2007-2008
Ruth Chance Lecture Series (2007-2008)
Spring 2008
Christopher Arriola --Mr. Arriola ’95, was born in Southern California and is the grandson of Mexican immigrants. He graduated from Stanford University 1992 with Honors and Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California Berkeley in 1995 as Editor of La Raza Law Journal. He published a commentary in the Los Angeles Times, an article in La Raza Law Journal, and consulted on the creation of an Emmy Award winning PBS documentary about a landmark Latino school desegregation case in Southern California, Mendez v. Westminster (1947). Mr. Arriola speaks often on the Mendez case at schools and Universities. After law school, Mr. Arriola went to work for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and was assigned to try cases in the South Central Judicial District of the County in Compton. In 1998 Mr. Arriola returned to Santa Clara County at the District Attorney’s Office in San Jose, California. He tried serious felony cases until 2000 when he worked on the newly established Community Prosecution Unit at the District Attorney’s Office and conducted the first successful prosecution of a landlord for child endangerment. Mr. Arriola then worked for nearly four years as a trial attorney on the Career Criminal Unit, prosecuting the most serious offenders and then for three years to the Juvenile Delinquency Unit, where he supervised the Juvenile Mental Health Court. He is currently assigned to the Sexual Assault Trial Unit.
Maurice Emsellem, is the National Employment Law Project's (NELP) Policy Director. NELP is a research and advocacy organization that partners with local communities to deliver on the nation's promise of economic opportunity. Mr. Emsellem specializes in government systems of support for unemployed workers and the employment rights of people with criminal records. He has testified on these issues before Congress and state legislatures, and co-authored several publications, including scholarly articles that appeared in the Stanford Law & Policy Review and the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform. Mr. Emsellem was a Soros Justice Senior Fellow (2005), and a Visiting Public Interest Mentor at Stanford Law School (2003). He received his B.A. from the University of Michigan and his J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law.
Cecillia Wang --Cecillia Wang is a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project. Her practice centers on the impact of U.S. national security policies on immigrants, and the intersection of criminal defense and immigration law. Cecillia first worked at the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project from 1997 to 1998, and rejoined the Project in 2004. Before rejoining the ACLU, Cecillia was a trial attorney with the federal public defender's office in the Southern District of New York, and worked at the San Francisco law firm of Keker & Van Nest on both white-collar criminal cases and civil litigation. Cecillia has served on the Criminal Justice Act indigent defense panel for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Cecillia was a law clerk to Judge William Norris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and to Justice Harry Blackmun of the Supreme Court of the United States. While clerking for Justice Blackmun, she also served as a full-time law clerk in Justice Stephen Breyer's chambers. Cecillia is a 1995 graduate of Yale Law School, where she was an Articles Editor for The Yale Law Journal.
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Tim Coulter --Robert T. Coulter is an attorney who focuses on Indian law and international human rights. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Indian Law Resource Center in Helena, Montana and Washington, DC. The Center provides legal assistance for indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. He is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Coulter is a past chairperson of the American Bar Association Committee on Problems of the American Indian, Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities (1982-1984) and was a Ralph E. Shikes Visiting Fellow, Harvard Law School, November 1985. He has published numerous articles and essays. He was awarded the Lawrence A.Wien Prize for Social Responsibility by Columbia Law School in 2001 and the Bicentennial Medal by Williams College in 2002. He is a longstanding member of the American Society of International Law. He was a member of the Board of Directors of River Network, a national environmental organization, from 1998-2003. In 2004, he was elected to the Supreme Court of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.
Robert Rubin, a civil rights attorney for the past 29 years, is Legal Director for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. He specializes in the areas of immigrant rights and voting rights. Earlier, Mr. Rubin was the ACLU staff counsel in Mississippi.
Mr. Rubin directs the Committee's voting rights project and secured the first injunction in the nation ordering a state to comply with the “motor voter” law. In an action involving Sec. 5 of the Voting Rights Act, he was counsel to Latino voters in Monterey County opposed to at-large elections. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the at-large system violated the Act and in a second ruling, rejected California’s argument that the at-large system was immune from review.
Mr. Rubin also was counsel to minority voters challenging the elimination of community-based voting precincts during the 2003 gubernatorial recall election. During the 2004 Presidential election, he successfully challenged Ohio’s refusal to provide provisional ballots to persons who had requested, but did not receive, absentee ballots.
Mr. Rubin successfully settled the first suit under the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA). This settlement resulted in the conversion of the Hanford school board electoral process from an at-large to a district system. Finally, in a case involving an attack on the constitutionality of the CVRA, Mr. Rubin secured a favorable state appellate court ruling upholding the statute’s validity, a decision that only became final when the US Supreme Court denied review in late 2007.
(Video)
Fall 2007
Diane Bellas Monday, August 27th at 12:45-1:45 p.m. in Room 140
Topic: The Genesis and Evolution of the Alameda County Public Defender
Diane Bellas was a student at Boalt when she began working as a law clerk in the Alameda County Public Defender's Office in 1979. While a line lawyer, she represented clients throughout the County in countless criminal cases, including more than 50 murder cases, as well as in the civil conservatorship and mental health courts. Her last trial, occurring shortly before her appointment to the administrative position of Public Defender in 2000, was a double-murder death penalty case in which the jury returned a verdict of life without possibility of parole. In 2004, at the inception of the Alameda County Homeless and Caring Court , Bellas resumed representation of individual clients; the court convenes monthly in locations that provide services to the marginally housed or homeless, people in recovery, and the working poor. Bellas serves by Senate appointment on the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice and on the board of C.U.R.A. (Carnales Unidos Reformando Adictos).
