The 14th Annual Dean’s Diversity Forum Faith in the Future: America’s Ongoing Quest to Build a Diverse Democracy.
Keynote Speaker: Vincent Rougeau
Vincent Rougeau is the dean of Boston College Law School, the inaugural director of the new Boston College Forum on Racial Justice in America, and the 2021 president of the American Association of Law Schools. Dean Rougeau has just been named the first lay president of the College of the Holy Cross.
Panelists
Iva Ferrell, Associate Professor of Legal Methods at Delaware Law School
The Honorable Royce L. Morris, Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas
Joseph Robinson, Executive Director at the MLK Leadership Development Institute
Books referenced during the presentation include:
Caste – Isabel Wilkerson My Grandmother’s Hands – Resmaa Menakem How to be Antiracist – Ibram X. Kendi Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 – Ibram X. Kendi The New Jim Crow – Michelle Alexander Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man – Emmanuel Acho
Widener University Commonwealth Law School is the Pennsylvania capital’s only law school, with three specialized centers of legal scholarship through its Law & Government Institute, Environmental Law and Sustainability Center, and Business Advising Program. Widener Law Commonwealth offers an exceptional learning experience that is personal, practical, and professional. Visit commonwealthlaw.widener.edu for more information.
#lawschool #WidenerLawCW #diversity #lawstudents
Music Credit: LeChuckz
The 2021 Jurist in Residence Lecture, A Second Chance: Rehabilitation, Reform and Reentry, sponsored by the Law and Government Institute, was held on Thursday, February 4. The lecture will be presented by The Honorable Royce L. Morris, Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas.
Featured Panelists
Hon. Scott A. Evans, Criminal Calendar Judge, Dauphin County
Kelly Evans, Deputy Secretary, Office of Reentry, PA Board of Probation and Parole
Daniel Karhnak, Senior U.S. Probation Officer
Douglas Hollis, Mentoring Coordinator, Sound Community Solutions (former juvenile lifer)
Judge Morris's Biography
After more than 25 years of distinguished service as an attorney and civic service to his community, Royce Morris was elected to serve as a Judge on the Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas in 2018.
Judge Morris has provided numerous Continuing Legal Education Seminars for the Pennsylvania Bar Institute and the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, having previously served that organization as president, vice president and treasurer. He was an adjunct professor at Harrisburg Area Community College teaching criminal law and criminal evidence for more than ten years. Judge Morris received a gubernatorial appointment to serve on the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing and served on the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Task Force on the Code of Judicial Conduct. Judge Morris serves on the House of Delegates for the Pennsylvania Bar Association and is the former chair of the Equal Professional Opportunity Committee for the Dauphin County Bar Association and the Capital Area Managing Partners Diversity Initiative. Named by Philadelphia Magazine as a “Pennsylvania Super Lawyer” from 2008-2017, he rated at the highest level of professional excellence, AV preeminent, by his peers at Martindale Hubbell.
Widener University Commonwealth Law School is the Pennsylvania capital’s only law school, with three specialized centers of legal scholarship through its Law & Government Institute, Environmental Law and Sustainability Center, and Business Advising Program. Widener Law Commonwealth offers an exceptional learning experience that is personal, practical, and professional. Visit commonwealthlaw.widener.edu for more information.
Follow the Law and Government Institute on Twitter @WidenerLG.
Music Credit: LeChuckz
Widener Law Commonwealth's Environmental Law Distinguished Speaker Series Presented: Earth in Trust: Inalienable Rights for a Collective Ecological Future on November 19, 2020.
Mary Christina Wood is a Philip H.Knight Professor of Law at University of Oregon and Faculty Director of the law school’s nationally acclaimed Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program. Her research focuses on a fundamental rights approach to ecological restoration and distribution of resources. She is one of the foremost authorities in the world on the pubic trust principle and is widely credited with originating the approach used in youth-led litigation across the U.S. and in other countries around the world invoking the principle to hold government accountable for promoting the fossil fuel energy system. She is a frequent speaker on global warming issues and has received national and international attention for her sovereign trust approach to global climate policy. Professor Wood is author of Nature’s Trust, Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age (Cambridge University Press), as well as textbooks, book chapters, monographs, and articles spanning environmental and natural resources law, tribal sovereignty, and climate crisis.
