The 21st Annual Rebellious Lawyering Conference Scheduled for February 20–21

The 21st annual Rebellious Lawyering Conference (RebLaw) will be held on Friday, February 20th, and Saturday, February 21, 2015, at Yale Law School.

RebLaw is the nation’s largest student-run public interest conference. Every year, the conference brings together hundreds of people from around the country to discuss innovative, progressive approaches to the law and social change. The RebLaw conference, grounded in the spirit of Gerald Lopez’s Rebellious Lawyering, seeks to build a community of law students, practitioners, and activists seeking to work in the service of social change movements and to challenge hierarchies of race, wealth, gender, and expertise within legal practice and education.

This year’s conference features 25 panel sessions addressing a wide range of topics. Panels include Using Law to Occupy Wall Street, The Fight Against Mass Incarceration, The Future of Legal Protections for Trafficking Victims and Unaccompanied Minors, Native Peacemaking, Wage Justice for Low-Wage Immigrant Workers, Young Lawyers Improving the Food System, Reforming Policing Post-Ferguson, and many more. A complete list of panels can be found here.

The conference will also welcome two keynote speakers, both of whom are uniquely qualified to speak about the path towards reconciliation and change. Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), will deliver the opening keynote address. Warren oversees CCR’s groundbreaking litigation and advocacy work, which includes using international and domestic law to hold corporations and government officials accountable for human rights abuses; challenging racial, gender, and LGBT injustice; and combating the illegal expansion of U.S. presidential power and policies such as illegal detention at Guantanamo, rendition, and torture. Prior to his tenure at CCR, Warren litigated civil rights cases at the ACLU and was involved in monitoring South Africa’s historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings. Sujatha Baliga, director of the Restorative Justice Project at the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, will deliver the closing keynote. Baliga’s work is characterized by an equal dedication to victims and persons accused of crimes. Currently, Baliga assists communities in implementing restorative justice alternatives to juvenile detention and zero-tolerance school discipline policies. She is also dedicated to advancing restorative justice to end child sexual abuse and intrafamilial and sexualized violence.

For more details about the conference, as well as online registration, please visit the RebLaw website. Registration is free for members of Yale University as well as the University of Connecticut, University of New Haven, Quinnipiac, and the surrounding New Haven community. The registration fee is $30 for all other attendees. Questions and comments may be directed to reblaw@yale.edu. Follow RebLaw on Facebook and Twitter.