Students and Faculty Honored at 27th School of Law Awards Ceremony

Dean Ronald Weich presents Prof. Angela Vallario with the Saul Ewing Award for Outstanding Teaching in Transactional Law.

The UB School of Law held its 27th Annual Awards Ceremony on April 24 at the Angelos Law Center. The Hon. John Morrissey, J.D. ’89, chief judge, District Court of Maryland, was the keynote speaker. 

Leaders of the Jewish Law Students Association accept the SBA Award for Outstanding Service to UB by a Student Organization. 

For the Class of 2022, Zachary Babo was the valedictorian, and Claudia Wozniak was the salutatorian. Paola Flores received the 2022 Pro Bono Challenge Award. 

Julianna Felkoski and Aiden Galloway received the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) Outstanding Student-Attorney Team Award for their work with the Community Development Clinic. Lindsey Eshelman received the CLEA Outstanding Externship Award. 

Clinical Excellence Awards went to Russhell Ford, for her work in the Community Development Clinic, and Sophia Yaple, for her contributions to the work of The Bob Parsons Veterans Advocacy Clinic. 

The Student Bar Association recognized Prof. Neha Lall with the James May Faculty Award and Asst. Dean Alyssa Fieo with the Staff Mentoring Award. The SBA named Julianne Greene Student Leader of the Year and recognized Jewish Law Students Association for Outstanding Service to UB by a Student Organization. 

View the full list of winners 

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Johnson Receives Fulbright Scholar Award to Study Menstrual Justice in Australia

Margaret Johnson

Prof. Margaret E. Johnson has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award in Law for the 2022-2023 academic year from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. 

Johnson will conduct research at The University of Technology Sydney in Australia for her Fulbright project, “Comparative Menstrual Justice in Australia and the United States.” This project builds on Johnson’s work on menstruation and gender equity and has two objectives. The first is to understand how Australian and U.S. law and policy address, or fail to address, the needs of persons who menstruate (menstruators). The second is to use the Australian and U.S. law and policy comparison to explore two theoretical framings: 

  • Whether, and, if so, how law can promote social change, including “menstrual justice” reforms that reduce and remedy menstruation-related harms or enhance menstruators’ quality of life; 
  • How the law’s treatment of menstruation informs law’s relationship with the reproductive system and the body.

“The University of Baltimore School of Law is very proud that our colleague Margaret Johnson has received a Fulbright award,” says Baltimore Law Dean Ronald Weich 

“As associate dean for experiential education and as co-director of our Center on Applied Feminism, Prof. Johnson has been a leader in advancing the mission of our law school. The Fulbright will enable her to bring an international perspective to her path-breaking scholarship on menstrual justice and gender equity.” 

Johnson is one of more than 800 U.S. citizens who will conduct research and/or teach abroad for the 2022-2023 academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program. Fulbright scholars engage in cutting-edge research and expand their professional networks, often continuing research collaborations started abroad and laying the groundwork for forging future partnerships between institutions. 

Upon returning to their home countries, institutions, labs, and classrooms, they share their stories and often become active supporters of international exchange, inviting foreign scholars to campus and encouraging colleagues and students to go abroad. As Fulbright Scholar alumni, their careers are enriched by joining a network of thousands of esteemed scholars, many of whom are leaders in their fields. Fulbright alumni include 61 Nobel Prize laureates, 88 Pulitzer Prize recipients, and 40 who have served as a head of state or government. 

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Suter, Innocence Project Clinic Director, Gains Exoneration for Adnan Syed

After serving 23 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, Adnan Syed’s conviction was vacated in September by a Baltimore City Circuit Court judge. Several weeks later, prosecutors dismissed the charges against Syed when DNA testing previously ordered by the Court excluded Syed.  

Syed, who has consistently maintained his innocence, became famous when the podcast “Serial” documented his case, resulting in numerous subsequent books and documentaries. He was ultimately exonerated after years of investigation and advocacy by his attorney, Erica J. Suter, director of the law school’s Innocence Project Clinic and a lawyer with the Maryland Office of the Public Defender.  

