Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray continues to garner attention for his efforts to hold large corporations accountable for their involvement in shaping one of the nation's worst economic eras. Last week numerous media outlets and blogs, including this one, noted Cordray's lawsuit against home lender, GMAC Mortgage, alleging that it filed false affidavits in scores of foreclosure proceedings.

The New York Times profiles Cordray's work, noting that during his two years in office he has lodged lawsuits against "global financial houses, rating agencies, subprime lenders and foreclosure scammers." Cordray, the newspaper continues has "wrested about $2 billion so far," including "a $475 million Merrill Lynch settlement, $400 million from Marsh & McLennan and $725 million from the American International Group."

The Times writes that the Ohio Attorney General (pictured) "is no William Jennings Bryan inveighing against the evils of monopoly capital. He can be eloquent about corporate misbehavior, in an eyes-downcast and soft-spoken fashion."

Cordray tells The Times, "The notion that banks will just get things right over time is perhaps true. But over what time period, and at what terrible cost to the individual American?"

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By Stephen B. Bright and Lauren Sudeall Lucas, co-authors of the recently released ACS Issue Brief, Overcoming Defiance of the Constitution: The Need for a Federal Role in Protecting the Right to Counsel in Georgia. Bright is president and senior counsel for the Southern Center for Human Rights; Lucas is a staff attorney for the organization.

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On September 27, 2010, Senator Patrick Leahy introduced the Justice for All Reauthorization Act of 2010, which would reauthorize the 2004 Justice for All Act but also promises to extend, strengthen and improve many of the 2004 reforms. Among other things, the Reauthorization Act instructs the Attorney General to assist states and local governments who request support to meet their constitutional obligations under the Sixth Amendment. To make such support possible, the Act provides for $5 million to be appropriated each year for five years, starting in fiscal year 2011. The Act would eventually authorize the Department of Justice (DOJ) to file civil actions against governmental entities - or individuals acting on behalf of such entities - who engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives individuals of their constitutionally-protected right to counsel. Unfortunately, the latter provision of the Act would not take effect for two years, first giving states and local governments a chance to rectify existing systemic deficiencies with DOJ's technical assistance.

While this may be one step in the right direction, as a solution, its magnitude fails to mirror the dimensions of the greater problems facing indigent defense systems across the country. In Georgia, where millions of dollars collected through a statutory scheme to provide for indigent defense have been diverted to other government purposes, public defender offices are overwhelmed by crushing caseloads and forced to decide which of their many clients will benefit from the meager investigative and expert funding they have been allocated. Many indigent defendants - including defendants like Jamie Weis, who are facing the death penalty - have for years been denied funding for counsel and for critical investigative and expert assistance, making a fair trial impossible. In an effort to control costs, fixed-fee contracts have been used with alarming regularity. Under such contracts, lawyers are paid a nominal amount to provide representation to a set number of defendants; often such attorneys simultaneously maintain a private practice and the financial incentive to focus on their non-paying clients can be difficult to discern.

In addition to being underfunded, Georgia's system for providing representation to poor people accused of crimes lacks critical features such as independence, proper management, effective recruitment, and a comprehensive training and continuing legal education program. In our recently-released Issue Brief, Overcoming Defiance of the Constitution: The Need for a Federal Role in Protecting the Right to Counsel in Georgia, we provide a fuller history of Georgia's indigent defense system and its current beleaguered state. Ultimately, we advocate for a greater federal role in protecting the right to counsel on a state and local level, suggesting, for example, that the federal government require greater parity between funding of the prosecution and the defense, attach minimum requirements regarding training, caseloads, and supervision to grants made directly to indigent defense programs, and condition federal grants made to prosecutors and law enforcement agencies on their jurisdiction's compliance with the Sixth Amendment.

In reality, it will take more than one federal legislative act to create change for Georgia's indigent defense system. But our suggestions regarding federal involvement stem from the recognition that, given what history has shown, there must be some motivation available other than the mandate of the United States Constitution. States like Georgia are not willing to solve this problem on their own - particularly when those who are in a position to effect change are elected into office or appointed by those who are elected into office. Supporting the rights of criminal defendants has never been a popular campaign platform and those most impacted by the criminal justice system are not a powerful political constituency. DOJ's ability and willingness to pursue civil actions against jurisdictions that are out of compliance with the Constitution can therefore fill a critical void. Moreover, such a development would be a welcome reaffirmation of the federal government's shared responsibility to enforce the right to counsel.

