Registration and Continental Breakfast Starts at 8:30 a.m.

REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED FOR THIS EVENT

Details

Symposium Schedule

Speaker Bios

Main Sponsor

Co-Sponsor

The Santa Clara Law Review and the Katharine and George Alexander Community Law Center cordially invite students, faculty, practitioners, and members of the immigration law community to our Sanctuary Jurisdiction Symposium. The event will explore the history of sanctuary jurisdictions, constitutional issues often associated with federal and subfederal immigration policies, and the potential future of these policies under the new Trump administration.

In recent months immigration issues have risen to the forefront of political and legal debate. Legal scholars and local attorneys have attempted to make sense of the new political regime and its ramifications on both our country and local communities. Our 2017 Symposium panelists will address the rise of sanctuary jurisdictions and what we might expect from the legal responses to threats of defunding.

Complimentary continental breakfast and bagged lunch for guests who RSVP.

Up to 3 CLE credits available.

For more information about this event, please contact Emily Tewes at etewes@scu.edu.

Special thanks to Immigration Law Society & Federalist Society.

SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE

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Speaker Bios

Josh Blackman is an Associate Professor of Law at the South Texas College of Law in Houston who specializes in constitutional law, the United States Supreme Court, and the intersection of law and technology. Josh is the author of the critically acclaimed Unprecedented: The Constitutional Challenge to Obamacare (2013) and Unraveled: Obamacare, Religious Liberty, and Executive Power (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

Josh was selected by Forbes Magazine for the “30 Under 30” in Law and Policy. Josh has twice testified before the House Judiciary Committee on the constitutionality of executive action on immigration and health care. He is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. Josh is the founder and President of the Harlan Institute, the founder of FantasySCOTUS, the Internet’s Premier Supreme Court Fantasy League, and blogs at JoshBlackman.com. Josh leads the cutting edge of legal analytics as Director of Judicial Research at LexPredict. Josh is the author of over three dozen law review articles, and his commentary has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today, L.A. Times, and other national publications.

James J. Brosnahan is named among the top 30 trial lawyers in the United States, according to the Legal 500 US. A lion of the trial bar, he is one of the most respected and recognized trial lawyers in the United States. Jim has been practicing trial and appellate law for over fifty years. He maintains an active practice of civil and criminal cases, very often cases that are going to trial or will be argued in Circuit Courts. In addition to his busy practice, he teaches a class on persuasion at UC Berkeley Law. Fascinated by many aspects of the law, Jim has an insatiable curiosity for many types of cases and will fight for justice, within the rules, for any of his clients. He has tried, to conclusion, 150 cases.

Mr. Brosnahan has received numerous awards and recognition throughout his distinguished career. In 1996, he was inducted into the State Bar of California’s “Trial Lawyers Hall of Fame” and was awarded the Samuel E. Gates Award by the American College of Trial Lawyers in 2000 for his “significant, exceptional lasting contribution to the improvement of the litigation process.”  In 2001, Mr. Brosnahan was named “Trial Lawyer of the Year” by the American Board of Trial Advocates, and the following year, the San Francisco Lawyers’ Club honored Mr. Brosnahan with its “Legend of the Law” award.  In 2006, he was named one of America’s most influential trial lawyers by the National Law Journal. In 2007, he received the American Inns of Court Lewis F. Powell Award for Professionalism and Ethics to recognize a “lifetime devoted to the highest standards of ethical practice, competence, and professionalism.”  In 2011, he received the Judge Learned Hand Award from the American Jewish Committee. He was recently recognized as a 2012 Lifetime Achiever by The American Lawyer which recognizes outstanding professional success and a devotion to public service. He was also a National Institute of Trial Advocacy (NITA) Teacher of the Year.

Read Mr. Brosnahan’s full bio on the Morrison Foerster website.

Allan Colbern is joining Arizona State University in the Fall 2017 as an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and he received his PhD from the University of California, Riverside. His research explores the historical-political development of sanctuary laws and engages broader debates in American federalism, immigration law, civil rights and racial politics. His book manuscript, Today’s Runaway Slaves: Unauthorized Immigrants in a Federalist Framework, examines and draws connections between different periods in American history where states and localities have passed sanctuary policies to protect runaway slaves (1780-1860), Central American refugees (1979-1997) and undocumented immigrants (2000-present) from re-enslavement and deportation. Colbern is also collaborating with Professor Karthick Ramakrishnan (at UC Riverside) on a co-authored book manuscript that examines how today’s state integration policies (especially those taking shape in California) raise new notions of state level citizenship, with respect to expanding rights and benefits for immigrants that exceed those set by the federal government.