Syed was 17 when he was tried and convicted in 2000 of first-degree murder, robbery, kidnapping and false imprisonment in the slaying of Hae Min Lee, his former girlfriend and Woodlawn High School classmate. Questions about whether he had received a fair trial drew widespread attention when “Serial” debuted in 2014. The podcast became a pop-culture sensation with its detailed examination over a dozen episodes of the case against Syed, including questions about the effectiveness of his attorney, who was disbarred amid complaints of wrongdoing in 2001. 

An appeals court vacated Syed’s conviction in 2018, ruling that he had received ineffective legal counsel, but Maryland’s highest court reversed that decision in 2019. 

Suter began representing Syed last year and brought the case to the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office after Maryland adopted a law that allowed people convicted of crimes as juveniles to request sentence modifications after serving 20 years in prison. 

As the request was being considered, additional evidence emerged, prompting prosecutors to conduct a more in-depth investigation, the prosecutor’s office said. As a result of that investigation, Becky Feldman, J.D. ’02, chief of the state’s attorney’s Sentencing Review Unit, told Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Melissa M. Phinn “the state no longer has confidence in the integrity of the conviction.”

 
 

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On the Rocks with Jeremy, Kurt and Adam

Left to right: Jeremy Eldridge, Kurt Nachtman, Adam Crandell

By Hope Keller 

The three lawyers behind the Lawyers on the Rocks podcast are on the front lines of the justice system in Baltimore. 

“We are in the trenches – in the courthouses, in the jails,” says Adam Crandell, an immigration lawyer with Eldridge, Nachtman & Crandell LLC. 

Crandell and his partners, Jeremy Eldridge, J.D. ’06, and Kurt Nachtman, J.D. ’06, want you to see the world through their eyes, and through the eyes of their colleagues and clients. 

“We give an opportunity (for listeners) to hear what it’s really like in the trenches, compared to what their perception might be from the movies,” says Nachtman, who practices personal injury law. 

Since mid-2018, the three have produced nearly 140 podcast episodes, each featuring a cocktail created by firm associate Clarissa Lindsey, J.D. ’19, cocktail curator, and proprietor of the Drink Link. 

Local legal luminaries are frequent guests. Criminal defense attorney Warren A. Brown came by Eldridge, Nachtman & Crandell’s office/recording studio to sip Johnny Walker Blue Label in November (former Baltimore State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein enjoyed the same beverage a year earlier). Public defender Natalie Finegar had a blueberry mojito mocktail, while Erik Atas, J.D. ’06, now a Baltimore Circuit Court judge, stopped in for a bourbon iced tea. Radio personality and congressional candidate, attorney Yuripzy Morgan, sat down for a chat and a Bombay Sapphire martini. 

“Part of what we do is try to get ‘real’ lawyers who are more experienced than us in specific areas to really dive in, to give people a better idea of what the law really is,” says Eldridge, who practices criminal defense law. He also hosts a weekly talk show on WBAL Radio. 

Plenty of non-lawyers also stop by for a drink and a discussion of life and the law, including former felon Bruce White, now CEO of One Promise Counseling and DUI Education in Baltimore (Cooper’s Cask Coffee). 

White’s story was so compelling he was asked back for an encore episode. 

Asked if he thought he’d been done wrong by the justice system, which imprisoned him for 12 years, White says: “I have a hard time saying the prison system or the court system failed me. I got exactly what I deserved.” 

Today the former self-described “apex predator” helps people get and stay clean. “The job is to love them,” says White, now a certified addictions counselor. 

Nachtman said producing the show on top of the day job can add up to a lot of work. 

“Maintaining our ability to run a law firm and to be diligent and organized, and running a podcast with quality guests, is sometimes an adventure,” he says. “It’s not the easiest task, but we have a really good time.” 

Lawyers on the Rocks is recorded most Fridays at 4 p.m. at Eldridge, Nachtman & Crandell’s North Charles Street offices. The podcast is archived at Lawyers on the Rocks, and the lawyers post news about the show on Instagram and LinkedIn. 

Hope Keller is a writer based in Connecticut.

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2022 Commencement held at SECU Arena

The Class of 2022 received their degrees in a May 17 commencement ceremony at Towson University’s SECU Arena. 

Recipients of the Juris Doctor degree, Master of Laws in Taxation, and Master of Laws in the Law of the United States had their degrees conferred upon them by University of Baltimore Provost Catherine Andersen. 

