IN THIS ISSUE

Front Page

Letter from the President: Putting Race Back on the Table

Notes from the Right: Race and Poverty —Getting a Legal Burial?

Law Review Summaries: Racial Lines and Property Rights

Funders Support Innovative Meeting on Intent Doctrine

EJS and California Teachers Association Collaborate on Unconscious Bias Project

EJS Argues Admissions Policy of Hawai'i Private School for Native Hawaiian Children Does Not Violate Civil Rights

New Chief Justice: Where Will He Stand on Civil Rights?

Staff/Board News and Notes

Newsletter Editors:
Elaine Elinson
Miguel Gavaldon

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News and Notes

Honors to EJS Staff and Board

EJS President Eva Paterson was honored Nov. 4 by the National Bar Association at its 17^th Annual Wiley Branton Awards Luncheon in Los Angeles. Hollywood icon Norman Lear presented Eva with her award.

Honoree Eva Paterson, Producer and Presenter Norman Lear and CABL President and State Bar VP Demetrius Shelton

Paterson received the award as a “distinguished  California attorney who  has  advanced  the  causes  of  justice  and equality of opportunity.”  In addition to Paterson, the group honored Leo A.  Branton, Jr., a noted advocate for civil rights and brother of Wiley A. Branton; Judge Terry Hatter of the U.S. District Court, Central  District of California; Robert Harris of Pacific Gas and Electric;  Constance Rice, of English,  Munger  & Rice, formerly counsel with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational  Fund;  and Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Allen Webster.

The  NBA,  founded  in  1925, serves as the national organization for more than  18,000  African-American  lawyers,  judges,  and  law students in the United  States.   The Wiley A. Branton Issues Symposium was established by the  NBA  as a tribute to attorney and civil rights leader Wiley A. Branton.

EJS Board Chair  Charles J. Ogletree Jr., Jesse Climenko professor of law and vice dean for Clinical Programs at Harvard Law School, has been appointed director of the new Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. The Institute, which was  was launched with an opening symposium in September, will focus on race and justice issues. It will sponsor research, hold conferences, and provide policy analysis.

The Institute is named in honor of Charles Hamilton Houston, a visionary lawyer who spearheaded the litigation in Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case that ended segregation in public schools. Houston, a 1922 Harvard Law graduate and the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review, also trained Justice Thurgood Marshall and Oliver Hill - pivotal players in the case - when they were students at Howard Law School.

Born in 1895, just blocks from the Supreme Court, Charles Hamilton Houston attended a prestigious all black high school and later enrolled in Amherst College. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he traveled to Europe and Africa, and returned to the United States and joined the Howard Law School faculty. He served as the first special counsel to the NAACP and arguably contributed to every legal victory in civil rights from the 1930s through Brown v. Board of Education.

EJS Board member Eric Yamamoto was presented with the 2005 University of Hawaii Regents’ Medal for Excellence in Teaching by the Board of Regents for his “extraordinary level of subject mastery and scholarship, teaching effectiveness and creativity and personal values that benefit students.”

A professor of law at UH Manoa, Yamamoto is an internationally renowned expert in addressing issues of racism and reconciliation with originality and genuine depth. Yamamoto’s visionary style of teaching enabled him to develop an innovative teaching/learning model, Strategic Research and Action Initiative. The model brings together law students and graduates, lawyers, advocates, policymakers, journalists and scientists to employ tools of critical inquiry to conduct research, write materials and engage in public education on current social justice issues. 

Staff Comings and Goings

Development

EJS welcomes Miguel Gavaldon as the new Director of Development.  Gavaldon was previously co-executive director and development director at the DataCenter in Oakland, and also served as executive director of Barrios Unidos in Fresno and executive director of the San Rafael Canal Ministry.

A UC Berkeley graduate in cultural anthropology and Chicano Studies, Gavaldon has also worked at the Canal Community Alliance, Larkin Street Youth Center and Bay Area Community Resources and consulted with the Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training, California Wellness Leadership Institute, and Radio Bilingue, among other organizations.

Gavaldon,  is currently on the boards of Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training and Grassroots Fundraising Journal and has served on the advisory committees of the Tides Foundation and the Fresno County Youth Network.

Gavaldon replaces Joe Lucero, former  EJS Development Consultant.  Lucero, who is exploring a new career in  food, wine and catering,  continues to serve on the Board of Directors for the Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center in San Francisco and remains active with other groups including the American Foundation for AIDS Research.

Research

Shannon Seibert joined EJS in September as the Law & Communications Irmas Fellow, funded through the Irmas Fellowship and Public Interest Law Foundation programs at the University of Southern California.

Seibert, who graduated from USC in 2005 with both a J.D. and an M.A. in Print Journalism, received her BA from UCLA in Political Science.  While at USC, Seibert was a  graduate research assistant at the Institute for Justice & Journalism, where she assisted IJJ Senior Fellow Joe Domanick with research for his 2004 book, Cruel Justice: Three Strikes and the Politics of Crime in America’s Golden State.

As a law student Seibert clerked at the Los Angeles Federal Public Defender’s office, and at the law offices of Yagman & Yagman & Reichmann, a firm that focuses on civil rights and police brutality.  She also worked at USC Law School’s immigration clinic.  Seibert’s Irmas Fellowship will allow her to work on EJS litigation as well as a strategic communications research project on framing and language in covering social justice issues in the media.

Bill Kidder, former research associate at EJS, is now a Senior Policy Analyst at the University of California, Davis in the Office of the Vice Chancellor, where he focuses on higher education equity issues, including admissions policy.  During his tenure at EJS, Kidder produced innovative reports on affirmative action and admissions policies at the University of California, the University of New Mexico and the University of Texas. 

Kidder also co-authored a rebuttal to Richard Sander's study in the Stanford Law Review. This critique, an invited submission written in collaboration with David Chambers and Richard Lempert of the University of Michigan Law School, and Tim Clydesdale, sociologist at the College of New Jersey, demonstrated that Sander's forecasts that  affirmative action decreases the number of African American attorneys nationwide are untenable.