A scholar whose research has explored work-family policy, gender theory, and contingent workers’ rights, Professor Keith Cunningham-Parmeter focuses his writing on emerging theories of employment discrimination. Prior to joining the law faculty at Willamette University in 2006, he represented migrant farmworkers as a Skadden Fellow with the Oregon Law Center. While there, Professor Cunningham-Parmeter was lead counsel in a wage and hour class action brought on behalf of food processing employees, which resulted in the largest judgment to date for agricultural workers in Oregon.

Professor Cunningham-Parmeter graduated from Stanford Law School with distinction and was elected to the Order of the Coif. He was the first-place winner of two writing competitions in law school and was selected as a Stanford Law School Public Interest Fellow. During law school, he worked at the East Palo Alto Community Law Project and the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, providing focused legal services to immigrant communities and low-wage workers.

Read Professor Cunningham-Parmeter’s full bio.

Professor Seth Davis is an expert on federal litigation and public administration. His scholarship focuses upon the hard choices that we don’t acknowledge or hope to avoid when we create rights of action and allocate lawmaking authority. Substantively, he focuses upon these hard choices as they arise in federal litigation, federal administrative law, and federal Indian law on the one side and property and tort on the other. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in leading law reviews, including the Columbia Law Review, the California Law Review, the Vanderbilt Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Wisconsin Law Review, as well as in leading specialty law journals, including the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. Prof. Davis is also a co-author on the forthcoming 2017 supplement to Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law.

After graduating from Columbia Law School, Professor Davis clerked for the Honorable Douglas H. Ginsburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Following his clerkship, Prof. Davis served as a volunteer legal intern at the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia and then as a litigation associate at O’Melveny & Myers LLP, where he specialized in appellate litigation and financial services regulatory law and also developed a pro bono practice working with Indian Nations and intertribal organizations.

Kevin R. Johnson is Dean, Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law, and Professor of Chicana/o Studies. He joined the UC Davis law faculty in 1989 and was named Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in 1998. Johnson became Dean in 2008. He has taught a wide array of classes, including immigration law, civil procedure, complex litigation, Latinos and Latinas and the law, and Critical Race Theory. In 1993, he was the recipient of the law school’s Distinguished Teaching Award.

Dean Johnson has published extensively on immigration law and civil rights. Published in 1999, his book How Did You Get to Be Mexican? A White/Brown Man’s Search for Identity was nominated for the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Dean Johnson’s latest book, Immigration Law and the US-Mexico Border (2011), received the Latino Literacy Now’s International Latino Book Awards – Best Reference Book.  Dean Johnson blogs at ImmigrationProf, and is a regular contributor on immigration on SCOTUSblog.

A regular participant in national and international conferences, Dean Johnson has also held leadership positions in the Association of American Law Schools and is the recipient of an array of honors and awards. He is quoted regularly by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and other national and international news outlets.

Read Dean Johnson’s full bio.

Ash Kalra was elected to serve in the California State Assembly in 2016, representing the 27th Assembly District. He has called San Jose home for over 37 years. In that time, he has developed a passion for serving his neighbors and making sure that our government is solving problems – not creating them.

In 2008, Ash made history by becoming the first Indian-American to be elected to the San Jose City Council. In his time as a Councilmember, he has fought against cuts to public safety including standing up in favor of restoring the SJPD burglary unit and Violent Crimes Enforcement Team, worked to provide incentives for companies to locate and grow in San Jose and has been a champion for more transit options including the BART to Silicon Valley extension. Ash has been a voice for public safety, better schools, improved public transportation and a healthier environment.

Prior to serving on the City Council, Ash was an attorney for the Santa Clara County Public Defender’s Office for 11 years. Most of his time was spent in drug treatment court where client’s were given the opportunity to complete a rehabilitation program and turn their lives around. In addition, Ash served on numerous non-profit boards, including Somos Mayfair, the Asian Law Alliance, the South Asian Bar Association, Fresh Lifelines for Youth and the Santa Clara County Bar Association. Ash also helped to found the Hayes Neighborhood Association in the neighborhood in which he grew up and still lives today.

Read more about Ash Kalra.

Zoe Lofgren has been a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives since 1995.  She represents the 19th District of California, based in the “Capital of Silicon Valley,” San Jose.

A lifelong Bay Area resident and the daughter of a truck driver, Zoe attended public schools in Palo Alto and attended Stanford University on a scholarship, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1970. She attended, with the help of a scholarship, Santa Clara University School of Law, graduating cum laude in 1975. She served as a member of Congressman Don Edwards’ staff for eight years in both his San Jose and Washington DC offices. While practicing and teaching immigration law, she was first elected to the San Jose Evergreen Community College Board in 1979.  In 1980, she was elected to the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors where she served for 14 years.  Following Congressman Don Edwards’ retirement in 1994 after 32 years in Congress, Zoe was elected to the House of Representatives. She currently serves on the House Judiciary Committee, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, and the Committee on House Administration

As the highest ranking Democrat and former chair of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, and a longtime immigration attorney and law professor, Zoe is recognized as an established champion of comprehensive immigration reform and a national leader in immigration policy. During the 113th Congress she played a key role in negotiating a comprehensive reform bill in the House Representatives as part of an eight-person bipartisan working group.