Valedictorians from both graduating classes presented remarks, as did commencement speaker Vanita Gupta, associate attorney general of the United States. Guests were welcomed by School of Law Dean Ronald Weich, University System of Maryland RegentRobert K. Hur, and alumna Jasmine Pope, J.D. ’18, president of the University of Baltimore Law Alumni Association.  

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By Hope Keller

In 2017, on the day the consent decree between the U.S. Department of Justice and the city of Baltimore and its police department was filed in court, then-U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch spoke at the University of Baltimore School of Law. 

She began by noting that she took her oath of office on the day Baltimore erupted over Freddie Gray’s death in police custody. 

“It was clear that here in Baltimore – as in so many American cities – deep-seated feelings of mistrust and hostility had gone unaddressed for too long,” Lynch said on Jan. 12, 2017. “And it was clear that in order to repair the social fabric, those issues had to be dealt with honestly, comprehensively and immediately.” 

Against this backdrop, the UBalt School of Law this year launched the Center for Criminal Justice Reform (CCJR). Created with a $3 million gift from alumnus Samuel G. Rose, LL.B. ’62, the center supports community-driven efforts to improve public safety and address the harm and inequity caused by the criminal legal system. (A companion Criminal Defense and Advocacy Clinic, which begins in Spring 2023, was also created thanks to Rose’s bequest.) 

Heather Warnken

Heather Warnken, executive director of the center, said it is engaging in a range of programming meant to address the mass incarceration crisis, and to reimagine public safety across the country. Part of this work means rethinking the definition of “crime victim” to build a more inclusive infrastructure of care. 

“Historically, the idea of ‘crime victim’ [conjures] certain images and does not include the experience of Black men and youth who, by exponents, experience the most homicide and nonfatal gun violence in this country, including in Baltimore,” Warnken says, “yet are more likely to be criminalized than supported in the aftermath of that violence.” 

Prof. David Jaros, the center’s faculty director, said he and Warnken sought to break down the “false dichotomy” between crime victims and the defendants who disproportionately wind up enmeshed in the criminal legal system.

Prof. David Jaros

“In fact, these are all the same people,” Jaros says. “Our system tends to divide [people] up into communities worthy of protection and respect for their rights and communities that don’t get the resources or protection of the legal system.” 

Moreover, trauma begets more trauma, notes Warnken. “For people who experience violence and harm in their communities, especially in the absence of meaningful, humane, dignified responses that support them — the likelihood that they will be a victim or they will harm others is greater,” Warnken says. “Being serious about public safety means embracing what we know actually works in interrupting cycles of harm — and the systemic racism that perpetuates it.”

‘The Web of disparities’

Warnken and Jaros say the CCJR will regularly convene community and government stakeholders to identify challenges and recommend solutions to the deeply entrenched inequities in the national and local criminal legal systems.  

Before coming to the law school, Warnken spent five years as a visiting fellow at the U.S. Department of Justice, where she was co-affiliated with the Bureau of Justice Statistics and Office for Victims of Crime in the first-ever position dedicated to bridging the gap between research, policy and practice to improve the response to individuals and communities impacted by crime victimization. 

In that role, Warnken led an assessment of how people impacted by violence are treated in Baltimore. The report authored by her and her team — which examined the experiences of underserved survivors, focused on Black men and youth affected by gun violence — was released by the City of Baltimore in August, along with a formal response. 

The report made clear that to improve public safety in Baltimore, the legacy of racism in policing must be confronted head-on. 

The historical role that law enforcement played in maintaining slavery through slave patrols came up in multiple interviews, according to the report. 

“It is obvious to many that Black and brown bodies have been historically viewed as a threat by law enforcement and, in society more broadly, less worthy of compassion in the wake of harm if worthy at all,” the report said in its first chapter. “These persistent attitudes undergird the web of disparities found throughout public life, including a sense of continued impunity for disparate or dehumanizing treatment from BPD.” 

At a center event in February, former DOJ Inspector General Michael Bromwich, who led a two-year investigation into the Baltimore Police Department’s disgraced Gun Trace Task Force, presented his team’s findings. The video of the event had been viewed more than 11,000 times as of late October, no doubt thanks to “We Own This City,” the HBO series about the GTTF adapted from Baltimore crime reporter Justin Fenton’s book of the same name. 

