Welcome 
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Speakers
Panel I: “Fighting Poverty: Root or Branch?”
Christine Jolls, Gordon Bradford Tweedy Professor of Law and Organization, Moderator
Co-hosted by Yale Law Democrats and Yale Law Republicans
10:15 am - 12:00 pm
Peter Edelman is the Co-Director of the Joint Degree in Law and Public Policy and a Professor of Law at Georgetown University. He served as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation for the Clinton administration and as a legislative assistant to Senator Robert Kennedy.
Professor Edelman's book, Searching for America's Heart: RFK and the Renewal of Hope, was published by Houghton-Mifflin in January 2001. He co-authored Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men, which was published by the Urban Institute in 2006, and is the author of many articles on poverty, constitutional law, and issues about children and youth. His article in the Atlantic Monthly, entitled “The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done,” received the Harry Chapin Media Award.
Barbara B. Kennelly, President and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, has spent 25 years in public service at local, state, and federal levels, including 17 years as a member of the U.S. Congress. Mrs. Kennelly served as ranking member on the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security and was the first woman to serve on the House Intelligence Committee. Mrs. Kennelly served in the Clinton Administration as the Counselor to the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, and, in 2006, was appointed to the Social Security Advisory Board by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Robert Rector is a leading national authority on poverty, the U.S.welfare system and is a Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow.
Dubbed the “intellectual godfather” of welfare reform by National Review Editor Rich Lowry, Mr. Rector concentrates on a range of issues relating to welfare reform, family breakdown and America's various social ills. Mr. Rector has written over 100 articles and research papers, is the author of the book America's Failed $5.4 Trillion War on Poverty, a comprehensive examination of U.S. Welfare programs, and is the co-editor of Steering the Elephant: How Washington Works. Mr. Rector has also provided important analysis on immigration issues.”
David A. Reingold is Professor of Public Policy at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs. His primary teaching and research areas include urban poverty, social policy, low-income housing policy, civil society, and government performance. His research has appeared in The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Social Service Review, Urban Studies, the Journal of Urban Affairs, and Housing Studies, among other social science journals. Currently, he is Director of Indiana University’s Public Affairs and Public Policy Ph.D. Programs.
From 2002 to 2004, he was Director of Research and Policy Development at the U.S. Corporation for National and Community Service, a member of the White House Task Force for Disadvantaged Youth and chairman of the Task Force’s Research Committee. A former Housing Commissioner and Vice-Chairman of the Bloomington Housing Authority Board, he is currently the Chairman of the Indiana Commission on Community Service and Volunteerism and Board President of the South Central Community Action Program in southern Indiana. He has served on expert panels for the National Academy of Public Administration and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He is the Managing Editor and Co-Editor of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Urban Affairs. He received his doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago.
Panel II: “Multilevel Governance: The Role of State and Local Actors”
Robin Golden, Selma M. Levine Clinical Lecturer in Law, Moderator
Co-hosted by
YLS chapters of the
American Constitution Society and Federalist Society
1:30 pm - 3:15 pm
Justice Scott Brister was appointed to the Supreme Court of Texas in November 2003 by Governor Rick Perry and was elected to a six-year term in November 2004. Justice Brister has been a trial and appellate judge since 1989.
A native of Waco, Justice Brister is a summa cum laude graduate of Duke University, and a cum laude graduate of the Harvard Law School. After law school he was a briefing attorney for Chief Justice Joe Greenhill at the Texas Supreme Court in 1980-1981, then practiced law with Andrews & Kurth in Houston. In 1989, Governor Bill Clements appointed him judge of the 234th District Court in Harris County, to which he was re-elected in 1990, 1994 and 1998.
In November 2000 Justice Brister was elected to the First District Court of Appeals in Houston, where he served until Governor Perry appointed him chief justice of the 14th Court of Appeals in 2001.
Justice Brister is board-certified in civil appellate, civil trial, and personal injury trial law. He previously served on the Supreme Court Advisory Committee and on the Supreme Court Jury Task Force. He is a fellow of the Houston and Texas Bar foundations and a member of the College of the State Bar of Texas. He is a co-author of Texas Pretrial Practice and has written law review articles in the Baylor, Oak Brook, South Texas, and St. Mary's law reviews.
