American Constitution Society (ACS)

The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy is a recently formed national organization of law students, law professors, judges, practicing lawyers and others. We want to counter the dominant vision of American law today, a narrow conservative vision that lacks appropriate regard for the ways in which the law affects people’s lives. We seek to restore the fundamental principles of respect for human dignity, protection of individual rights and liberties, genuine equality, and access to justice to their rightful—and traditionally central—place in American law. We want to strengthen the intellectual underpinnings of—and the public case for—a vision of the law in which these values are paramount—on such issues as: privacy; freedom of speech; federalism; anti-discrimination and affirmative action; gay rights; a woman’s right to choose; labor and consumer rights; protection of health, safety, and the environment; the death penalty; and the criminal justice system.

Speakers at Stanford’s American Constitution Society’s events include former Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis, ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero, former White House Counsel John Dean, Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta, Public Citizen’s Litigation Department’s Co-founder Alan Morrison, Judge Stephen Reinhardt, Judge Nathaniel R. Jones, Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, Judge Ann Aiken, Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Christopher Painter and John Elwood from the U.S. Department of Justice, Professor Pamela S. Karlan, and Lis Semel, former director of the ABA’s Death Penalty Representation Project.

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