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By Sherrilyn Ifill, Professor of Law, University of Maryland School of Law

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There's a story to be told from the intense media focus on last week's Snyder v. Phelps case in the Supreme Court. To be sure, the case - involving a challenge by the father of a slain serviceman to protests conducted by a fringe religious organization at his son's funeral - is an important one in which the Court may provide importance guidance on the reach of the First Amendment. The protests at the military funerals, in which followers of the Westboro Baptist "church," hold up signs that celebrate the death of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, which Westboro members regard as a punishment for what they believe is U.S. tolerance of gays in the military - are repulsive by almost any sane standard. Given the lurid facts of the case, and the tension between our sympathy for Alfred Snyder and our traditional robust protection of even repulsive speech under the First Amendment, it's perhaps not surprising that almost every major news outlet and Supreme Court blog reported on last Thursday's oral argument.

But it's telling that on the same day Snyder was argued, the Court also heard oral argument in Connick v. Thompson - a case with considerably more concrete implications for the lives of thousands of criminal defendants. In Connick, the Court will decide whether a man who was convicted of capital murder and held in solitary confinement on death row for 14 years can hold a prosecutor's office civilly liable for violating his constitutional rights by withholding exculpatory evidence from defense counsel and failing to train prosecutors in their obligation to furnish this information to defense counsel. The obligation of prosecutors to turn over such evidence to defense counsel was first established by the Supreme Court in 1963. But the New Orleans district attorney's office argues in Connick that it cannot be held liable for a single incident of violating Brady. Instead, the prosecutor argues that they can only be held liable if it is demonstrated that they engaged in a pattern of withholding such evidence. In other words, only if we repeatedly violated the Constitution can we be compelled to pay for allowing an innocent man to be imprisoned and almost executed.

With the exception of an article I wrote for The Root, and an in-depth treatment by John Hollway in SLATE, (Hollway's book on the Thompson case has just been released) the oral argument in Connick escaped media and Supreme Court blog attention. And this is its own story. Connick (like last year's Pottawattamie, IA v. McGhee case) is a case that peels back the cover on an aspect of the criminal justice system that is too little examined in the mainstream media, and is unfortunately too well-known to many African Americans. The willingness of some prosecutors to withhold evidence that would likely exculpate criminal defendants, or as in the Pottawattamie case, to deliberately fabricate evidence to frame criminal suspects is a reality of our criminal justice system. The fact that these instances are rare compared to the thousands of cases in which prosecutors act ethically, makes them no less corrosive of public confidence in our justice system. That the victims of this kind of misconduct are often African Americans adds yet another layer of ugliness that further complicates the public response. Unfortunately, it may also explain why these stories - even when they make it to the Supreme Court - get so little attention. When the victims are prominent and white - as in the case of the Duke lacrosse team members accused of rape - prosecutorial misconduct makes an intense, but still too-brief appearance on the front pages of our newspapers.

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Author Steve Wermiel discusses his subject (Part II)

This year, the First Monday in October brought not only the traditional return to the bench for the justices of the Supreme Court, but also the publication of an important new book about one of the most influential justices of all time, William J. Brennan. Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion, by Seth Stern, a lawyer and legal reporter for Congressional Quarterly, and Stephen Wermiel, a law professor at American University and a former Supreme Court reporter for The Wall Street Journal, is the long awaited authoritative account of the justice's life, based on unprecedented access to him and his confidential case files. In a recent interview with ACSblog interviewed Prof. Wermiel about the Justice and the research behind the book. In the interview with ACSblog, Wermiel discusses how he came to be chosen by Brennan to write the book, the special access he received to the justice and his papers, the justice's confidence in his own abilities and his willingness to hire conservative law clerks, the decisions the justice thought were his most significant, the implications of Brennan's legacy for current ideological battles over judicial nominations, and many other subjects. For part one of this interview, click here.

 

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As part of a symposium on the 45th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, ACS hosted a memorable lunchtime conversation between Congressman John Lewis and Pulitzer Prize winning author Taylor Branch, during which they reflected on the rare confluence of circumstances that allowed for the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Lewis discussed how support for the Act's passage grew, including recollections about the introduction of the phrase "One Man, One Vote," the efforts to March from Selma to Montgomery, and President Johnson's leadership on passage of the historic law.

