ACS Austin: Insurrection at the Capitol: A Look at Disparate Punishments and the Civil and Legal Consequences of the Riots of January 6th, 2021

Over a year later, the violent insurrection that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 still heavily looms over the nation. With the 2022 midterm elections fast approaching, the Select House Committee tasked with investigating the attempted coup is moving swiftly to make its case about civil and criminal legal consequences for certain actors that day. For this hour-long online CLE program, the Austin Lawyers Chapter of the American Constitution Society will convene a panel of experts consisting of Professor Stephen Vladeck of the University of Texas School of Law and Ed Caspar of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law to lead a discussion of the legal action that has proceeded since that day. This presentation and discussion will include a contrast of the disparities in punishments that the Capitol insurrectionists received versus that of those who participated in Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020, as well as an overview of the current cases against Donald Trump filed by Capitol police officers who were injured on January 6, 2021.

PRESENTERS:

Stephen I. Vladeck holds the Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts at the University of Texas School of Law and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts, constitutional law, national security law, and military justice. Professor Vladeck has argued over a dozen cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Texas Supreme Court, and various lower federal civilian and military courts; has testified before numerous congressional committees and Executive Branch agencies and commissions; has served as an expert witness both in U.S. state and federal courts and in foreign tribunals; and has received numerous awards for his influential and widely cited legal scholarship, his prolific popular writing, his teaching, and his service to the legal profession. A graduate of Yale Law School, Vladeck clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He formerly taught at the University of Miami School of Law and American University Washington College of Law. He is an elected member of the University of Texas Faculty Council, in which he serves as Chair-Elect of the Committee of Counsel on Academic Freedom and Responsibility; an elected member of the American Law Institute; a Distinguished Scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, and a senior editor of the peer-reviewed Journal of National Security Law and Policy. Vladeck is the co-host, together with Professor Bobby Chesney, of the popular and award-winning "National Security Law Podcast." He is CNN's lead Supreme Court analyst and a co-author of Aspen Publishers' leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks. He is an executive editor of the Just Security blog and a senior editor of the Lawfare blog. And he is currently writing a book on the rise of the Supreme Court's "shadow docket," to be published by Basic Books in May 2023.

Edward Caspar is the Senior Counsel for National Support at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a non-partisan, non-profit organization formed in 1963 that works to secure equal justice for all through the rule of law, targeting, in particular, the inequities confronting African Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities. As Senior Counsel, Mr. Caspar is responsible for litigating matters across all project areas. Before joining the Lawyers' Committee in 2019, Mr. Caspar was an attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2002-2017, wherein he engaged in extensive litigation in a variety of civil rights cases. As Special Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, Mr. Caspar led the United States' civil litigation against the Sherriff's Office of Maricopa County, Arizona, for widespread civil rights violations, helping to secure crucial reforms and end unconstitutional policing practices. Mr. Caspar also worked in the Division's Criminal Section, prosecuting cases involving police misconduct, hate crimes, and human trafficking. In the Division's Educational Opportunities Section, Mr. Caspar litigated civil cases to remedy racial discrimination in public schools. Mr. Caspar also served as Legislative and Policy Counsel in the Civil Rights Division, coordinating inter-agency efforts to reduce unnecessary collateral consequences for criminal convictions and remove unnecessary prisoner reentry barriers. In 2016, he was detailed to the Department's Office of Legal Policy, where he served as Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General, helping to lead the development of policy initiatives on the advancement of civil rights and criminal justice reform. From 2017 to 2019, Mr. Caspar served as Director of the Office of Program Performance in the Legal Services Corporation, which administered over $400 million dollars in grants supporting legal services for low-income persons throughout the United States.

OPENING REMARKS:

Andrew Hairston, Education Justice Project Director, Texas Appleseed; Board Member, ACS Austin Lawyer Chapter Board of Directors

Shavonne Henderson, Lecturer and Assistant Dean for Equity and Inclusion, University of Texas School of Law; Board Member, ACS Austin Lawyer Chapter Board of Directors

CLE is pending for this event.

SUGGESTED READING MATERIALS:

• ACS, Insurrection at the Capitol: Where Do We Go From Here, available at https://www.acslaw.org/video/insurrection-at-the-capitol-where-do-we-go-from-here/. January 8, 2021.
• Dayton, Soren, "Gradually, then suddenly": How the Protecting Our Democracy Act addresses institutional decay," ACS Blog. January 6, 2022.
• Brown, Tristin, "Accountability from Within," ACS Blog. January 6, 2022.
• Goitein, Elizabeth, "Putting D.C. in the Chain of Command: Congress Should Reform the DC National Guard's Outdated and Dangerous Command Structure," ACS Blog. January 6, 2022.
• Ramachandran, Gowri, "A Year Later -- Sham Election Reviews Continue to Undermine Democracy," ACS Blog. January 5, 2022.
• Fernandes, Praveen, "Examining our Past to Secure our Future: What Reconstruction can teach us about January 6th and Constitutional Accountability," ACS Blog. January 5, 2022.
• Kirtley, Jane, "Liability for Amplification of Disinformation: A Law of Unintended Consequences?," ACS Blog. January 3, 2022.
• Gerstein, Josh and Cheney, Kyle, "Black Lives Matter comparison roils court in Jan. 6 cases," Politico. October 4, 2021.
• Richer, Alanna Durkin; Kunzelman, Michael; and Billeaud, Jacques, "Records rebut claims of unequal treatment of Jan. 6 rioters," AP News. August 30, 2021.

CLE in Texas has been applied for and is pending