Faculty Colloquia and Events

Professor Christina Mulligan (Brooklyn Law) explores the nature, evolution, and internal limits of the state police power.

Lunch will be served. Please RSVP.

TBA

Dr. Paul E. Kerry (BYU) examines the opposition of the Religious Society of Friends to Texas annexation, the Mexican-American War, and the Fugitive Slave Act as a form of legal resistance to the federalization of slavery. His talk places the First Amendment right of petition at the heart of the story, showing how Quakers used memorials, petitions, antislavery newspapers, religious meetings, and public advocacy to challenge congressional suppression under the gag rule and resist federal complicity in slavery’s expansion and enforcement. The paper recovers a neglected chapter in the history of antislavery constitutionalism.

Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP. We hope you join us!

Faculty meeting for all law school faculty

Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Texas has been home to one of the harshest criminal abortion bans in the country. Yet, there have been virtually no prosecutions under the ban, due in part to the territorial limits of state law, constraints on accomplice liability, and a legislative commitment not to prosecute pregnant persons for their abortions. This talk will consider the coordinated legal strategy of lawyers and advocates in Texas to use local government ordinances and civil litigation as sites for criminal law claiming, if not criminal lawmaking.

TBA

In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the United States possesses a fragmented patchwork of state laws imposing varying degrees of restrictions on and penalties for abortion. This talk will examine the profound implications of this arrangement for noncitizen women, whose rights and mobility are already constrained by federal immigration laws and policies. It will argue that the intersection of state-level abortion restrictions and federal immigration enforcement creates de facto internal borders, uniquely curtailing the reproductive freedoms of noncitizens.

TBA

Drawing Board Luncheon: H.W. Perry

Drawing Board Luncheon: Lee Kovarsky

Faulty forensic evidence and biased evidence relying on sex-based stereotypes have long been used to convict innocent women in situations where an accident or health event has been misconstrued as a criminal act. This talk will conceptualize and consider “reproductive wrongful convictions,” which are instances in which a noncriminal pregnancy-related event or act––such as a miscarriage, stillbirth, or taking legally prescribed medicine––is erroneously labeled as criminal. It will also attend to the ways that women with disabilities and from racially and economically subordinated communities are often labeled as “unfit” and made particularly vulnerable to these charges.

Details to follow.

Drawing Board Luncheon: Andrew Granato

Using the example of post-Dobbs abortion bans that contain no exceptions for incest or rape, this talk will argue that law and institutions charged with protecting the vulnerable are often responsible for the oppression of women, the suppression of their capacities, and the harms that follow. It will examine some of the ways that the state wields and perpetuates sexual violence inconsistently based on race and class, as it curates prurient and avoidable harm against women and girls, fails to shield them from harm, and too frequently magnifies both risks of this harm and the harm itself.

Details to follow.

Healthcare conscientious objection allows providers to refuse treatment based on moral or religious beliefs. Alongside the legalization of abortion since the 1970s, conscience clauses have expanded globally. In response, some legislative bodies and courts have implemented institutional safeguards to ensure that conscience-based refusals do not become insurmountable obstacles for patients.  This talk will argue that while these institutional safeguards hold potential, they have not fundamentally altered the dominant understanding of medical objection, which frames the conflict and its resolution as a situation involving two equally balanced parties. 

Details to follow.

Details to follow.

Details will be announced soon.

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Details to follow.