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• Past Symposia
  • November 3, 2023 – Education in America
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  • November 11, 2022 – The Industrial Prison Complex System
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  • October 8, 2021 – Conspiracy Theories, Disinformation, and Civil Rights
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  • March 19, 2021 – Fighting White Supremacy in the 21st Century
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Speakers

Robert Craig

Robert Craig graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 2012. He clerked for Judge Andy Hurwitz on the Ninth Circuit for one year followed by a three-year clerkship with Judge James Soto of the District Court of Arizona. He volunteered with Abolish Private Prisons over the fall of 2017 and joined the team full-time in 2018.​

John Dacey

Founder and Executive Director-Abolish Private Prisons

John Dacey worked for 12 years at legal aid and public interest firms during 1978-1990 where he handled class actions and other cases for the poor and people with disabilities in matters concerning poverty and disability programs, particularly Medicaid, and jail conditions. While at a private law firm from 1990 to August, 2018, John represented businesses, particularly non-profits, that provide medical, behavioral health and developmental disability services. His work includes trials in state, federal, and tribal courts. John served as a state court judge pro tem and a federal court-appointed mediator to mediate inmate lawsuits over medical care and religious freedoms. For years John has been building a litigation challenge to the constitutionality of private for-profit prisons. John and Phoenix lawyer Robert Beckett founded Abolish Private Prisons, a 501(c)(3) Arizona nonprofit corporation, in 2015.

Brittany Deitch

Brittany Deitch joined is an Assistant Professor of Law at Capital University Law School, where she teaches Criminal Law and Procedure.

Prior to joining Capital, Professor Deitch was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law, where she taught 1L and upper-level sections of Criminal Procedure. Professor Deitch previously served as a J.D. Case Writing Fellow at Harvard Law School, where she developed case studies covering a broad range of topics, including sanctuary cities, labor organizing, and prosecutorial discretion. In this role, she gained extensive experience in curriculum design based on proven pedagogical methods. She incorporates these teaching methods into her courses.

Her research focuses on the theory and practice of punishment. Her works often engage in analysis of whether certain practices in the criminal justice system advance or undermine their purported theoretical underpinnings. She is especially interested in the intersection of criminal punishment and poverty. She has written about the ways in which parole conditions perpetuate a cycle of poverty and imprisonment, the application of death with dignity laws to prisoners serving life without parole sentences, the constitutional flaws in criminal jury selection practices, and retributivism’s conjoined twins problem. Her scholarship has appeared in Georgetown Law Journal Online, Alabama Law Review, William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal, University of Cincinnati Law Review, and the Criminal Law Bulletin.

Paul Finkelman

Rydell Visiting Professor, Gustavus Adolphus College

Paul Finkelman currently holds the Rydell Visiting Chair at Gusatus Adolphus College in Minnesota. He received his B.A. in American Studies from Syracuse University in 1971 and his Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago in 1976. He was later a Fellow in Law and Humanities at Harvard Law School. In 2014 he was the Justice Pike Hall, Jr. Visiting Professor of Law at Louisiana State University, Paul M. Hebert Law Center. He has also held the Ariel F. Sallows Chair in Human Rights Law at the University of Saskatchewan, the John Hope Franklin Chair in American Legal History at Duke Law School, and was the President William McKinley Distinguished Professor at Albany Law School. In 2017 he held the Fulbright Chair in Human Rights and Social Justice at the University of Ottawa School of Law, in Ottawa, Canada and was also the John E. Murray Visiting Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He is the author of more than 200 scholarly articles and the author or editor of more than fifty books. His most recent major book, “Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation’s Highest Court,” was published by Harvard University Press in 2018. He recently published “The First Civil Rights Movement: Black Rights in the Age of the Revolution and Chief Justice Taney’s Originalism in Dred Scott,” 24 University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 676 (2022).

He has published in a wide variety of areas including American legal history, race and slavery in American law, constitutional law, religion and law, and legal issues surrounding baseball. His work has been cited in six decisions by the United States Supreme Court. Justice Ginsburg quoted him on the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment in her unanimous decision in Timbs v. Indiana. In 2022 the Court cited him in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen He has been quoted and cited by numerous other federal and state courts and in many appellate briefs. He has spoken on slavery, human trafficking, civil liberties, and human rights issues at the United Nations, throughout the United States, and in more than a dozen other countries, including China, Germany, Israel, Japan, and the United Kingdom. In 2014, he was ranked as the fifth most cited legal historian in American legal scholarship in Brian Leiter’s “Top Ten Law Faculty Scholarly Impact, 2009-2013.” He op-eds and essays have appeared in many journals including New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Huffington Post, and Washington Monthly. He was an expert witness in the famous Alabama Ten Commandments Monument Case (Glassroth v. Moore) and in the lawsuit over the ownership of Barry Bonds’ 73rd home run ball (Popov v. Hayashi).

Stevie Leachy

Northeastern Law

Professor Stefanie (Stevie) Leahy teaches in the first-year Legal Skills in Social Context (LSSC) program. Professor Leahy was appointed an assistant teaching professor at Northeastern Law in July 2020 following her term as a visiting assistant professor during the 2019-2020 academic year. Within LSSC, Professor Leahy has collaborated with LatinoJustice PRLDEF, GLBB, HCRS and CLBB, among other organizations. In connection with her work as the CPIAC Resident Fellow, Professor Leahy’s current projects focus on the cradle to prison pipeline and juvenile justice.

Outside of LSSC, Professor Leahy also teaches Introduction to Writing for Litigation. Professor Leahy is an active member of the Association of Legal Writing Directors, and in 2021 was awarded an outstanding Service Award in recognition of her contributions as a member of the organization’s Leadership and Development (L&D) Committee. Before joining the faculty at Northeastern, Professor Leahy taught at New England Law Boston within the legal writing and academic success departments.

Prior to starting her teaching career, Professor Leahy began her legal career at Latham & Watkins, where she conducted a broad-based civil litigation practice. Professor Leahy continued her litigation practice as an attorney with Goodwin Procter and later at Aeton Law Partners. She also had extensive pro bono experience, including asylum petitions, VAWA petitions, and an internet censorship case in collaboration with the American Civil Liberties Union. Professor Leahy practiced for over a decade before transitioning to Northeastern to begin teaching.