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Past Conferences

  • October 8-10, 2010

LATCRIT XV The Color of the Economic Crisis: Exploring the Downturn from the Bottom Up

The Global Financial Crisis reached its peak in September of 2008 when stock markets crashed and numerous banks, mortgage lenders and insurance companies failed. More than a year later, although government bailouts have assured that financial players such as Goldman Sachs now enjoy “one of the richest periods in the bank’s 140-year history” (NYT, Dec 16, 2009), relief for the hardest hit – people of color, low-income communities, and women – has yet to materialize.

This conference will explore the disparate impact of the Great Recession on the powerless and the marginalized. What is the nature of the impact of the economic crash? What accounts for its disparate effects? How did regulatory failures increase the likelihood and effects of the crisis, and what legal reforms are needed to address the harm it has wrought and prevent future collapses? Many communities of color were still feeling the effects of the last “downturn” when this recession hit. In September 2008, the unemployment rate among African Americans was already 11.4% (compared to 5.4% for whites). A year later, the unemployment rate among African Americans is at 15.9%, a 23 year high. Communities of color have moved beyond recession and are now experiencing a depression, yet the media has paid little attention to the effects of this crisis on the most vulnerable. Both the declaration of the crisis, and the current pronouncement of a recovery, reveal painfully the societal disenfranchisement of the economically disempowered.

In examining the workings of subordinated identities — race, gender, sexual orientation and class — class (economic status) stands alone as a putative indicator of merit. Net worth and social worth are equated in a capitalism that holds itself out as a tool of anti-subordination. But such an account of capitalism ignores its historical and societal underpinnings, and the ways in which capitalism functions to entrench the status quo.

This entrenchment operates both domestically and internationally. The overlooked consequences of the economic crisis do not stop with the disadvantaged constituencies in the industrialized West. While developed economies have been affected, many developing economies, and people in them (mostly people of color), have been devastated in a new brand of colonialism through commerce.

Like all crises, this one too presents us with an opportunity. We invite LatCrit scholars to take this opportunity to fully explore the causes, conditions and ramifications of the economic crisis.

  • August 27-28, 2010

Second Annual Southwest Criminal Law Conference

The Sturm College of Law and the University of Colorado Law School co-hosted the second annual Southwest Criminal Law Conference. Designed as an opportunity for criminal law and procedure faculty from law schools in the southwest United States to present works in progress, the conference followed on the heels of a very successful workshop held last fall at the University of Arizona. The format called for a commenter, rather than the paper’s author, to present the manuscript after which the author was given a chance to respond, with the balance of the time left for discussion among all participants. The workshop emphasized two important tenets: all participants were expected to read all of the papers and participants were urged to provide constructive, critical feedback rather than simply praise the author. The papers covered topics such as racial profiling, civil liberties and the war on terror, a comparative law analysis of defenses to the crime of rape, and Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB 1070.

  • April 23 & 24, 2010
    Access to Justice (co-sponsored with the Colorado Access to Justice Commission)
  • April 16, 2010
    The Ballot Initiative: The Role of Citizens and Scholars (co-sponsored with the Society of American Law Teachers)
  • March 01, 2010
    Brazilian Federal Judges Association Conference
  • February 12-13, 2010
    American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA) Conference on
    Sustainable Development, Corporate Governance, and International Law Conference (co-sponsored by the International Legal Studies Program, the Nanda Center for International Law, the Denver Journal of International Law& Policy, and the International Law Section of the Colorado Bar Association).