treasury. \nDrawing on my work at USAID and on a Senate foreign policy team\, this talk examines how the DFC and congressional actors define and implement these authorities. Loans and political risk insurance place federal backing behind private ventures. Equity investments give the government an ownership interest in their commercial performance. Financing mineral extraction and related infrastructure can simultaneously secure supply chains\, create opportunities for American firms\, and strengthen relationships with partner governments. The central question\, however\, is how these transactions serve the national interest\, and who has authority to make that determination. Congressional disputes over investments in high-income countries reveal competing understandings of FC’s statutory purpose. Prioritizing commercially attractive or strategically designated transactions may divert financing form poorer countries whose development sustains long-term diplomatic relationships. The talk considers whether existing eligibility rules and oversight requirements adequately govern the relationship among private gain\, public financial exposure\, and national security. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n \nProfessor 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. \n 
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:20261021T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261021T133000
DTSTAMP:20261006T202147Z
CREATED:20260629T190417Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261006T202147Z
UID:15607-1792584000-1792589400@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Amelia Frank-Vitale
DESCRIPTION:Hondurans have been at the heart of some of the most visible migration phenomena in the last few years\, as well as the direct target of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy. In Leave If You Can\, anthropologist Amelia Frank-Vitale offers a fine-grained portrait of the Honduran exodus and what it reveals about the broader consequences of changing US border enforcement policies. She highlights the stories of those who are often presented as unsympathetic: deported young men implicitly associated with the very violence they were trying to flee\, challenging underlying assumptions frequently held by policymakers and humanitarian agencies. \nConnecting overlapping regimes of mobility control\, from the invisible gangland borders within San Pedro Sula to the growing expansiveness of the US border’s reach\, this book shows how deportation does not deter migration but\, in fact\, keeps people moving\, and how U.S. policies fuel the migration “crisis” they claim to address. Drawing from her own accompaniment of migrant caravans over many years\, Frank-Vitale also explores how caravans emerge as both protest movement and migration tactic in response to this expanding border regime. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n \nAmelia 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.
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/Chicago:20261014T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261014T133000
DTSTAMP:20261005T234807Z
CREATED:20260629T185950Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261005T234807Z
UID:15604-1791979200-1791984600@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Traci Burch
DESCRIPTION:In this presentation\, Dr. Traci Burch uses the administrative burdens framework developed by Moynihan\, Herd\, and Harvey (2015) to identify and discuss the learning\, compliance\, and psychological burdens that decrease voting among people with felony convictions. Using a case study of Tennessee’s rights restoration process\, Dr. Burch shows how the compliance costs of voting after a felony conviction\, specifically\, paying legal financial obligations\, providing documentary proof of eligibility\, and submitting applications under rapidly changing rules\, can stymie re-enfranchisement even among people who qualify to vote. These difficulties are compounded by confusion brought about by continuous changes in rules and fear brought about by high-profile prosecutions of people with felony convictions.   \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n \nDr. Traci Burch (she/her) is a Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation and a Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. She 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. Her work has also been featured in Political Behavior\, Law and Society Review\, and Criminology and Public Policy.