As Branch told the standing-room-only audience, "Historically ... what's so significant about this is that it brings together an aroused citizenry with a responsive government ... Underneath all of it is the notion that through politics, you can do something positive to change not just everyday conditions, but to change the realities of peoples' lives. That notion is to some degree severely atrophied today, that politics has this kind of noble possibility."

Highlights of the conversation can be viewed by clicking on the video below.

The full conversation between Cong. Lewis and Taylor Branch can be viewed here. The ACS symposium also featured two fascinating panel discussions in which a broad range of experts discussed the Voting Rights Act in the wake of two recent Supreme Court decisions, Bartlett and NAMUDNO, and anticipated election administration challenges during the 2010 midterm elections and beyond.

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By Carlton Larson, professor of law, UC Davis School of Law. Professor Larson is author of the chapter, "Legacy Preferences and the Constitutional Prohibition of Titles of Nobility," in The Century Foundation book, Affirmative Action for the Rich: Legacy Preferences in College Admissions.  

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In a recent book, Affirmative Action for the Rich, a number of authors address various aspects of the problem of legacy preferences in college admissions. My chapter, entitled, "Legacy Preferences and the Constitutional Prohibition of Titles of Nobility," makes an argument that many people will initially find quite startling. The Constitution flatly prohibits the states from granting any "title of nobility." I argue that public universities violate the prohibition of titles of nobility when granting preferential admission to applicants based on their ancestry.

At first blush, this argument might seem a bit nutty. The prohibition would seem to be about creating dukes and earls, not about distinguishing among 17-years olds applying to college. But this perception is simply wrong. To see why, imagine a simple hypothetical. Suppose that a state decided to create a new position called "Distinguished Citizen." Each person selected as a "Distinguished Citizen" would receive a coat of arms, a large country estate, and would be entitled to serve in a state "Council of Distinguished Citizens" that would replace the state senate. The title of "Distinguished Citizen" would be hereditary, descending to the individual's eldest child or other heir at law. In this case, no prohibited "title" of nobility has actually been used - nobody was formally declared a duke or an earl. But, functionally, this system is virtually identical to the English House of Lords - precisely the type of aristocracy that the Constitution was meant to prohibit. If this proposal did not violate the prohibition of titles of nobility, then the prohibition could be easily evaded by simply using certain words rather than others - "Distinguished Citizen," rather than "Earl."

As this example suggests, the prohibition of titles of nobility is not primarily about words - it is about the substance of nobility. To know whether a governmental practice violates the prohibition, one must know functionally how it actually works, not whatever label it happens to be wearing. So what, then, is the substance of nobility? One of the core features of nobility is a set of hereditary privileges with respect to institutions of the state. This feature, more than anything else, animated the constitutional prohibition.

My chapter spends a fair amount of time exploring how revolutionary Americans understood the term "title of nobility." This evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that revolutionary Americans viewed hereditary privileges as flatly prohibited by the Constitution's prohibition of titles of nobility, and by the predecessor clause in the Articles of Confederation. As one proponent of the Constitution pointed out, American political leaders would "have none of the peculiar follies and vices of those men, who possess power merely because their fathers held it before them, for they will be educated (under equal advantages, and, with equal prospects) among and on a footing with the other sons of a free people." Revolutionary Americans repeated, insistently (with the notorious exception of slavery), that any form of hereditary privilege be purged from American life. When a group of former Continental Army officers formed a hereditary society, an outraged people demanded that it be abolished as a violation of the fundamental principles of equality the nation was founded on. Many of America's most distinguished lawyers concluded that this society violated the prohibition on titles of nobility in the Articles of Confederation, even though no formal titles such as "earl" or "duke" had actually been employed.