For years, members of the elite police unit robbed Baltimore residents and planted guns and drugs. They were arrested in 2017 and ultimately convicted on charges of racketeering, robbery, extortion and overtime fraud.  

Saying the scandal was emblematic of deeper, systemic challenges in policing, Warnken says the CCJR will look into the role of judges and other key actors in responding to police misconduct.  

“We’re really interested in the role of judges, who make decisions every day in their courtrooms — interpreting evidence and [determining] the truthfulness and reliability of officers — reliability that is often given great weight,” Warnken says. 

The center is also involved in projects examining equity in public safety grantmaking, including how federal criminal justice grants are spent, Warnken adds.  

“State and local governments get a tremendous amount of money from the Department of Justice and other federal agencies,” says Warnken. “Are they relying on police and prosecution, or are they meaningfully investing in community-based programs and alternatives to incarceration? There’s so much discretion at the state and local levels, but not enough support or transparency on how those dollars get spent.” 

Samuel G Rose

Benefactor Samuel Rose said in a University of Baltimore School of Law news release that the center would benefit reform efforts locally and nationally. 

“It’s both exciting and gratifying to support efforts to improve the lives of individuals — the wrongly accused and the excessively punished — while working more broadly to influence local and national policy around violence prevention, mass incarceration, juvenile justice and more,” he said. 

Dean Ronald Weich said the Center for Criminal Justice Reform was a logical outgrowth of the law school’s longstanding involvement in criminal justice matters. 

“Some of the best defense lawyers are UB graduates, half of the state’s attorneys in Maryland are UB graduates,” Weich said. “This is a more comprehensive way of addressing issues related to criminal justice, from policing to sentencing to victims’ rights.” 

And, he said, the law school is a perfect place for such a center. 

“If you want to work on improving criminal justice, the University of Baltimore is the place to do it,” Weich says. “We are proud to support community-driven reform efforts in Baltimore and beyond.” 

Hope Keller is a writer based in Connecticut.

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A grassroots approach to diversity

By Adam Stone

It’s easy to feel helpless when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion. Big systemic changes are needed, institutional shifts that are outside most people’s job descriptions. Imoh Akpan, J.D. ’06, comes at it from another perspective. 

“I take a grassroots approach to diversity,” he says. “It’s about being involved in volunteerism, being a mentor, being available to go to lunch. There’s a lot I can do as an individual to help diversify the legal profession.” 

A partner in the Baltimore office of Goldberg Segalla, Akpan brings to bear this personal approach on a number of different fronts. He’s co-chair of the Diversity Committee of the Federation of Defense & Corporate Counsel, as well as a member of the Diversity Steering/Planning Committee of the Defense Research Institute. And he’s an active member of his firm’s diversity task force. 

Akbar has also been active with the law school’s Fannie Angelos Program for Academic Excellence, which prepares students from Maryland’s historically Black colleges for admission to law school and helps them to excel and thrive throughout their legal careers. 

“Imoh has been a real champion of DEI, not only in academic circles with his leadership of the Fannie Angelos Program annual gala, but also in the legal profession, with his efforts to diversify law firms by improving their hiring and promotion practices,” says UBalt Law Professor Mike Higginbotham. 

Akpan’s dad was a lawyer, as was his older sister. “I saw some of the struggles she faced as a Black woman trying to rise up in larger law firms,” he says. As he thought about how people might overcome similar challenges he evolved his grassroots approach to DEI, largely from his own personal experience. 

A mentor who is now a partner at D.C. law firm Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell “made himself available to me on an individual basis. He kind of gave me very direct, targeted advice that applied to me. I could bounce ideas off of him,” Akpan says. That individual attention “helped me so much just by giving me context, perspective.” 

Now he brings the same philosophy to his own DEI efforts. “I want to highlight the importance of those personal, individual interactions, particularly in building and promoting the network of diverse attorneys,” he says. “Having a connection with someone who has already done it before, getting advice from someone who has faced those challenges before. That can be invaluable.” 

With his professional work and extensive efforts around diversity, not to mention a wife and two children, he’s got a pretty full plate. How to keep it all in balance? He says the key ingredient is passion. 

