Panel Descriptions
October 16 and 17, 2009 - Stanford Law School
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Under the Long Shadow of Jim Crow: The Continuing Fight to Achieve Labor and Employment Rights for Domestic and Farm Workers
Date, Time and Location
Friday, October 16, 2:30-4:00 PM, Room 280A
Panel Description
Many farm and domestic workers in the United States face discrimination, brutal working conditions, and continue to be legally excluded from the basic labor protections that most of the U.S. workforce takes for granted. This panel will address state and federal efforts to achieve employment and labor rights for workers in these industries.
Speakers
- William B. Gould IV (Panel Moderator), Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law, Emeritus, Stanford Law School
- Alegría De La Cruz, Staff Attorney, Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment
- Hillary Ronen, Workers' Rights Co-Coordinating Attorney, La Raza Centro Legal
- Barbara Young, Domestic Worker & Member, Steering Committee of Domestic Workers United
Urban Renewal: Prospects, Promises, and Pitfalls
Date, Time and Location
Friday, October 16, 2:30-4:00 PM, Room 280B
Panel Description
Given concerns over carbon emissions, dependency on foreign oil, the housing market, and quality of life in suburbia, regional planning has increasingly focused on density and urban growth. This panel will discuss the best ways to implement urban renewal that is progressive and responsible from both a social and environmental perspective. How can urban renewal best address the major social and environmental issues of our time without displacing or otherwise having a negative effect on any segment of the urban community?
Speakers
- Richard Thompson Ford (Panel Moderator), George E. Osborne Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
- Roger A. Clay, Jr., President, Insight Center for Community and Economic Development
- Juliet Ellis, Executive Director, Urban Habitat
- Ron Miguel, President, San Francisco Planning Commission
Engaging Religious Communities in Support of Same-Sex Marriage
Date, Time and Location
Friday, October 16, 4:15-5:45 PM, Room 280A
Panel Description
Last year, religious communities played a major role in the passage of Proposition 8 and the elimination of same-sex marriage in California. This panel will bring together lawyers, gay rights activists, and people of faith to discuss methods of engaging religious communities in the acceptance of marriage equality. Panelists will address tensions within religious movements between notions of the "traditional" family and equality and justice. The panel will also specifically address how states around the nation have attempted to navigate the tension between civil rights and religious freedom by incorporating religious exemptions into laws meant to protect the LGBT community.
Speakers
- Jane Schacter (Panel Moderator), William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
- Kate Kendell, Executive Director, National Center for Lesbian Rights
- Andrew Koppelman, John Paul Stevens Professor of Law & Professor of Political Science, Northwestern University School of Law
- Rev. Dr. Jonipher Kwong, Interfaith Organizer, California Faith for Equality
When Schools Leave Children Behind: Accountability in the Education Reform Agenda
Date, Time and Location
Friday, October 16, 4:15-5:45 PM, Room 290
Panel Description
Over the last three decades, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores have remained largely flat despite a number of well-intentioned policy responses. Today, there is a significant achievement gap both between the United States and other countries and within the United States across socio-economic and racial and ethnic lines. Moreover there is a shortage of high quality teachers in a number of high needs schools and districts in the United States. Given that within the United States, significant differences in student outcomes exist not only between racial and socio-economic groups, but between schools and school districts serving similar populations, this panel will engage a number of policy frameworks for closing these gaps. Through addressing teacher quality, teacher certification, student assessment, school funding, unions, human capital reform, as well as other topics, this panel will ask how the federal government and the states should respond to districts and schools that are failing to educate their students and the related question of how school districts can create accountability for, and most importantly, foster student achievement.
Speakers
- William Simon (Panel Moderator), Everett B. Birch Professor in Law, Columbia Law School & Visiting Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
- Linda Darling Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education, Stanford University
- Daniel Weisberg, Vice President of Policy & General Counsel, The New Teacher Project
The Health Care Debate: A Voice for the Disenfranchised?: Addressing the Needs of Intersex Children, Immigrants, and Low-Income Women
Date, Time and Location
Saturday, October 17, 12:00-1:30 PM, Room 280A
Panel Description
In the current widespread discussion of health care reform, the voices championing the specific needs of a diverse health care population have been largely silenced by louder voices arguing for and against macro-level changes in the health care system. By focusing on reproductive health care, this panel addresses how the present health care system fails specific subpopulations including low-income women, intersex children, and immigrant women. The panel will address the extent to which the needs of vulnerable and disenfranchised populations map on to the health care needs of the population as a whole. Each speaker, working at the intersection of health law and policy, will address the ways in which legal skills can serve to provide a voice, if not a seat at the table, for those whose health care needs are ill-served under the present system.