Once we understand that the constitutional prohibition of titles of nobility is not limited to specific titles, but extends to all hereditary privileges granted by the state, it is easy to see why legacy preferences in public universities cannot be sustained. These preferences augment the candidacies of certain applicants for no other reason than their ancestry. It is hereditary privilege, pure and simple, entirely unrelated to any personal quality of the applicant. This is precisely the type of privilege with respect to state institutions that the revolutionary generation was most concerned to eliminate. Indeed, so successful was the American Revolution in this respect that is impossible to think of any other area of American life in which public institutions routinely favor certain people solely based on ancestry. Would we give bar examinees a few extra points because they happen to have a lawyer parent? Or issue hereditary hunting licenses? Of course, not. The very idea is absurd. And it's just as absurd in the context of college admissions. Although created in the 1920's to reduce the number of Jewish students at elite institutions (prior to the 1920s, elite institutions did not limit their class size; they took every applicant who passed the rigid entrance requirements), legacy preferences are more properly viewed as a relic of a monarchical, aristocratic era. They have no place in 21st century America.

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Author Steve Wermiel discusses his subject (Part I)

This year, the First Monday in October brought not only the traditional return to the bench for the justices of the Supreme Court, but also the publication of an important new book about one of the most influential justices of all time, William J. Brennan. Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion, by Seth Stern, a lawyer and legal reporter for Congressional Quarterly, and Stephen Wermiel, a law professor at American University and a former Supreme Court reporter for The Wall Street Journal, is the long awaited authoritative account of the justice's life, based on unprecedented access to him and his confidential case files. In a recent interview with ACSblog interviewed Prof. Wermiel about the Justice and the research behind the book. In the interview with ACSblog, Wermiel discusses how he came to be chosen by Brennan to write the book, the special access he received to the justice and his papers, the justice's confidence in his own abilities and his willingness to hire conservative law clerks, the decisions the justice thought were his most significant, the implications of Brennan's legacy for current ideological battles over judicial nominations, and many other subjects. For the second part of this interview, click here.

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The Senate's decision to adjourn without considering any more of President Obama's judicial nominees and the continuing obstruction by Senate conservatives has led to mounting criticism from the president, court watchers, and editorial writers. In a letter to Senate leaders, President Obama decried the Senate's failure to confirm a single pending nominee before recessing last week. "Despite the urgent and pressing need to fill these important posts, a minority of Senators has systematically and irresponsibly used procedural moves to block or delay confirmation votes on judicial nominees," Obama wrote, noting that even the most noncontroversial nominees have not escaped needless delays.

JudicialNominations.org is a new website developed by ACS dedicated to tracking the nominations, delays, and continuing vacancy crisis in the federal judiciary. Visit JudicialNominations.org to keep abreast of the latest developments, and follow us on Facebook to receive regular updates. Here are some recent posts:

Recent Updates to "In the News"
"Those who ought to be livid are ordinary citizens for whom justice delayed is indeed justice denied."
-Lance Dickie in The Seattle Times

• 10/6/10 - "All Federal Circuit Vacancies Now Have Nominees, but Quick Confirmation Unlikely" in The Natonal Law Journal
• 10/4/10 - "Judicial vacancies put justice on hold" in The Seattle Times
• 10/2/10 - "Senate's judicial graveyard" in The Charlotte Observer
• 10/1/10 - "Senate recesses without confirming 23 judges; Obama lashes out" in The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog

New Congressional Statements

• 10/7/10 - Sen. Cardin (D-Md.) on Diversity matters on the Supreme Court
• 9/29/10 - Sen. Leahy (D-Vt.) on Judicial Nominations
• 9/27/10 - Sen. Wicker (R-Miss.) on the Nomination of James E. Graves, Jr.

New Recommended Readings

• 10/5/10 - The Real Nuclear Option in The Huffington Post
• 10/5/10 - Extra Credit: Judicial vacancies put justice on hold in the Athens Banner-Herald
• 10/3/10 - 3Q's: Senator Roger Wicker on judicial nominations in NEMS360

New Videos

• 9/29/10 - Stephen Colbert: "The Word - Original Spin"
• 9/29/10 - Sen. Merkley (D-Ore.) on the Dysfunctional Senate

 These and many more developments are available here.

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Two new Issue Briefs in an ACS series on the nation's indigent defense crisis document the extent of states' noncompliance with the constitutional right to counsel, and propose that the federal government intervene with conditional grants and legislation.