Widener University Commonwealth Law School is the Pennsylvania capital’s only law school, with three specialized centers of legal scholarship through its Law & Government Institute, Environmental Law and Sustainability Center, and Business Advising Program. Widener Law Commonwealth offers an exceptional learning experience that is personal, practical, and professional. Visit commonwealthlaw.widener.edu for more information.
This is a recording of the 2020 Annual John Gedid Lecture Series: The President and the Rise of Partisan Administration of the Law hosted by Widener University Commonwealth Law School, Law and Government Institute.
This lecture series honors John Gedid, one of the founders of Widener Law Commonwealth, the school’s first vice-dean and the founder of Widener’s Law and Government Institute. Professor Gedid has served as a wonderful mentor to every faculty member the school has hired. The series showcases the work of nationally recognized young scholars much the same way Professor Gedid has fostered, encouraged, and applauded the work of those who joined the school he helped to found.
Speaker Kevin M. Stack is Lee S. & Charles A. Speir Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University Law School. He writes and teaches in the areas of administrative law, separation of powers, and statutory interpretation. In 2019, he was appointed as a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States. In 2013, he received the American Bar Association’s Annual Scholarship Award in 2013. He is co-author (with Lisa S. Bressman and Edward L. Rubin) of The Regulatory State, a casebook on statutes and administrative lawmaking. He served as law clerk for the Honorable Kimba N. Wood (S.D.N.Y) and the Honorable A. Wallace Tashima (Ninth Circuit). Before his J.D at Yale Law School, he earned a master’s degree in philosophy at Oxford University, supported by a Fulbright Scholarship, and a B.A. from Brown University.
Widener University Commonwealth Law School is the Pennsylvania capital’s only law school, with three specialized centers of legal scholarship through its Law & Government Institute, Environmental Law and Sustainability Center, and Business Advising Program. Widener Law Commonwealth offers an exceptional learning experience that is personal, practical, and professional. Visit commonwealthlaw.widener.edu for more information.
Follow the Law and Government Institute on Twitter @WidenerLG.
Music Credit: LeChuckz
This lecture entitled, Bail: Risk Release & Reform, was be presented by Chief Magistrate Judge Susan E. Schwab, United States Magistrate Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. The following individuals served as experts on the lecture panel:
Hon. Richard A. Lewis
President Judge
Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas
Heidi Freese
Federal Public Defender
Middle District of Pennsylvania
David J. Freed
United States Attorney
The United States Attorney's Office
Middle District of Pennsylvania
Nyssa Taylor, Esquire
Criminal Justice Policy Counsel
ACLU of Pennsylvania
Judge Susan E. Schwab was appointed Magistrate Judge for the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in 2012. She assumed the role of Chief Magistrate Judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in 2017.
She spent 11 years in public service with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as Deputy Chief Counsel for the Auditor General, Deputy Chief Counsel and Deputy State Treasurer for Administration for Treasury, and Deputy Chief of Staff for Administration and Deputy Chief Counsel for the Democratic Caucus of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.
Prior to that, Judge Schwab was in private law practice with Rhoads & Sinon, LLP in Harrisburg and Semanoff, Orsmby, Greenberg and Torchia, LLC in Huntingdon Valley.
Judge Schwab is from Wilkes-Barre, Pa. and graduated summa cum laude from Wilkes College. She was a member of the inaugural class of the Harrisburg campus of Widener University School of Law, where she served as an Internal Editor of the Widener Journal of Public Law. She graduated magna cum laude and was the law school’s first valedictorian.
Judge Schwab has been a member of the Board of Overseers of Widener University School of Law and the Chair of the Widener University School of Law Harrisburg Campus Diversity Advisory Board.
For more information about Widener Law Commonwealth's podcast, visit commonwealthlaw.widener.edu/podcast.
Music Credit: LeChuckz
Our first Wayback Wednesday episode in celebration of Earth Day on April 22 is a recording from a 2016 lecture by Jerry Taylor.
This event was co-sponsored by the Environmental Law and Sustainability Center and the Law and Government Institute.
