Tag: 2016 ACS National Convention

Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards addresses the 2016 ACS National Convention.

More than any other time in recent memory, access to justice may be at a tipping point. Until recently, with the help of courts and legislatures, proponents of class action bans and forced arbitration had a string of victories in their efforts to restrict the ability of consumers, employees, investors and others to seek redress for their injuries. In the past year, however, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a scathing report on the effect of forced arbitration clauses and a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking limiting their use. The change in the Supreme Court’s composition is leading corporate defendants to reassess class action appeals to what may now be a less business-friendly Court. How will this potential tipping point affect the ability of individuals and classes to assert their rights under consumer, anti-trust, securities, employment discrimination and wage-and-hours laws?

Speakers - 

Lauren Guth Barnes, Partner, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP (moderator)
F. Paul Bland, Jr., Executive Director, Public Justice
Kalpana Kotagal, Partner, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC 
Eric Mogilnicki, Partner, Covington & Burling LLP
Suja Thomas, Professor of Law, University of Illinois College of Law

While the currently depleted Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4 in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, the latest challenge to public unions, activist anti-union litigants have had some success in recent years in restricting the efforts of organized labor to fight for living wages, gender and wage equality, and safe and stable workplace environments. With the Fight for $15 gaining steam, will unions grow in workplaces that are not traditionally organized? What role will unions play in the emerging “gig economy?” And how can organized labor prepare for coming challenges to union cornerstones such as exclusive bargaining agreements and renewed challenges to public sector unions? This panel will focus on what organized labor can do to continue fighting for workers’ rights.

Speakers - 

Dorian Warren, Fellow, Roosevelt Institute; Board Chair, Center for Community Change; Host and Executive Producer of MSNBC’s Nerding Out (moderator)
Daniel DiSalvo, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute; Associate Professor of Political Science, Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership, City College of New York –CUNY
Ruben Garcia, Professor of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law
Richard Griffin, Jr., General Counsel, National Labor Relations Board
Judith Scott, General Counsel, Service Employees International Union; Partner, James & Homan PC

Marginalized, disproportionately low-income communities, including communities of color, sexual minorities and transgender people, have a fraught relationship with the criminal justice system. Overcriminalization and overincarceration, the inevitable consequences of our current criminal justice policies, rob marginalized communities of financial and human capital, and exacerbate these communities’ lack of political and economic power. Over- and under-policing (in which police aggressively police communities for minor crimes while failing to prevent or investigate major, violent crimes) fail to adequately address threats of violence, both at the hands of criminals and the police. What measures best empower these communities to achieve the political and economic influence to ensure self-determination and prevent continued mistreatment by the criminal justice system?

Speakers

Kanya Bennett, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office (moderator)
Paul Butler, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Lauren-Brooke Eisen, Senior Counsel, Brennan Center for Justice
William Otis, Adjunct Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Remington Gregg, Legislative Counsel, Human Rights Campaign

The First Amendment right to free expression holds a special place in the American public mind, conjuring thoughts of reporters who keep us informed and protesters who keep us honest. But in recent years, conservative advocates have advanced First Amendment arguments that some claim enhance the interests of the already powerful at the expense of everyone else. Whether in the campaign nance context, labor law, or commercial speech, they have thus far been successfully enlisting the Supreme Court in their cause. Has something unalterable happened to the cherished First Amendment?

Speakers 

Linda Greenhouse, Senior Research Scholar in Law, Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence, and Joseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law, Yale Law School (moderator)
Tamara Piety, Phyllis Hurley Frey Professor of Law, University of Tulsa College of Law
Martin Redish, Louis and Harriet Ancel Professor of Law and Public Policy, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
Paul Smith, Partner, Jenner & Block
Daniel Tokaji, Charles W. Ebersold and Florence Whitcomb Ebersold Professor of Constitutional Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law