Painting a grave picture of a flailing indigent defense system in the state of Georgia, where contract attorneys are hired to work for a flat fee, and the state shows "indifference even when life is at stake," Stephen B. Bright, president and senior counsel for the Southern Center for Human Rights, and Lauren Sudeall Lucas, a staff attorney for the organization, call for a strong federal response. In Overcoming Defiance of the Constitution: The Need for a Federal Rule in Protecting the Right to Counsel in Georgia, the authors propose that the federal government create a mechanism similar to the Legal Services Corporation to fund state defender systems, and that the federal government equalize the playing field between prosecutors and defenders by conditioning awards granted to law enforcers on demonstrating that there is a well-functioning indigent defense system in that jurisdiction.

"The generosity of federal grants programs over the years and the unwillingness of states to fund adequately programs for providing representation to poor people accused of crimes has resulted in many parts of the country in systems that are completely imbalanced. There is simply no adversary system," Lucas and Bright write.

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The majority opinion in Citizens United v. FEC, which allows corporations to spend freely on elections, is a "deep danger to our democracy and self-government," says Jeff Clements, general counsel of Free Speech For People.

Clements, in an interview with ACSblog, said one of the most effective ways of responding to Citizens United is through amending the Constitution, which is not as Clements noted an easy proposition. Nonetheless, he said Citizens United involves a core constitutional issue, which likely requires a constitutional amendment.

Free Speech For People was founded, Clements said, shortly after Citizens United was handed down and involves a coalition of public interest groups dedicated to overturning the decision. "A deeply divided court ruled that people cannot regulate" corporate money in politics, sweeping aside long-term precedent that allowed such regulations. Clements said his organization has strong bipartisan support in overturning the decision, citing a letter signed by 50 law professors, attorneys and public servants from across the political spectrum. The letter was sent to congressional leaders earlier this week urging them to support a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United.

Watch Clements' entire interview below.

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A federal judge in Detroit rejected a conservative advocacy group's legal attempts to shut down the health care reform law. TPM reports that the "first federal court ruling on the constitutionality of the health care law is bad news for those trying to repeal it."

U.S. District Court Judge George Steeh rejected an injunction to halt major provisions of the law from taking effect by 2014, including the individual mandate that requires the purchase of health care insurance. The conservative Thomas More Law Center had lodged the lawsuit arguing, as other conservative activists and state attorneys general have, that Congress lacks constitutional authority to require the individual mandate.

Department of Justice of spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler lauded Steeh's decision. "This ruling marks the first time a court has considered the merits of any challenge to this law and we welcome the court's decision upholding the health care reform statute as constitutional. The court found that the minimum coverage provision of the statute was a reasonable means for Congress to take in reforming our health care system. The department will continue to vigorously defend this law in ongoing litigation."

Earlier this week ACSblog highlighted a Newsweek column by the National Senior Citizens Law Center's Simon Lazarus on the wildly misleading tactics conservatives are employing to garner support of their wobbly legal challenges to the health care reform law. Lazarus is author of an ACS Issue Brief on the constitutionality of the individual mandate.

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Ten years after its enactment it is time for Congress to reconsider the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), constitutional law professor Marci A. Hamilton tells ACSblog. Following a recent ACS panel discussion on the anniversary of the law, which was enacted during the Clinton administration, Hamilton, a law professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, talked with ACSblog about what she said were serious problems with law.

For Hamilton the law, which supporters say is needed to bolster the religious liberty rights of religious groups and prisoners, is not needed and is negatively impacting communities nationwide.
"Any place that excludes religious assemblies or uses altogether clearly violates the First Amendment," Hamilton said. "But that is not what happens in the United States."

With the enactment of RLUIPA, what has happened is that the federal government has changed the "political play at the local level. So it doesn't matter what kind of master plan or goals a community has, if an aggressive religious-use comes in, it gets a privilege to get in the middle of that and alter the outcome." And after ten years, it is time for Congress to see how the law is operating, Hamilton said.

"It is my view that it is a real violation of federalism, if there is anything that ought to be local and belong to the states, it ought to be land-use," she said. Some of Hamilton's study of RLUIPA is available here. Watch the entire interview below and the RLUIPA panel discussion here.

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Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray has lodged a lawsuit against GMAC Mortgage, one of the nation's largest home lenders, accusing it of filing scores of fraudulent affidavits in foreclosure cases.

In a press release, Cordray (pictured) said the affidavits filed by GMAC Mortgage were meant to mislead the courts in hundreds of foreclosures in Ohio.

