American University Washington College of Law Speakers Series, 2007-2008

Friday, Sept. 7

Pence Law Library Workshop on Doing Research in the Digital Age

Tuesday, Sept. 18

"Lightning Rounds" Session I

• Janie Chuang, "Creating an Interdisciplinary Roundtable/Database on Trafficking Issues"
• Lewis Grossman, "Food, Drugs, and Droods: Definitions and Categories in American Food and Drug Regulation"
• Fernanda Nicola, "Comparisons Within: Local Government, Spaces and Distribution in European Union Law"
• Mark Niles, "Punctuated Equilibrium: A Model for Administrative Evolution"
• Steve Vladeck, "Access to Courts and the Separation of Powers"

Friday, Sept. 28

Vicki Schultz, Yale Law School

TITLE: "Antidiscrimination Law as Disruption: The Emergence of a New Paradigm for Understanding Discrimination"

COMMENTATOR: Candace Kovacic-Fleischer, American University Washington College of Law

Friday, Oct. 5

Cristina Rodriguez, New York University Law School

TITLE: "The Significance of the Local in Immigration Regulation"

DESCRIPTION: The proliferation of state and local regulation designed to control immigrant movement has attracted much media attention and generated several high profile lawsuits in the last year. Ironically, proponents and opponents of these measures share one basic assumption with deep roots in American constitutional doctrine and practice: that immigration control is the exclusive responsibility of the federal government. As a result, assessments of this important trend have failed to explain why state and local measures are arising in large numbers, and why the uniformity both sides seek is neither achievable nor desirable.

In this Article, I argue that is time to come to a modus vivendi regarding participation by all levels of government in the management of migration. To do so, I provide a functional account of immigration regulation and demonstrate how the federal-state-local dynamic operates as an integrated system to manage the complex phenomenon of contemporary immigration. The primary function states and localities play is to integrate immigrants into the body politic and thus to bring the country to terms with demographic change. This process cannot be managed by a single sovereign, because it is context dependent and demands local experimentation. In fact, immigrant integration sometimes depends on states and localities adopting positions in tension with federal policy, particularly when it comes to undocumented immigration. I therefore offer a reformulation of existing federalism doctrines and presumptions. These will not be primarily for application by courts (though to the extent that courts apply field and obstacle preemption theories in immigration cases, they should abandon such approaches). Instead, I offer a framework for federal and state lawmakers that would restrain their impulse to preempt legislation by lower levels of government and create incentives to engage the different sovereigns in cooperative ventures.

Speaker Bio: Cristina Rodríguez is an associate professor of law at the NYU School of Law. Her fields of research include language rights and language policy; immigration law and policy; constitutional law and theory; and citizenship theory. Professor Rodriguez served as a law clerk to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge David S. Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. She earned a B.A. in History from Yale College in 1995, a Master of Letters in Modern History in 1998 from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 2000.

COMMENTATOR: Jamin Raskin, American University Washington College of Law

Friday, Oct. 19

Cynthia Jones, American University Washington College of Law

TITLE: "The Right Remedy for the Wrongly Convicted: Judicial Sanctions for Destruction of Evidence"

COMMENTATOR: Andrew E. Taslitz, Howard University School of Law

Friday, Oct. 25

Dan Rodriguez, University of Texas

TITLE: "State Constitutionalism and the Scope of Judicial Review"

COMMENTATOR: Mark Niles, American University Washington College of Law

Friday, Nov. 9

Jeanne Suk, Harvard Law School

TITLE: Selections from book draft, "At Home in the Law"

DESCRIPTION: Jeannie Suk is an Assistant Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Prior to joining the Harvard faculty in 2006, she served as a law clerk to Judge Harry T. Edwards on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to Justice Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. She received a B.A. in literature from Yale, a D.Phil in literature from Oxford University, where she studied as a Marshall scholar, and a J.D. from Harvard.

COMMENTATOR: Kevin Haynes, American University Washington College of Law

Friday, Jan. 11

Nancy Polikoff, American University Washington College of Law

TITLE: "Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families under the Law"

DESCRIPTION: The debate over marriage equality for same-sex couples in America rages. Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage boldly moves the discussion forward by focusing on the larger, more fundamental, issue of marriage and the law. The root problem, asserts law professor and LGBT rights activist Nancy Polikoff, is that marriage is a bright dividing line between relationships that legally matter and those that don't. A woman married to a man for nine months is entitled to Social Security survivor's benefits when he dies; a woman living for nineteen years with a man or woman to whom she isn't married receives nothing.

Polikoff reframes the debate by arguing that all family relationships and households need the economic stability and emotional peace of mind that now extend only to married couples. Unmarried couples of any sexual orientation, single-parent households, extended family units, and myriad other familial configurations need recognition and protection to meet the concerns they all share: building and sustaining economic and emotional interdependence, and nurturing the next generation.