Speakers
- Michelle Oberman (Panel Moderator), Professor of Law, Santa Clara University School of Law
- Deeana Jang, Policy Director, Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum
- Destiny Lopez, Executive Director, ACCESS/Women's Health Rights Coalition
- Anne Tamar-Mattis, Founder & Executive Director, Advocates for Informed Choice
Sexual Violence Against Women in Indian Country: Oliphant and Its Aftermath
Date, Time and Location
Saturday, October 17, 12:00-1:30 PM, Room 280B
Panel Description
In 1978, The Supreme Court severely weakened Indian legal sovereignty. Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe held that tribes lack the inherent authority to arrest, try and convict non-Indians who commit major crimes on their lands. As a result, the federal government holds exclusive jurisdiction over many crimes committed on Indian reservations. Alarmingly, it often fails to prosecute these offenses. Amnesty International recently released a report showing one in three Indian women on reservations are raped. Eighty percent of these women identify their attacker as non-Indian. Despite near-pandemic levels of crimes against Native women, the DOJ refuses to prosecute seventy-five percent of Native rape accusations against non-Native assailants. This panel will examine the state of contemporary criminal law on Indian lands, discuss the consequences of Oliphant for Native people and propose solutions for establishing legal autonomy.
Speakers
- Barton H. "Buzz" Thompson, Jr. (Panel Moderator), Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law & Perry L. McCarty Director, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford Law School
- Rit Bellis, Director, Suquamish Tribe Legal Department
- Kirsten Carlson, Staff Attorney & Director of Safe Women / Strong Nations Program, Indian Law Resource Center
- Sarah Deer, Assistant Professor of Law, William Mitchell College of Law
Contemporary Issues in Disability Litigation
Date, Time and Location
Saturday, October 17, 3:45-5:15 PM, Room 280A
Panel Description
The panelists will discuss the current state of litigation on disability rights issues. While the federal laws for people with disabilities are quite favorable—the 2008 ADA amendments broadening the scope of its coverage, and the 2004 IDEIA increasing protections and services for the education of children with disabilities—the proper interpretation and enforcement of these laws still remains an issue. The panelists will draw on their own experience litigating disability rights cases to address the role of judicial interpretation in the enforcement of disability law and key cases that have shaped the course of the disability rights movements.
Speakers
- Stephen Rosenbaum (Panel Moderator), Senior Lecturer, University of California Berkeley School of Law & Staff Attorney, Disability Rights California
- Mazen Basrawi, Counsel, Office of the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Department of Justice
- Claudia Center, Senior Staff Attorney & Director of the Disability Rights Program, Legal Aid Society - Employment Law Center
- Scott C. LaBarre, Principal, LaBarre Law Offices P.C.
Solitary Confinement in America's Prisons: A Human Rights Abuse?
Date, Time and Location
Saturday, October 17, 3:45-5:15 PM, Room 280B
Panel Description
One in one hundred Americans are currently incarcerated, and a growing number of those incarcerated are held in conditions of solitary confinement. In Supermax prisons, administrative segregation units, and even Guantanamo Bay, prisoners spend 22 or 23 hours of every day in isolation, for weeks, months or years. This panel will discuss the expanded use of solitary confinement in the American prison system and its effects on prisoners' health and recidivism. Through this discussion, panelists will ask: Is the use of solitary confinement cruel and unusual punishment? Is it a human rights violation? And if so, what can be done?
Speakers
- Joan Petersilia (Panel Moderator), Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
- J. Clark Kelso, Professor of Law & Senior Counsel to the Capital Center for Government Law and Policy, University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law
- Terry A. Kupers, M.D., M.S.P., Institute Professor, The Wright Institute
- Nick Trenticosta, Director, Center for Equal Justice