“You can say it’s a scheduling thing, but to me it’s really an effort-and-energy thing,” Akpan says. “I like the job that I do. I obviously love my family. And the work that I do on diversity is important to me.  

“If you like what you’re doing, it doesn’t actually seem as hard. You can find time for all of this, if what you’re doing is meaningful to you.” 

Adam Stone is a writer based in Annapolis.

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Professor Emeritus Byron L. Warnken, Lovingly Known as ‘Mr. UB,’ Dies at 76

Prof. Byron L. Warnken indulges in a favorite activity, engaging with students.

Professor Emeritus Byron L. Warnken, who for decades colorfully personified the University of Baltimore School of Law, passed away on Sept. 5, 2022, after a valiant struggle with a neurological disorder. He was 76 years old. 

A native Baltimorean, Warnken was a scholarship student at McDonogh School, where he won a school-wide oratory competition in high school and played the lead in the school production of “Billy Budd.” He graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 1968. 

After being discharged from the Army, he attended the University of Baltimore School of Law as an evening student, graduating cum laude in 1977. While in law school, Warnken worked full-time as a law clerk, first with a law firm and then with the Hon. Basil A. Thomas, on the Circuit Court for Baltimore City. He was president of the Student Bar Association. 

Soon after graduation he began to teach at the law school, first as an adjunct professor and eventually as a tenured professor. He was a member of the law faculty for more than 40 years before retiring in 2018, at which time we named the moot courtroom in his honor. A tribute video was made at the time, and Baltimore Law magazine published this article about him. 

A memorial service was held at the law school on Sept. 17.

“Byron Warnken was a legendary teacher of criminal law and procedure, and author of the three-volume treatise Maryland Criminal Procedure,” says Baltimore Law Dean Ronald Weich. “He developed and led the school’s nationally known moot court program and established the EXPLOR program, which guarantees students the opportunity to work in judicial chambers and law offices after their first year of law school. Above all, Warnken was a devoted mentor to generations of UB Law students. Because he embodied the spirit of our law school, Byron Warnken was widely known as ‘Mr. UB.’”   

Warnken won numerous awards throughout his career from organizations such as the Bar Association of Baltimore City, the Women’s Bar Association, the Maryland State Bar Association, the University of Baltimore and the University System of Maryland. 

In addition to the countless law students he launched into the legal profession, Warnken’s legacy includes his wife Bonnie, a UB Law alumna; his son Byron B. Warnken, a UB Law alumnus; and his daughter Heather, who is the executive director of the school’s Center for Criminal Justice Reform.

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In the wake of Scotus Dobbs decision, law students work for reproductive rights

Marcella Labellarte participates in a 2019 reproductive rights rally at the Supreme Court.

By Adam Stone

Carita Tarter was working as a summer legal intern in the American Civil Liberties Union’s Reproductive Freedom Project when the Supreme Court negated the constitutional right to abortion with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. “Then it was like: We know what we have to do now,” she says. “Now it’s crunch time.” 

Across the School of Law, students and school organizations have been on the front lines of the fight to preserve reproductive rights. Students say the June 2022 Dobbs decision has, if anything, put new energy into their efforts. 

“I definitely feel disappointed and saddened, like the justice system has failed us. But it’s reassuring to work with other people who share a passion for this, who to be solution-oriented and to keep moving forward. It makes me hopeful,” says Tarter, a 3L. 

Marcella Labellarte is in her second year of law school. Prior to attending UBalt Law, she worked for the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, where she helped formulate policy around reproductive rights. She says she’s feeling “very motivated” to continue that work in the wake of Dobbs. 

“Now is the time for the legal profession to step it up and come to the aid of people who are seeking this care,” she says. 

That might mean “representing people directly, in states where women are being criminalized. It might mean doing pro bono work, making sure they are properly represented,” Labellarte says.  

Engagement by the legal community might include helping companies do the paperwork to shift their headquarters into states where female employees still have access to abortion. It could also include the kind of policy work that Labellarte was doing for the OB/GYN association. 

“The ABA should be taking a very strong stance on this,” she says. “One of the most important parts of our system was just blatantly disregarded, and that cannot be ignored. Lawyers need to be out there saying, “We have a big problem with this, we think the Supreme Court got it wrong.’” 