Couples should have the choice to marry based on the spiritual, cultural or religious meaning of marriage in their lives, asserts Polikoff. While marriage equality for same-sex couples is a civil rights victory, she contends no one should have to marry in order to reap specific and unique legal results.

A persuasive argument that married couples should not receive special rights denied to other families, Polikoff shows how the law can value all families-and why it must.

COMMENTATOR: Judith Areen, Georgetown University Law Center

Friday, Feb. 1

Kerry Rittich, University of Toronto

TITLE: "Informal Labor Markets and Development"

COMMENTATOR: Heather Hughes, American University Washington College of Law

Friday, Feb. 8

Lightning Rounds, Session I

Presenters

• Amanda Frost, Overvaluing Uniformity
• David Hunter, Climate Change and Law Teaching
• Teresa Phelps, Post Conflict Remedies for Sexual Violence
• Ann Shalleck, Narrative Theory and the Lawyer-Client Relationship
• David Snyder, Contracting for Human Rights
• Rick Wilson, Lawfare, Ass-Covering, and the Nation's Narrative

Friday, Feb. 15

Thomas M. Franck, New York University School of Law

TITLE: "On Proportionality of Counter-Measures in International Law"

COMMENTATOR: Stephen Vladeck, American University Washington College of Law

Friday, Feb. 22

Sameer Ashar, City University of New York School of Law

TITLE: "Law Clinics and Collective Mobilization"

COMMENTATOR: Ann Shalleck, American University Washington College of Law

ABSTRACT: Poor people are not served well by the kinds of advocacy currently taught and reinforced in most law clinics. The canonical approaches to clinical legal education – (1) a nearly exclusive focus on individual client empowerment, (2) professional skills transfer, and (3) lawyer-led impact litigation and law reform – are not sufficient to sustain effective public interest practice in the current political moment. These approaches rely on a practice narrative that does not accurately portray the conditions faced by poor people or the resistance strategies devised by groups with activist organizers. At the margins of the field, law school clinics and innovative legal advocacy organizations have played a key role in developing a new public interest practice. Lawyers and law students support and stimulate radical democratic resistance to market forces by developing litigation, legislative, and community education methods to advance collective mobilization. This article offers a typology of clinical approaches, a critique of the canon, and a description of the features of an alternative clinical model with the ultimate aim of reconfiguring public interest law.

Friday, Feb. 29

Tanya K. Hernandez, George Washington University Law School

TITLE: "The Long Lingering Shadow: Law, Liberalism and Cultures of Racial Hierarchy and Identity in the Americas"

COMMENTATOR: Ezra Rosser, American University Washington College of Law

Tuesday, March 4

Lightning Rounds, Session II

TITLE: "The Ethics of Professional Role"

PRESENTERS:

• Heather Hughes, "Legal Academics' Professional Responsibility"
• Brenda Smith, "Creating An Ethics Around Power, Dominance, and Sex"
• Robert Vaughn, "Watergate and the Emergence of Ethical Justifications for Whistleblowing"
• Dennis Ventry, Tax Lawyers' Ethics

Friday, Mar. 21

Tomiko Brown-Nagin, University of Virginia School of Law

TITLE: "Courage to Dissent: Communities, Lawyers, and Courts in the Civil Rights Movements"

COMMENTATOR: Darren Hutchinson, American University Washington College of Law

Friday, Mar. 28

Laura Kalman, Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara

TITLE: "Right Star Rising: American Politics and the Limits of Leadership in the Seventies, 1974-79"

COMMENTATOR: Lewis Grossman, American University Washington College of Law

Friday, Apr. 4

Jennifer Johnson, Northwestern School of Law of Lewis & Clark College

TITLE: "Arbitration of Shareholder Claims: Why Change is not Always a Measure of Progress"

COMMENTATOR: Perry Wallace, American University Washington College of Law

Friday, April 11

Lama Abu-Odeh, Georgetown University Law Center

TITLE: "Reflections on Law, Development and Rentierism in the Middle East: The Case of Egypt"

COMMENTATOR: Muneer Ahmad, American University Washington College of Law

Friday, April 18

Jeanne Schroeder, Cardozo Law School

TITLE: "The Four Lacanian Discourses or Turning Law Inside-Out"

COMMENTATOR: Adam Thurshwell, American University Washington College of Law

Friday, May 2

G. Mitu Gulati, Duke University

TITLE: "Are Judges Overpaid?: A Skeptical Response to the Judicial Salary Debate"

COMMENTATOR: Jon Baker, American University Washington College of Law