Stephen Bright, Author of “The Fear of Too Much Justice” in Conversation with Professor Elisabeth Semel

From 1982 until 2016, Stephen B. Bright led the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. Before joining the Southern Center, he was a trial attorney at the Public Defender Service in Washington, DC, and a legal services attorney at the Appalachian Research & Defense Fund of Kentucky. Bright has defended men and women in capital cases since 1979, trying cases  before juries in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi and  before state and federal appellate courts, including four arguments before the United States Supreme Court. Three of the Supreme Court cases involved racial discrimination in jury selection and the fourth involved the right to a mental health expert for a poor person facing the death penalty. The Court ruled in favor of his client in each case. For the past several decades, Bright has taught courses on capital punishment at Yale and Georgetown Law Schools. He will be in conversation with Professor Elisabeth Semel, co-director of the Berkeley Law Death Penalty Clinic, about his recently published book, The Fear of Too Much Justice: Race, Poverty, and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal Court.

Lunch provided. Please RSVP here.