Hear a Lecture, There a Lecture

Selected Spring 2024 Lectures, Conferences and More

Dr. Michelle A. Williams, renowned epidemiologist, academic leader and awardwinning educator on the faculty of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, delivered the keynote address at the 2024 Health Law Conference.

Center for Health Policy and Law (CHPL)

Advancing Pregnant Persons’ Right to Life Symposium

2.8.24 ›› CHPL cosponsored this symposium held at Boston University School of Law. Professors Katherine Kraschel, Martha Davis and Wendy Parmet and CHPL Managing Director Mehreen Butt participated in conversations focused on developing a right to life for people of reproductive age.

Annual Health Law Conference: The Future of Health Equity After the End of Affirmative Action

4.12.23 ›› In 2023, the Supreme Court upended established equal protection law with its decision in SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. UNC, effectively eliminating the use of affirmative action in college admissions. This conference focused on how the Court’s decision may have profound and troubling implications for health equity.

Center for Health Policy and Law Salus Populi Judicial Education Program

4.26.24 ›› This full-day, interactive, seminar-style program provided judges with an introduction to the social determinants of health and their relationship to judicial decision-making, plus the tools judges need to apply their knowledge to their work on the bench.

Center for Health Policy and Law and Public Health Law Watch

Act for Public Health Spring 2024 Convening: Protecting Public Health in the Courts

5.22.24 ›› Academics and public health officials from across the country met at Northeastern Law to create a strategic plan for protecting public health in the courts.

Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy (PHRGE)

Reparative Justice in the United States: Human Rights in Practice

6.20.24 ›› This symposium of the Bringing Human Rights Home Lawyers’ Network, led by PHRGE, focused on reparative justice in the United States and human rights in practice. The event, which featured a keynote conversation between Professor Margaret Burnham and Professor Justin Hansford of Howard University, was held at Fordham University and cohosted by Fordham Law’s Center on Race, Law and Justice and the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice.

Water for Peace

3.22.24 ›› This World Water Day briefing focused on the impact of local water affordability policies and Massachusetts legislation on the human right to water and sanitation.

Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy and Black Law Students Association

Margaret Huang (fourth from right) was honored with a plaque. She was joined by (from left) Dean James Hackney, PHRGE Director Elizabeth Ennen ’08, Merissa Spaulding ’25, Tamia Hackworth ’25 and Tia Martin ’25.

Photo by Craig Bailey

4.5.24 ›› Margaret Huang, president and chief executive officer of the Southern Poverty Law Center and former executive director of Amnesty International USA, delivered the 2024 Gordon Lecture. In her lecture, “The Necessity of (and Struggle for) a Human Rights Movement in the United States,” Huang called for establishing a national human rights institution, normalizing the use of international human rights principles in social justice advocacy and building public awareness in this country about international human rights.

School of Law and College of Engineering

The Algorithmic Workplace: A Workshop

5.16.24 ›› Digital technologies are transforming the global economy, reshaping labor markets, employment relations and public services in far-reaching ways. This workshop was the culminating event of the Algorithmic Workplace, a five-year project funded by the National Science Foundation. Professor Hilary Robinson served as one of the principal investigators (see page 38).

School of Law and Northeastern London

The Law — What’s Next? The Future for the Law in the Age of AI

3.13.24 ›› This hybrid conference, cohosted with Northeastern University London, focused on key trends in AI and legal technology that will shape the world in the coming decade.

Office of Development and Alumni/ae Relations

Denise-Carty Bennia Memorial Bar Awards Reception

5.8.24 ›› April English ’00, chief secretary to Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey ’98, delivered the keynote address at the 31st annual Denise Carty-Bennia Memorial Bar Awards reception. Lennox Chase ’98 presided over the ceremony. Twenty students received bar awards.

Alumni/ae Association Virtual Book Club

2.5.24 ›› Northeastern Law’s Alumni/ae Association Virtual Book Club became an instant “bestseller” when it launched in 2020. This year, the book club was delighted to feature a discussion between Dahlia Lithwick (above, right), author of Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America and host of Slate’s Amicus podcast, and Professor Jeremy Paul (above, left).

Center for Public Interest Advocacy and Collaboration

4.10.24 ›› Erin Reed, a transgender journalist who writes Erin in the Morning, a subscription newsletter on LGBTQ+ legislation, news and life, spoke about the current state of anti-trans legislation and how advocates can push back against hatred for the trans movement.

Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR)

Unjust Enrichment: The Case of Henrietta Lacks

The CLEAR team warmly welcomed Professor Deleso Alford (second from right) to the School of Law. From left: Deborah Jackson, managing director of CLEAR; Professor Deborah Ramirez, faculty codirector of CLEAR; Professor Patricia Williams; and (at far right) Professor Margaret Burnham, faculty codirector of CLEAR.

