Checks should be made
payable to "Whittier Law School."
Registration
will be considered complete upon receipt of payment.
Enrollment is on a first-come, first-served basis
and is not limited to lawyers.
Schedule
July 23
10am-12pm
This introductory session
will provide an overview of the three-day program and
introduce its main themes. To provide a common
understanding for the international material covered in the
rest of the course, an overview of LGBT rights in the United
States will be provided. This session will explore basic
problems of equality and liberty faced by the LGBT community
and how various constitutional concepts have been used to
challenge forms of discrimination against LGBT people. An
overview of the legal rights of LGBT people in the United
States in the areas of criminalization of same-sex sexual
behavior, anti-discrimination law, couples rights, and
parenting rights will be provided.
·
Jon Davidson,
Legal Director, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund
·
Professor
Russell Robinson, UCLA Law
1pm-3pm
This session will use a
comparative law approach to examine how the rights of
same-sex couples have been recognized in the United States
and Western Europe. Major cases and legislation in the
United States that have resulted in domestic partnerships,
civil unions, and marriage for same-sex couples will be
compared with the ways in which the legal rights and
obligations of same-sex couples have been recognized in
Scandinavia and Western Europe. Panelists will discuss the
differences between marital and non-marital forms of
recognition, the varying levels of rights attached to
different forms of recognition, the use of the legislative
and the judicial process to achieve recognition, and the
political process that led to recognition in each country.
·
Brad Sears,
Executive Director of the Williams Institute at UCLA Law
·
Evan Wolfson,
Executive Director, Freedom to Marry
·
Jennifer Pizer,
Senior Counsel, Lambda Legal Defense and
Education Fund
6pm-8pm
The first hour of this
session (1 hour of elimination of bias credit) will help
lawyers build skills for working with colleagues of color
and colleagues who are members of the LGBT community.
Awareness of bias issues in today's evolving cross-cultural
society is essential, both to prevent discrimination
against, and to assure fairness in the work environment. The
session will help lawyers to work with colleagues of color
and members of the LGBT community in a culturally sensitive
manner. The session will also explore how to address issues
of racial, gender, and sexual orientation bias in a variety
of law practice settings.
The second hour of this
session (1 hour of ethics credit) will explore the unique
professional, ethical, and moral challenges that arise for
people of color and LGBT people in the legal profession. To
what extent do prevailing identity and behavior norms limit
or shape professional opportunities for these overlapping
groups of lawyers? What personal and ethical dilemmas are
presented by sexual orientation, gender and race-based
discrimination in the workplace? How does one balance the
often competing goals of providing adequate client
representation, preserving individual autonomy, and securing
avenues for personal expression?
·
Professor
Russell Robinson, UCLA Law
·
Professor
Elizabeth Glazer, Hofstra Law School
July 24
10am-4pm
This session, which will
include two two-hour presentations, will also include an
additional tour of the international courts of the Hague and
an overview of International Human Rights documents and how
they protect LGBT rights.
The Hague is the
center of international legal arbitration.
These presentations in the
Hague will include take place in international tribunals
such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Court of Justice (ICJ),
the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal
for Rwanda (ICTR), the International Criminal Court (ICC),
and Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal.
The presentations will be
lead by Professor David Kaye, who was a legal advisor to the
American Embassy in the Hague, where he worked with the
international criminal tribunals and acted as counsel to the
United States in several cases before the International
Court of Justice and the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal. From
1999 to 2002, Professor Kaye was the principal staff
attorney on humanitarian law, handling issues such as the
application of the law to detainees in Guantanamo Bay and
serving on several U.S. delegations to international
negotiations and conferences.
These sessions will cover
international efforts to eradicate discrimination and
violence against the LGBT community and will explore
international conventions that address violence on the basis
of gender and sexual orientation as well as strategies to
protect the LGBT community from violence and discrimination
and how those strategies have been and are being utilized in
specific countries across the globe. In addition,
participants will explore the major political, judicial and
non-governmental institutions in human rights. The session
will review, in particular, institutions in the United
Nations system as well as regional institutions such as the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and how
individuals pursue human rights claims before these
international bodies.