Justice Brister and his wife, Julia Upton Brister, have four daughters, Elizabeth, Susannah, Sarah and Mattie. They are members of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Austin.
His term ends at the end of 2010.
R. Ted Cruz is a litigation partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, responsible for helping to build and lead the firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and national appellate practice. Prior to joining Morgan Lewis, he served for five and one half years as the Solicitor General of Texas. He has authored more than 70 U.S. Supreme Court briefs and presented 32 oral arguments, including eight before the U.S. Supreme Court, more than any other lawyer in Texas. Before the Supreme Court, Mr. Cruz has won landmark decisions successfully defending the Texas Ten Commandments monument, the Pledge of Allegiance, the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, the Texas congressional redistricting plan, and U.S. sovereignty from attempts by the World Court to bind the U.S. justice system. For five consecutive years, he won the Best Brief Award from the National Association of Attorney Generals (NAAG) for U.S. Supreme Court briefs authored in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007.
As a litigator, his lifetime record in decided cases that he has argued is 23 wins and 5 losses. The son of a Cuban immigrant, Mr. Cruz was the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas and, when appointed, was the youngest Solicitor General in the United States. He has been named by American Lawyer magazine as one of the 50 Best Litigators Under 45 in America and by National Law Journal as one of the 50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America. Mr. Cruz also serves as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Texas Law School, where he teaches U.S. Supreme Court Litigation. He previously served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning for the Federal Trade Commission, as Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, as Department of Justice Coordinator for the Bush Transition Team, and as Domestic Policy Advisor to President George W. Bush on the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign. A graduate of Princeton University and the Harvard Law School, he is a former law clerk to Judge J. Michael Luttig on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Denise R. Johnson was appointed a justice of the Vermont Supreme Court by Governor Madeleine Kunin on December 3, 1990. She was educated at Wayne State University (B.A.1969), the University of Connecticut School of Law (J.D. with honors 1974), and the University of Virginia School of Law (LL.M 1995). She was an attorney with New Haven Legal Assistance Association, Inc. from 1974 to 1978, a Legal Writing Instructor at Vermont Law School from 1978 to 1979, a Vermont Assistant Attorney General, serving as Chief, Civil Rights Division and then Chief, Public Protection Division from 1980-1988. She was in private practice, working in the areas of employment law and public utilities, and Chair of the Vermont Human Rights Commission from 1988 to 1990. In 1997 she was elected a member of the American Law Institute. She is a member of the American Bar Association and has served as Chair of the Appellate Judges Conference. She currently serves the ABA as a member of the Commission on IOLTA. She has been active in appellate judicial education nationally since the late 1990’s. Recently, she has lectured on criminal procedure, employment law and property in law schools in Trento and Udine, Italy. As a member of the Vermont Supreme Court, she has chaired the Gender-Bias Study Implementation Committee and the Equal Access to Justice Committee. She is a member of the Access to Justice Coalition, a statewide planning agency for the delivery of legal services to the poor, and a board member of the Vermont Bar Foundation.
Kathleen Morris is Executive Director of the San Francisco City Attorney's Affirmative Litigation Task Force, where she helps lead the development of the City's public policy litigation/civil law enforcement agenda. Ms. Morris is also a member of the City's Affirmative and Complex Litigation Team, and was a Visiting Lecturer at YLS in Spring 2008. In her more than five years at the City Attorney's Office, Ms. Morris has handled over 100 trial and appellate cases dealing with a wide range of issues including contracts, civil rights, personal injury, consumer protection, property and legal ethics. Ms. Morris served on the legal team that successfully challenged California's discriminatory marriage laws and was lead counsel for San Francisco in the so-called “partial-birth abortion” case. Ms. Morris has a B.A. in English Literature from California State University, Northridge; a Masters in Politics from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where she was a Rotary Scholar; and a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Ms. Morris began her legal career as a law clerk for Ninth Circuit judge Sidney R. Thomas, and as an associate at the San Francisco law firms of Altshuler Berzon LLP, and Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin. She is a proud and active member of the Bay Area Chapter of the American Constitution Society.