It’s not just law students who are working on the front lines of reproductive rights. The law school has long been active on these issues, for example through its Center on Applied Feminism. 

Center co-directors Prof. Michele Gilman and Prof. Margaret Johnson serve as faculty advisors to If/When/How, the law students’ reproductive rights organization. “We’re supporting them in their activities, and we also have been organizing and will continue to organize educational events that explain and contextualize the recent decision by the Supreme Court,” says Johnson, who is director of the Bronfein Family Law Clinic and associate dean for experiential education. 

“We held a teach-in at the end of the semester when the decision came down, and we’ll be holding an event this fall with different faculty members talking about the Dobbs decision based on their areas of expertise,” she adds. 

In the family law clinic, Johnson works with students on policy and legislative initiatives in the area of reproductive justice. In the wake of Dobbs, she says, “They will be working with a coalition of policymakers and advocates to help get legislation passed in Maryland that provides more rights relating to abortion.” 

The legal community should be all-in on its efforts to push back against Dobbs, Johnson says, adding the ruling could be used to undermine gay marriage, the right to contraception, and other rights as well. 

“This is a structural issue,” she says. “We know that women were able to grow into professional roles in part because they controlled their contraception, their ability to conceive. If we take that away, it has a structural impact on who can enter the workplace. It’s an issue of gender justice.” 

The abortion fight going forward likely will play out state by state, and much will come down to the ways in which the states formulate their specific laws. In Tarter’s view, that means the lawyers need to be engaged in the conversation at all levels. 

“There are a lot of things lawyers can do outside the courtroom,” she says. “As part of the community, lawyers can talk about this — because talking about abortion is still taboo, people don’t want to face the issue. Doing your part as a lawyer also means bringing it up, speaking up about it.” 

Tarter said that despite the Dobbs decision, she still feels positive about the prospects for reproductive rights. “There is a lot of hope,” she says. “In my generation, I’ve only known the right to abortion, and before that there was no right to abortion. So just because it’s not open for us right now, that doesn’t mean we can’t turn it around again.” 

Adam Stone is a writer based in Annapolis.

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CFCC holds symposium on family integrity

Keynote speakers Andrea James, at left, and Dorothy Roberts, at right, share the symposium stage with CFCC Faculty Director Shanta Trivedi.

This fall, the Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children and the Courts convened its first in-person event since 2019, the CFCC Symposium on Protecting Family Integrity. In her opening remarks, CFCC’s faculty director, Prof. Shanta Trivedi, shared her vision for the center. “CFCC will continue to use the expertise that we bring, in collaboration with the expertise in our community, to reduce harm and improve the lives of children and families through a wide range of activities,” Trivedi said. “On issues affecting children and families, we strive to be a place to exchange ideas, debate notions of justice and equity, and educate and learn from one another.” 

To that end, CFCC welcomed nearly 250 guests from the community at the Sept. 29 event, including advocates, attorneys, social workers, representatives from nonprofits, law students, faculty, and people negatively impacted by legal systems. The symposium emphasized a critical issue that has risen to the forefront during discussions of race and criminal legal system reform since 2020—the separation of children from their parents by the child welfare and criminal legal systems.  

The majority of the families separated by government intervention are racial minorities and the economically underprivileged. The symposium’s goal was to bring together advocates challenging these systems from different vantage points to discuss approaches to preventing separation, when possible, and minimizing harm to children when separation occurs.  

In the keynote conversation, distinguished law professor Dorothy Roberts, and abolitionist, author and activist Andrea James led a keynote conversation, moderated by Trivedi. The speakers discussed their own experiences with carceral systems, described their decades of advocacy in this area, and described what James calls “what different looks like” — that is, how they envision a future without system involvement.  

The keynote conversation was followed by a panel focused on the causes and impacts of family separations due to parental incarceration or juvenile detention. The afternoon panel explored separations due to interventions by what some refer to as the family regulation system. Panelists included impacted individuals, advocates for reform, and law professors. They discussed the devastating impacts of these separations on families and communities and challenged participants to look at the history of the criminal and child welfare systems in this country as context for how these systems cause harm today.

Participants on both panels shared an alternate vision in which families struggling with poverty and other challenges receive supportive interventions rather than punitive responses. 

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