·
David Kaye,
Executive Director,
International Human Rights Program, UCLA Law
·
Paula
Ettelbrick, Executive Director of the International Gay and
Lesbian Human Rights Commission
·
Professor John
Heilman, Whittier Law School
6pm-7pm
This session focuses on
substance abuse, addiction, and ways to help attorneys "stop
managing the problem" and start getting rid of it. Subjects
include the nature of addiction, causative factors, and
recognition of symptoms. The session will explore why
attorneys believe they can handle substance abuse and
addiction better than non-attorneys, unique signs of
trouble, and resources for attorneys in need of assistance
or treatment.
The session will be led by
Ken Seeley, who has been certified by the National
Association of Drug and Alcohol Interventionists and has
been involved, professionally and personally, in recovery
since 1987. His organization, Intervention911, is one of
the most prominent and successful private intervention
services in the country. Currently, Ken is one of the
on-camera interventionists featured on the groundbreaking
A&E television series Intervention. Seeley will discuss how
to recognize signs of substance abuse in colleagues and how
to intervene.
·
Ken Seeley,
Founder and Executive Director of Intervention911
July 25
10am-12pm
This
panel will provide a brief overview of recent legal
developments in Eastern Europe and in Asia. With regard to
Eastern Europe, special emphasis will be placed on court
decisions involving the rights of same-sex couples and the
impact that the EU accession process is having on LGBT
rights. With regard to Asia, the discussion will address
general trends in the region as well as recent milestones in
a variety of specific jurisdictions, including Hong Kong,
South Korea, and Nepal.
·
Professor
Holning Lau, Hofstra Law School
·
Brad Sears,
Director of the Williams Institute at UCLA Law
1pm-3pm
The legal rights and
obligations of same-sex couples have been recognized in
Scandinavia and Western Europe for close to two decades. As
a result, a great deal of empirical information is now
available about the impact that state recognition has had on
same-sex couples, the LGBT community, and the population as
a whole in the countries that have extended the rights of
marriage to same-sex couples.
The scholars in this panel
will present some of the latest research on the legal
recognition of same-sex couples in Scandinavia and Western
Europe. Topics covered will include: how do the types of
recognition offered by different countries differ in terms
of the amount of rights and obligations they provide? What
factors lead a country to recognize the rights and
obligations of same-sex couples? Can a model be developed
to predict what countries will recognize such rights in the
future? How many couples are registering or marrying in
these countries? How many have sought dissolutions? What do
we know about the demographic characteristics of these
couples compared to married couples or compared to same-sex
couples who are not registering? As some conservative
commentators have claimed, has the legal recognition of
same-sex couples increased rates of divorce and non-marital
birth rate and decreased marriage rates?
·
Kees Waaldijk,
Doctor of Law, Universiteit Leiden in the Netherlands
·
Lee Badgett,
Research Director, The Williams Institute
6pm-8pm
Group decisions about
litigation are structured by the rules of civil procedure
and professional ethics. Those rules currently adhere to an
individualist model. They generally require the attorney to
be, above all else, loyal to her individual client’s desires
-- even where the consequences of the litigation affect
entire groups of people. Why is any individual group member
able to step forward in the litigation arena and
unilaterally claim to represent, and indeed bind, all
similarly situated group members to a particular legal
position? Further, why can any single attorney or
organization litigating one of many cases brought on behalf
of a group decide alone what tactics and strategies to
employ in pursuing that case?
This session examines
professional responsibility issues through the lens of
public interest law practice and the representation of LGBT
groups and individuals. This session will examine the
procedural and ethical questions about individual
decision-making in litigation on behalf of the LGBT
community as a whole. The course will consider problems of
the allocation of control between lawyer and client,
conflicts between advocacy for social change and the needs
of the client, conflicts between the lawyer's individual
morality and the client's needs, and problems in class
action and other multiple client situations.
·
Jon Davidson,
Legal Director, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund
·
Jennifer Pizer,
Senior Counsel, Lambda Legal Defense and
Education Fund
·
Evan Wolfson,
Executive Director, Freedom to Marry
UCLA
School of Law is a state bar of California approved MCLE
provider.
For more information, contact Darcy Pottle at
pottle@law.ucla.edu
or at 310-825-8760. Checks should be made payable to "Whittier
Law School."
Registration will be considered complete upon receipt of
payment. Enrollment is on a first-come, first-served basis
and is not limited to lawyers.