Photo by Catherine McGloin

3.12.24 ›› Professor Deleso Alford, a faculty member of the Southern University Law Center and author of an amicus brief in the case of Estate of Henrietta Lacks vs. Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., and Professor Patricia Williams spoke about the legacy of Henrietta Lacks, the young Black mother whose cancer cells, nicknamed HeLa, supported a generation of medical research. Although Lacks passed away in 1951, her cells continue to impact the world.

Center for Law, Information and Creativity (CLIC)

Marginalized Inventors and Trouble at the Patent Office

2.29.24 ›› This presentation featured Professor Jordana Goodman of Chicago-Kent College of Law. She highlighted the inequities the patent prosecution process presents to inventors from marginalized backgrounds for inventions related to their culture. Goodman drew attention to the USPTO’s inequitable messaging and proposed structural solutions to the patent system.

Reining in Big Tech: Antitrust Law at a Crossroads

The Reining in Big Tech discussion included (from left) Professor John Kwoka of the College of Social Sciences and Humanities and former chief economist to the chair of the Federal Trade Commission; Adjunct Professor Gary Cooper, an antitrust expert; Professor Elettra Bietti; and Professor David Simon (moderator)

Photo by Donis Perkins.

03.14.24 ›› This discussion focused on how tech platform markets dominated by companies such as Alphabet, Amazon and Meta are being remade through antitrust law and how antitrust law is, or isn’t, changing to address emerging economic challenges.

Governing AI’s Intermediaries: Model Marketplaces, Platforms and Supply Chains

4.2.24 ›› Professor Michael Veale of University College London spoke with Northeastern Professor of Philosophy John Basl about emerging business models of AI and challenges similar to those of the past, as well as those unique to AI business models. Professor Elettra Bietti moderated the conversation.

Center for Law Information and Creativity and Center for Health Policy and Law

The Privacy Fallacy: Harm and Power in the Information Economy

4.11.24 ›› This book talk featured Professor Ignacio Cofone, Canada Research Chair in AI Law and Data Governance at McGill University, in conversation with faculty members Claudia Haupt and Elettra Bietti. Cofone’s research explores how laws should adapt to technologically driven social and economic change, with a focus on data harms and AI decision-making.

Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project

Centering Black Resistance

2.22.24 ›› CRRJ celebrated Black History Month by inviting Professor Kellie Carter Jackson, chair of Africana studies at Wellesley College, to present on her new book, We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance.

Public Memorialization in the United States: Truth Commissions, Monuments and Commemoration

4.2.24 ›› James Williams, former chief public defender for Orange and Chatham Counties in North Carolina and current racial equity coordinator at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, spoke about public memorialization in the United States. Williams leads the Booker Spicely Committee, which seeks memorialization for an African American soldier killed in Durham, North Carolina, in 1944 and restorative justice for surviving family members.

Violence and Public Memory

4.3.24 ›› Northeastern University Professor Emeritus Martin Blatt, editor of the new collection Violence and Public Memory, joined volume contributor Professor Maria John of UMass Boston for a discussion on the

Daynard Public Interest Visiting Fellow

A roundtable discussion, “US War on Terror and the Suppression of Dissent,” featured (from left) Naz Ahmad, staff attorney with Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility; Professor Carlton Williams of Cornell Law School; Diala Shamas; Fatema Ahmad, executive director at Muslim Justice League; and Professor Zinaida Miller.

Photo by Michael Manning

US War on Terror and the Suppression of Dissent

2.12-14.24 ›› Diala Shamas, senior staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, came to Northeastern Law for three days in February as a Daynard Public Interest Visiting Fellow. Shamas delivered a community lecture, “Lawyering for Palestinian Rights in These Times.”

Northeastern Law

Junior Scholars Conference

Professor David Simon welcomed more than 100 colleagues from across the country to the Junior Scholars Conference.

Photo by David Leifer

3.1–2.24 ›› Northeastern Law invited junior law faculty from across the nation to this conference that focused on peer review of papers, discussions about law careers and networking.

Property Works in Progress

5.16-17.24 ›› Property Works in Progress is a workshop of property professors that meets annually to present and discuss papers concerning property law and theory. Its goal is to provide an intimate forum for the exchange of ideas and the receipt of early feedback from colleagues.

School of Law and D’Amore-McKim School of Business

Behavioral Approaches to Social Justice in Business and Law

4.2.24 ›› This event underscored the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to addressing societal challenges that are relevant to how business and law function.

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Spotlight

  • Northeastern Law’s Center for Health Policy and Law (CHPL), in collaboration with Northeastern University Bouvé College of Health Sciences’ Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research, has received $1 million from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to support and expand upon Salus Populi, the nation’s first education program for judges that provides critical information about the social determinants of health

  • Professor Martha Davis, an internationally recognized expert on economic and social rights, joined with a group of leading law faculty in April to submit an amicus brief to the US Supreme Court in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Gloria Johnson, a case in which the Supreme Court ultimately upheld an Oregon city’s laws aimed at banning homeless residents from sleeping outdoors, saying they did not violate the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

  • Associate Dean Hemanth Gundavaram has been elected to serve on the 2024 executive board of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Minority Groups.