Panel III: “Accountability and Principled Governance”
Michael Wishnie, Clinical Professor of Law, Moderator
Hosted by the Yale Law & Policy Review
3:45 pm - 5:30 pm
Steven Aftergood is a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists. He directs the FAS Project on Government Secrecy, which works to reduce the scope of government secrecy and to promote reform of official secrecy practices. He writes Secrecy News, an email newsletter (and blog) which reports on new developments in secrecy policy for more than 10,000 subscribers in media, government and among the general public.
In 1997, Mr. Aftergood was the plaintiff in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency which led to the declassification and publication of the total intelligence budget ($26.6 billion in 1997) for the first time in fifty years. In 2006, he won a FOIA lawsuit against the National Reconnaissance Office for release of unclassified budget records.
Herman “Art” Taylor is president and chief executive officer of the BBB Wise Giving Alliance. He oversees all aspects of the organization’s work, which includes setting standards for soliciting organizations, evaluating individual national charities in relation to these standards, publishing the quarterly Wise Giving Guide, promoting charity accountability and providing a variety of materials on informed giving to individual, institutional and business donors. Mr. Taylor is a respected and sought after voice in the non-profit sector on charity accountability and transparency issues. He is a regular and featured speaker at charity gatherings and reporters often quote him in newspaper stories. He appears frequently on broadcast and cable news programs. He has testified before both U.S. House and Senate committees offering guidance on ways to improve the ethical behavior and trustworthiness of charities.
Under Mr. Taylor’s leadership the Alliance developed an online charity evaluation tool enabling the expansion of the number of reports from 250 to 1,200. In addition, the organization introduced and implemented the charity seal now used by national and local charities to indicate adherence to the comprehensive standards for charity accountability.
He is a graduate of Franklin and Marshall College and received an honorary Dr. of Laws from his alma mater. He acquired a J.D. from Temple University School of Law, and was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 1989. The Non-Profit Times has three times named him one of its “Power and Influence Top 50” people in the non-profit sector.
Eric J. Pan is Assistant Professor of Law and Director of The Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Center on Corporate Governance at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House) in London and has been a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and Washington, DC. Professor Pan conducts research on financial regulation, capital markets, corporate governance and international law. Among his many professional activities, Professor Pan directs the Chatham House City Series, serves as a member of the International Bar Association's Securities Law Task Force on Extraterritorial Regulation and frequently speaks about international financial and corporate law issues across North America, Europe and Asia.
Before joining Cardozo, Professor Pan was an attorney in the Washington, DC office of Covington & Burling, where he worked in Covington's corporate, securities, and international practice groups. His practice consisted of mergers and acquisitions, public and private securities offerings, securities regulation, general corporate advisory work, and public and private international law matters. Before his time at Covington, he was a Jean Monnet Lecturer in Law at Warwick University, England, and served as director of Warwick's Programme in Law and Business. He was also a visiting fellow in international law at Cambridge University, England. Professor Pan received an A.B. in Economics from Harvard College, a M.Sc. in European and International Politics from Edinburgh University, Scotland, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Gayle Smith is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Co-Chair of the ENOUGH Campaign. She also is Director of the International Rights & Responsibilities Program. Previously, Gayle served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from 1998-2001, and as Senior Advisor to the Administrator and Chief of Staff of the U.S. Agency for International Development from 1994-1998.
Smith was based in Africa for over 20 years as a journalist covering military, economic, and political affairs for the BBC, Associated Press, Reuters, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Toronto Globe & Mail, London Observer, and Financial Times. Smith has also consulted for a wide range of NGOs, foundations, and governmental organizations including UNICEF, the World Bank, Dutch Interchurch Aid, Norwegian Church Relief, and the Canadian Council for International Cooperation. She won the World Journalism Award from the World Affairs Council and the World Hunger Year Award in 1991, and in 1999 won the National Security Council’s Samuel Nelson Drew Award for Distinguished Contribution in Pursuit of Global Peace.
Smith is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the boards of Oxfam America, the Africa America Institute, USA for Africa, and the National Security Network. She also serves on the policy advisory boards of DATA, the Acumen Fund, and the Global Fairness Initiative, and was the Working Group Chair on Global Poverty for the Clinton Global Initiative from 2005 to 2007.