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/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/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:20260923T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260923T133000
DTSTAMP:20261005T234904Z
CREATED:20260629T185202Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261005T234904Z
UID:15596-1790164800-1790170200@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Genevieve Bates
DESCRIPTION:Human rights abuses by agents of the state security apparatus have sparked demands for reform globally. In this paper\, we explore how framing these reform policies directly as human rights issues affects public support for enacting reforms. We do so using a case study of the United States\, where state abuses are often committed by policing institutions and are disproportionately experienced by minority communities. We use a survey experiment to test whether framing police reform initiatives as part of an international movement to implement transitional justice affects support for these policies among the American public. Our results largely confirm that framing racial justice policies as transitional justice can increase support\, especially among non-Republicans. These findings have important implications for research on human rights promotion and transitional justice\, especially in places like the United States\, which have only recently become the focus of human rights scholarship. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n \nDr. Genevieve Bates is the Mary Herman Rubinstein Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Previously\, Bates was an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia\, and a postdoctoral fellow with the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Bates received their PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2021.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-genevieve-bates/
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:20260916T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260916T133000
DTSTAMP:20261005T235125Z
CREATED:20260629T184613Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261005T235125Z
UID:15591-1789560000-1789565400@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Maria-Fátima Santos
DESCRIPTION:How do legal aid professionals influence penal state administration? Through legal aid professionals’ strategies to mitigate punishment for their clients they may both reduce the harm individual clients face while also contributing to court routines that naturalize the selectivity of penal state practices. I dissect the work of public defenders who counsel poor people facing prosecution for drug trafficking in Brazil’s São Paulo city as a “critical case” to develop this argument. Drawing on multiple sources of data\, I elaborate public defenders’ strategies to instigate doubt\, contest\, or negotiate other court authorities’ interpretations of their client’s case by learning and navigating what I conceptualize as their courtroom’s interpretive terrain. First\, my analysis identifies horizontal and vertical dynamics that influence legal aid workers’ strategic decisions. Second\, my findings invite greater analytic scrutiny into the conditions and perceptions that influence how and why court cases are resolved either at trial or far before ever making it to that stage. Third\, I spotlight the probing of legal aid strategies as a useful analytic method to identify\, synthesize\, and compare the forces that shape penal court processes and outcomes in different contexts. I conclude with the study’s contributions to research on punishment and inequality\, law-in-action\, and state power. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n \nProfessor Santos’s current research examines public defenders who counsel poor people in Brazil’s penal courts to clarify key dynamics that shape legal aid professions in different contexts\, including their relationship to inequality\, racialized violence and state transformation. In other work\, Fátima examines how carceral administration connects to dynamics of social conflict and political legitimacy.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/abf-speaker-series-maria-fatima-santos/
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:20260909T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260909T133000
DTSTAMP:20261005T235325Z
CREATED:20260629T184702Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261005T235325Z
UID:15589-1788955200-1788960600@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Elizabeth Mertz
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\nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n \nDr. Elizabeth Mertz (she/her) is a Research Professor at the ABF and the John and Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law Emerita at University of Wisconsin—Madison. She is a leading legal anthropologist and pioneer in the study of legal language in the United States\, with a special focus on law school education. Mertz’s research has also played a major role in developing interdisciplinary approaches to the empirical study of law within the field of New Legal Realism.  
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-elizabeth-mertz/
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:20260513T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260513T133000
DTSTAMP:20261005T235615Z
CREATED:20251219T185414Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261005T235615Z
UID:14315-1778673600-1778679000@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Cary Martin Shelby