"We know that as Ohioans were fighting to save their homes, this loan servicer benefited financially from the dire circumstances," Cordray said. "Instead of stepping up and assisting those at risk of losing their homes, it is clear that GMAC chose to compound the problem through fraudulent and unfair and deceptive practices."

The lawsuit, as noted by David Dayen at Firedoglake (FDL), "names Jeffrey Stephan, the infamous ‘robo-signer' who signed off on up to 10,000 foreclosures a month across the country with affidavits, without verifying the information in the foreclosure documents."

GMAC, described by The New York Times as one the nation's "most troubled home lenders," which "specialized in subprime loans during the boom," recently placed a moratorium on most of its foreclosures.

In a conference call with reporters, Cordray said the matter involves "lenders and servicers treating foreclosure not as a legal proceeding that deserves careful attention of the property owner, the servicer of the mortgage and the courts, but rather as a production line making widgets, that accords foreclosures little deliberate accuracy that the law - or for, that matter, basic courtesy and common sense - mandates be given to such serious matters."

Cordray's lawsuit seeks a court order stopping GMAC from foreclosure proceedings in Ohio and civil penalties of up to "$25,000 for every violation of Ohio's Consumer Sales Practices Act and for consumer restitution."

Cordray participated in a plenary panel, "Regulation in the Age of Obama," at the 2010 ACS National Convention.

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By James E. Ryan, William L. Matheson & Robert M. Morgenthau Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law and director of the law school's Program in Law and Public Service.

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Five Miles Away, A World Apart: One City, Two Schools, and the Story of Educational Opportunity in Modern America (Oxford 2010) is about the law and politics of educational opportunity over the last half century. It tells the story by using as extended examples two schools in the Richmond area, one in the central city and the other (five miles away) in a neighboring suburb. It is not really a case study, nor is it a (completely) dry, abstract, academic book. It's something in between, sort of like the duck-billed platypus of books.

The central argument starts with the claim that Richard Nixon is the modern architect of education law and policy. Here's why:

In March 1972, President Nixon gave an unusual televised address, devoted solely to the topic of school desegregation and busing. A few months earlier, lower federal courts in Detroit and Richmond had ordered suburban school districts to participate in metropolitan-wide desegregation plans. The courts ordered the participation of the suburbs because there were not many white students left in either city. These decisions were later overturned on appeal, but at the time of Nixon's speech - and as hard as it might be to imagine today - the possibility of cross-district, urban-suburban busing seemed very real.

Nixon denounced busing and proposed legislation that would limit its use for desegregation, suggesting that this reflected the views of both black and white parents, who preferred neighborhood schools. He then offered an alternative approach to the problems facing urban schools: "It is time for us to make a national commitment to see that the schools in central cities are upgraded so that the children who go there will have just as good a chance to get a quality education as do the children who go to school in the suburbs."

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Ohio State University Moritz College of Law professor Douglas A. Berman explores a "classic constitutional line-drawing problem," represented by the Eighth Amendment's ban against "cruel and unusual punishment." Berman, scheduled to participate in the Oct. 8 panel, "Punishment and the Constitution," at tomorrow's symposium at the Florida State University College of Law in Tallahassee, writes that "most punishments must be constitutionally sound, yet courts must find that at least a few punishments cross the ethereal line that demarcates a sanction as unconstitutionally ‘cruel and unusual.' The line drawing, he contends, has "proven especially confounding to the Supreme Court."

Berman continues:

The Court's jurisprudence has been assailed by a very broad array of commentators, including even the current Chief Justice. Complaints about the Court's work reflect a wide range of (sometimes competing) concerns: some assert that the Justices are too ready to second-guess the punishment choices of state legislatures, while others contend they show too much deference to these choices; some assail the Court's commitment to so-called proportionality review, while others call for a more robust review based on concepts of proportionality; some suggest that the Court now invests too much time and energy reviewing death sentences and too little reviewing other types of sentences.

"The Constitution in 2020: The Future of Criminal Justice," is sponsored by the FSU law school and ACS and "is one of a series of academic events connected to the Constitution in 2020 project," as Yale Law School professor Jack Balkin notes at Balkinization. Participants in the conference have provided guest blog posts for Balkinzation, which can be found here and here. The convention, opening tomorrow with a keynote address by Stephen B. Bright, head of the Southern Center for Human Rights, can be watched live on the Web by clicking here.

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