Jerry Taylor is president of the Niskanen Center, during which he provides the case of why conservatives do themselves a disservice by ignoring the risks of climate change. A little about the speaker: Prior to founding the Center in 2014, Mr.Taylor spent 23 years at the Cato Institute, where he served as director of natural resource studies, assistant editor of Regulation magazine, senior fellow, and then vice president. Before that, Mr. Taylor was the staff director for the energy and environment task force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Over the past two decades, Mr. Taylor has been one of the prominent and influential libertarian voices in energy policy in Washington. He is the author of numerous policy studies, has testified often before Congress, and his commentary has appeared in The Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other prominent print and electronic outlets.
https://widenerenvironment.wordpress....
Music Credit: LeChuckz
The lecture this year, Immigration, Race and Rights in the Trump Era: Lessons From the Muslim Ban and DACA Termination, was presented by Muneer I. Ahmad, Clinical Professor of Law and Deputy Dean for Experiential Education at Yale Law School.
Professor Ahmad is Deputy Dean for Experiential Education, a Clinical Professor of Law, and the Director of the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale Law School. He co-directs the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic (WIRAC) and teaches courses related to immigration, human rights, and development.
In WIRAC, he and his students represent individuals, groups and organizations in both litigation and non-litigation matters related to immigration, immigrants’ rights, and labor, and intersections among them. The clinic’s recent work has included Darweesh v. Trump, the first lawsuit to challenge the first Muslim Ban executive order, which resulted in the issuance of a nationwide stay within 24 hours of the ban; and Batalla Vidal v. Nielsen, which challenges the termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA). Professor Ahmad has represented immigrants in a range of labor, immigration, and trafficking cases, and for three years represented a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay; he has written on these and related topics.
His scholarship examines the intersections of immigration, race, and citizenship in both legal theory and legal practice. Recent scholarship includes Beyond Earned Citizenship, 52 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 257 (2017), which critiques the dominant approach to comprehensive immigration reform.
Previously, he was Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law. Prior to joining the faculty at American in 2001, he was a Skadden Fellow and staff attorney at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles. He clerked for the Hon. William K. Sessions III in the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont.
For more information about Widener Law Commonwealth's podcast, visit commonwealthlaw.widener.edu/podcast.
Music Credit: LeChuckz
Professor Randy Lee details Harry Potter`s lessons on rules, justice, forgiveness, honor, and the magic in practicing law. This is a recording of a 2017 CLE from homecoming weekend.
For more information about Widener Law Commonwealth's podcast, visit commonwealthlaw.widener.edu/podcast.
Music Credit: LeChuckz
This episode includes a recorded lecture from Sophia Z. Lee, a Professor of Law and History and Deputy Dean at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
View the video from this event on Widener Law Commonwealth's YouTube channel.
Professor Lee is a legal historian whose scholarship synthesizes constitutional and administrative law. She has written about administrative agencies’ role in shaping constitutional law; civil rights and labor advocates’ challenges to workplace discrimination during the early Cold War; and conservative legal movements in the post-New Deal era. Her book, The Workplace Constitution from the New Deal to the New Right, was published in 2014 by Cambridge University Press. She is currently working on a book about constitutional privacy. Her articles can be found in the Yale Law Journal, the Virginia Law Review, and Law & History Review. She earned her J.D. and Ph.D. in history from Yale. Prior to joining the Penn Law faculty, she clerked for the Honorable Kimba M. Wood of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
For more information about the podcast, visit commonwealthlaw.widener.edu/podcast.
Music Credit: LeChuckz
Commonwealth Court Judge P. Kevin Brobson, currently serving as the Jurist in Residence for Widener Law Commonwealth, presented A Reasonable Expectation of Transparency--Where the Rights to Know and to Privacy Intersect.
Judge Brobson discussed the legal issues that arise at the intersection of the rights to know and to privacy. Many states, including Pennsylvania, have a Right to Know law that encourages government transparency. Those laws can implicate rights to privacy when the information sought from the government involves private matters, however.
For more information, visit commonwealthlaw.widener.edu/podcast.
Music Credit: LeChuckz