DESCRIPTION:Professor Shelby will discuss several chapters of her upcoming book\, Markets for Black Pain: Law and Marginalization as a Commodity\, which introduces “Markets for Black Pain” as a novel theoretical construct contending that for-profit companies commodify Black Pain in ways that can lead to additional cycles of harm that spread to surrounding communities. Black Pain\, the foundation of this construct\, encompasses the multitude of individual and collective harms that Black people experience due to racism. Black Pain is its own distinct commodity\, Shelby argues\, given the ways in which it can be transformed into quantifiable and profitable units by for-profit companies. While the United States has historically relied on Black Pain to develop core aspects of its economy\, this book provides a taxonomy of modern commodifiers of Black Pain that stem from privatization becoming a preferred public policy solution to the ongoing plight of racism. Black Pain\, for example\, can manifest itself through “food deserts\,” experienced by predominantly Black communities enduring limited access to healthy food options. Market-based solutions invite private-sector participants to transform these food deserts into profitable units by receiving government subsidies in exchange for investing in grocery stores and other healthy food options within Black communities. \nAlthough market-based solutions for the ongoing plight of Black Pain can be successful\, they frequently create more of the same\, particularly when community investment leads to community displacement in the form of gentrification. The “Markets for Black Pain” construct thus uniquely categorizes these additional harms as negative externalities\, as they can cycle through entire communities despite community members themselves being excluded as direct participants within such transactions. While it might be assumed that these additional harms are exclusively borne by Black communities\, this construct challenges this assumption by exploring how the resulting market failures can threaten financial stability for the broader economy and serve as catalysts for a range of systemic disruptions. \nThe theory introduced in this book as “Markets for Black Pain” builds on a rich discourse of scholarly works that integrate economic analysis into the ways in which race is defined and categorized within hierarchical structures. It further revolutionizes the operation of the law in numerous contexts by introducing market failures as an entirely new category of harm that can emanate from racism. Potential market failures of this kind are not recognized within the panoply of civil rights legislation designed to redress the harms arising from direct and systemic forms of racism. They are similarly missing from the additional federal and state laws that regulate commodifiers of Black Pain by managing internal governance conflicts and protecting external stakeholders. Markets for Black Pain therefore compels us to consider a more expansive list of regulatory solutions that move beyond the prevailing goal of making a damaged party whole. This book offers timely and compelling suggestions for preventing the systemic harms arising from these market failures\, including strategic reparations and regulatory reforms based on pillars of transparency\, access\, diversity\, and accountability. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n \nCary Martin Shelby joined Chicago-Kent College of Law as the Ralph Brill Endowed Chair Professor of Law in July 2023. She specializes in corporate and securities law and teaches a variety of courses such as Contracts\, Business Associations\, Securities Regulation\, Corporate Finance\, and a seminar on Investment Funds. Shelby was previously a professor of law at Washington and Lee University School of Law and served as a visiting associate professor of law with The George Washington University Law School during the spring 2021 semester. She was also the J.B. and M.K. Pritzker Family Foundation Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law with Northwestern Pritzker School of Law during the 2022–2023 academic year. \nHer research generally encompasses regulatory issues related to hedge funds and other pooled investment vehicles. It has utilized a range of theoretical frameworks to scrutinize the blurred distinctions between public and private investment funds resulting from financial innovation\, retailization\, and systemic risk. Her research has since expanded to explore intersections between race and systemic risk by examining the extent to which racism poses a threat to financial stability in ways that should be recognized by financial regulators. Shelby has published articles in Northwestern University Law Review\, California Law Review\, The Business Lawyer\, Boston College Law Review\, among other journals and periodicals. Shelby is currently under contract with Cambridge University Press for her forthcoming book project\, Markets for Black Pain: Law and Marginalization as a Commodity.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-cary-martin-shelby/
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:20260507T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260507T200000
DTSTAMP:20260429T210142Z
CREATED:20260324T203113Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260429T210142Z
UID:14954-1778176800-1778184000@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Ruth Bader Ginsburg Endowed Fund for Research in Civil Rights & Gender Equality Reception
DESCRIPTION:As a tribute to its past Board member\, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg\, and the significant impact she had on the institution\, the American Bar Foundation (ABF) has established the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Endowed Fund for Research in Civil Rights & Gender Equality (RBG Fund). \nPlease join us in celebrating the late Justice Ginsburg and the RBG Fund with cocktails and abundant hors d’oeuvres in the city where the Justice began her career as a fierce advocate for equal justice under law. \nThursday\, May 7\, 2026\n6:00 pm – 8:00 pm ET \nNew York City Bar Association\n42 W. 44th Street\nNew York\, New York 10036 \nThe American Bar Foundation graciously recognizes event Platinum Sponsor: \nThe Kenneth & Harle Montgomery Foundation \nThe American Bar Foundation graciously recognizes event Gold Sponsor: \n \n The American Bar Foundation graciously recognizes event Silver Sponsor: \n \nFor more information on event sponsorship\, contact Erla Teli\, ABF Director of Major Gifts and Grants\, at 312-988-6511 or eteli@abfn.org.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/ruth-bader-ginsburg-endowed-fund-for-research-in-civil-rights-gender-equality-reception/
CATEGORIES:News
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20260506T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260506T133000
DTSTAMP:20261005T235748Z
CREATED:20251219T185252Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261005T235748Z
UID:14313-1778068800-1778074200@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Aziz Rana