Read Zoe Lofgren’s full bio.

Nikki Marquez is a Law Fellow/Attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC), where she contributes to manuals, practice advisories, and community resources, and engages in some of ILRC’s advocacy work. Recently, her work has focused on immigration enforcement, including community responses such as sanctuary resolutions and ordinances. Nikki attended Stanford Law School, has a Masters in International Relations and Economics from Johns Hopkins, and attended Stanford for undergrad. Prior to law school, Nikki worked on anti-human trafficking policy and the national human trafficking hotline, and she worked on issues related to the economic rights of survivors of domestic violence. In her free time, Nikki likes to hike, play basketball, and hang out with her 9 month old son.

Professor Elizabeth McCormick joined the faculty at the University of Tulsa College of Law in 2005, where she founded and continues to direct the Immigrant Rights Project, a law school clinical education program in which law students represent clients in immigration matters. Since 2008, McCormick has served as Director of Clinical Education Programs at the College of Law and, in 2015, Professor McCormick was appointed Associate Dean for Experiential Learning. In addition to teaching students in the Immigrant Rights Project Clinical Program, McCormick also teaches Immigration Law and International Refugee and Asylum Law.

McCormick’s scholarship and advocacy focus on immigration law and policy, in particular the intersection of federal immigration law and policy and state and local immigration enforcement efforts. In her most recent article in the Lewis & Clark Law Review, McCormick examines the twenty year history of two federal “anti-sanctuary” laws, the ways in which state and federal courts have understood their meaning and purpose, and the evolving role of the statutes in the national immigration debate, in particular the struggle to define the proper role for state and local governments in immigration enforcement. In her 2012 article in the Stanford Law and Policy Review, which draws heavily on her own experiences with students and clients in the Tulsa community, McCormick examines the detrimental impact of local anti-immigrant bias on the implementation of a federal immigration benefit designed to protect immigrant victims of violent crime, and proposes regulatory reforms to ensure protection for these victims. McCormick’s scholarship has also explored the history of immigration to and immigrant life in Oklahoma, and the reaction of state legislators, law enforcement agencies, and residents to recent and dramatic shifts in the state’s immigrant population. In a 2009 article in the Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, McCormick examined the history and the impact of the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act (HB 1804), Oklahoma’s comprehensive experiment in immigration regulation, and considered how it is that Oklahoma found itself on the front lines of the illegal immigration debate. In 2007, she received the Josephine Yalch Zekan Award for Best Scholarly Article in Faith and Law for her article Hospitality: How a Biblical Virtue Could Transform United States Immigration Policy.

Read Professor McCormick’s full bio.

Bea Pangilinan is a staff attorney at Asian Law Alliance, a legal services organization based in San Jose, CA. At ALA, she manages their immigration program and provides direct legal services to clients in the areas of naturalization, DACA, family petitions, adjustment of status, among others. Since moving to the Bay Area in 2006, she has been actively working on immigration issues such as the Santa Clara County detainer policy and helping to coordinate county-wide responses to the policy on Deferred Action for immigrant youth and preparing for Comprehensive Immigration Law. She received her Bachelor in Science and Law degrees from the University of the Philippines and has a Masters in Law from the Université de Marseille Aix in Aix-en- Provence, France.

Fr. Jon Pedigo has been awarded the 2008 Immigrant Advocate of the Year by SIREN (Services, Immigrants, Rights and Education Network), the 2010 Director’s Award from from the Human Relations Commission of Santa Clara County, the Cesar 2013 Chavez Social Justice Award from American Muslim Voice and the 2014 Cesar E. Chavez Si Se Puede Award by the Chavez Family Vision Foundation. He is the Chair of the Inter-Faith Council on Economics and Justice Board and a 2012 Rockwood Fellow for Immigrant Leaders in California.

Brittney Rezaei is a civil rights attorney for the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). In this capacity, she represents clients who have faced religious discrimination. Some of the issues she handles include law enforcement targeting, school bullying, employment discrimination and hate incidents.

Brittney graduated from UC Davis with degrees in Middle East/South Asia Studies and International Relations. While in college Brittney studied Arabic, Farsi, and French, and spent the summer after graduation in Jordan studying Arabic as a recipient of the State Department’s Critical Languages Scholarship. Brittney earned her J.D. from Santa Clara University School of Law (SCU), and is licensed to practice law in California. During and after law school, Brittney worked on the legal team at Google handling law enforcement matters. At SCU, she was active in the International Human Rights Clinic and Katherine & George Alexander Community Law Center’s immigration program.

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