Bill QuigleyMonday, September 6th at 12:45-1:45 p.m. in Room 140
Topic: Hurricane Katrina, the Law, and Social Justice
Professor Quigley has been an active public interest lawyer since 1977. He has served as counsel with a wide range of public interest organizations on issues including Katrina social justice issues, public housing, voting rights, death penalty, living wage, civil liberties, educational reform, constitutional rights and civil disobedience. In addition, he has litigated numerous cases with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the Advancement Project, and with the ACLU of Louisiana, for which he served as General Counsel for over 15 years.
Bill teaches in the Law Clinic and teaches courses in Law and Poverty and Catholic Social Teaching and Law. His research and writing has focused on living wage, the right to a job, legal services, community organizing as part of effective lawyering, civil disobedience, high stakes testing, international human rights, revolutionary lawyering and a continuing history of how the laws have regulated the poor since colonial times. He has served as an advisor on human and civil rights to Human Rights Watch USA, Amnesty International USA, and served as the Chair of the Louisiana Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights. Bill received the 2006 Camille Gravel Civil Pro Bono Award from the Federal Bar Association New Orleans Chapter. Bill received the 2006 Stanford Law School National Public Service Award and the 2006 National Lawyers Guild Ernie Goodman award. He has also been an active volunteer lawyer with School of the Americas Watch and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.
Larry Paradis, Executive Director, Disability Rights Advocates
Monday, September 24th at 12:45-1:45 p.m. in Room 140
Topic: Disability Rights –The Road Ahead
Larry Paradis is the Executive Director and Co-Director of Litigation for Disability Rights Advocates. Larry specializes in class action and other high impact disability rights litigation. He has handled many precedent-setting ADA cases in areas such as employment, housing, transportation, education, insurance, and public accommodations. Larry was recently named by California Lawyer Magazine one of California 's Lawyers of the Year for his victories in civil rights cases in 2003. In 2004, Larry was voted, along with his co-counsel, Trial Lawyer of the Year by the San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association.
Larry is a past member of the President's Committee on the Employment of People with Disabilities and has been on the boards of many public interest organizations such as the Berkeley Center for Independent Living, National Council on Disability: International Watch Committee, American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, Berkeley Commission on Disability, Disability Statistics Center at UCSF (Advisory Board), UCSF Center for Personal Assistance Services Advisory Committee.
Larry has also assisted the courts as a court appointed mediator, as a Ninth Circuit Judicial Council Lawyer Representative from the U.S. District Court for Northern District of California and as a member of a Magistrate Judge Selection Panel, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Before co-founding Disability Rights Advocates, Larry was a partner at the law firm Miller, Starr and Regalia, where he focused on complex business litigation as well as pro bono civil rights work.
Alegria De La Cruz, Directing Attorney, Migrant Farmworker Project California Rural Legal Assistance
Monday, October 22nd at 12:45-1:45 p.m. in Room 140
Alegría De La Cruz '03 is the Directing Attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance's Migrant Farmworker Project in Fresno, California. Her work addresses the unique issues facing California's farmworker community. Alegría provides advice and counsel, brief services, and administrative advocacy for her clients in the areas of wage and hour law, housing, civil rights and discrimination, and environmental justice, as well as litigating these claims in state and federal courts. Alegría serves as a Director on the Boards of Fresno Metro Ministries, Centro Binacional por el Desarrollo del Indígena Oaxaqueño (CBDIO), and the ACLU-Fresno. She received her B.A. in History from Yale University in 1997 and her J.D. from U.C. Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law in 2003. At Boalt, Alegria was active in the Coalition for Diversity, La Raza Law Students Association, and served as a co-Editor-in-Chief of the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal.
Jack Londen, Partner, Morrison & Foerster, LLP
Monday, November 19th at 12:45-1:45 p.m. in Room 140
Topic: The Changing Role of Private Law Firms in Impact Public Interest Work
Jack Londen has led major pro bono cases on inequalities in public education, defending legal aid organizations, and other public policy issues. He is now Chair of the Consortium for the National Equal Justice Library and Chair of the Public Interest Clearinghouse. He has served as Co-Chair of the National Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Chair of the California Commission on Access to Justice, Chair of Californians for Legal Aid, Chair of the Legal Services Section of the State Bar of California, and Chair of the Legal Services Committee of the Bar Association of San Francisco. Mr. Londen has received awards for his public interest work from organizations including the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the State Bar of California, the National Legal Aid and Defenders Association, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the National Center for Youth Law, California Rural Legal Assistance, the Western Center on Law and Poverty, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Bar Association of San Francisco. He was recognized as one of The National Law Journal's 2006 "Top 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America." He has been a partner in Morrison & Foerster since 1984, after graduating from the Yale Law School in 1978 and clerking for the Honorable William W. Schwarzer in the Northern District of California.