DESCRIPTION:Scholars and commentators increasingly worry that the United States is facing a constitutional crisis\, but the exact contours of this crisis remain underspecified.  In this talk\, Aziz Rana argues that the present moment is best understood as marked by the collapse of a midcentury constitutional compact that was consolidated over the course of three critical decades\, from the 1930s to the 1960s.  This consolidation took place against the backdrop of Cold War dynamics and global decolonization.  Thus\, the American constitutional project was forged through and gained meaning from its antagonism with the Soviet Union.  Today\, the Soviet Union is long gone and the country has witnessed a steady defection from the terms of that past compact.  The result has been institutional breakdown\, without a clear pathway for reconstructing shared legal and political practices.  All of this suggests that democratic renewal will likely require more than simply restoration of a past settlement\, but a far more extensive undertaking in constitutional transformation. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n \nAziz Rana is the J. Donald Monan\, S.J.\, University Professor of Law and Government. He joins Boston College from Cornell Law School\, where he was the Richard and Lois Cole Professor of Law. His research and teaching center on American constitutional law and political development. In particular\, Rana’s work focuses on how shifting notions of race\, citizenship\, and empire have shaped legal and political identity since the founding of the country.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-aziz-rana/
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:20260422T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260422T133000
DTSTAMP:20261005T235933Z
CREATED:20251219T185133Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261005T235933Z
UID:14311-1776859200-1776864600@www.americanbarfoundation.org
SUMMARY:Speaker Series: Deepa Das Acevedo
DESCRIPTION:As academia increasingly comes under attack in the United States\, The War on Tenure steps in to demystify what professors do and to explain the importance of tenure for their work. Deepa Das Acevedo takes readers on a backstage tour of tenure-stream academia to reveal hidden dynamics and obstacles. She challenges the common belief that tenure is only important for the protection of academic freedom. Instead\, she argues that the security and autonomy provided by tenure are also essential to the performance of work that students\, administrators\, parents\, politicians\, and taxpayers value. Going further\, Das Acevedo shows that tenure exists on a spectrum of comparable employment contracts and she debunks the notion that tenure warps the incentives of professors. Ultimately\, The War on Tenure demonstrates that the job security tenure provides is not nearly as unusual\, undesirable\, or unwarranted as critics claim. \nTo register\, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.  \n \nDeepa Das Acevedo is a legal anthropologist. Her research blends ethnographic fieldwork and anthropological theory with doctrinal and policy analysis to provide new insights about legal rules and institutions. She studies employment regulation (particularly faculty tenure as an employment protection)\, the law and politics of India (focusing on next-generation law & policy organizations)\, and methodological and theoretical developments in the anthropology of law. She is the Editor of the peer-reviewed journal PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review\, a past Trustee of the Law & Society Association\, and has held leadership positions in the Association of American Law Schools\, the American Anthropological Association\, and the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology.
URL:https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speaker-series-deepa-das-acevedo/
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:20260415T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260415T133000
DTSTAMP:20261006T000034Z
CREATED:20260129T174720Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261006T000034Z
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:20261006T000126Z
CREATED:20251219T185010Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261006T000126Z
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:20261006T000327Z
CREATED:20251219T184857Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261006T000327Z
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:20261030T215632Z
CREATED:20260305T180621Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261030T215632Z
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 \nDr. Natasha 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:20261030T215750Z
CREATED:20251219T184326Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261030T215750Z
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:20261030T225346Z
CREATED:20260114T191333Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261030T225346Z
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:20261030T225729Z
CREATED:20251219T184222Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261030T225729Z
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:20261030T225837Z
CREATED:20251219T184050Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261030T225837Z
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:20261030T225934Z
CREATED:20251219T183955Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261030T225934Z
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:20261030T230040Z
CREATED:20251219T183832Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261030T230040Z
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:20261030T230311Z
CREATED:20251219T183012Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261030T230311Z
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:20261030T230633Z
CREATED:20250618T150655Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261030T230633Z
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:20251022T213033Z
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:20251029T154052Z
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:20251002T171755Z
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:20251021T211308Z
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
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END:VCALENDAR