It’s only February, but 2Ls Sydney Gaskins and Rochelle Mulondo have their summer career plans settled. Gaskins will return to Morrison Foerster, an international law firm, as a diversity scholar. She is a powerhouse on UCLA’s top-ranked trial advocacy team, having won her past three competitions. Mulondo, will join the seasoned lawyers at Sidley Austin in the tech transactions group as a diversity scholar. Specializing in technology law, she’s already interned at Apple.
Constitutional law scholar Adam Winkler on Feb. 9 became the first UCLA professor to host a Reddit “Ask me anything.” Prompted by the spate of mass shootings in the U.S., Winkler, UCLA School of Law’s Connell Professor of Law, took to Reddit to provide context on historical and modern interpretations of U.S. gun laws.
Can American Democracy Survive the 2024 Elections?
The role of media, law, political norms, and technology in assuring free and fair elections and public acceptance of election results in the United States.
Conference Videos
Complete playlist of all videos
Welcome and introduction
Richard L. Hasen, Professor of Law and Political Science and Director, Safeguarding Democracy Project, UCLA School of Law
Panel 1: Election threats: inside and outside
Moderator:
- John Fortier, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Panelists:
- Jocelyn Benson, Secretary of State, Michigan
- Neal Kelley, Registrar of Voters, Orange County, CA (Retired)
- Stephen Richer, Recorder, Maricopa County, Arizona
Panel 2: The role of media and social media
Moderator:
- Nathaniel Persily, James B. McClatchy Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
Panelists:
- Renée DiResta, Technical Research Manager, Stanford Internet Observatory
- Pam Fessler, Editor and Correspondent, NPR News (Retired)
- Jack Lerner, Clinical Professor, UC Irvine School of Law
- David Kaye, Clinical Professor, UC Irvine School of Law
- Brendan Nyhan, James O. Freedman Presidential Professor, Department of Government, Dartmouth College
Panel 3: The role of tech
Moderator:
- Elizabeth Howard, Senior Counsel, Brennan Center for Justice
Panelists:
- Andrew Appel, Eugene Higgins Professor of Computer Science, Princeton University
- Matt Masterson, Director of Information Integrity, Microsoft
- Alex Stamos, Director, Stanford Internet Observatory
- Kim Wyman, Senior Election Security Advisor for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Lunchtime Conversation: Election Denialism and the Future of the Republican Party
Sarah Longwell, President and CEO, Longwell Partners, and Publisher, The Bulwark, in conversation with Richard L. Hasen, Professor of Law and Political Science and Director, Safeguarding Democracy Project, UCLA School of Law
Panel 4: The role of politics and norms
Moderator:
- Bruce Cain, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford University
Panelists:
- Julia Azari, Professor of Political Science, Marquette University
- Larry Diamond, William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, Stanford University
- Norman Ornstein, Senior Fellow Emeritus, American Enterprise Institute
- Charles Stewart III, Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Michael Tesler, Professor of Political Science, UC Irvine
Panel 5: The role of election law
Moderator:
- Joey Fishkin, Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law, where he teaches and writes about employment discrimination law, election law, constitutional law, education law, fair housing law, poverty and inequality, and distributive justice.
Panelists:
- Michael Morley, Sheila M. McDevitt Professor, Florida State University College of Law
- Richard H. Pildes, Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, NYU School of Law
- Bertrall Ross, Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law; Director, Karsh Center for Law and Democracy, University of Virginia School of Law
- Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, Brennan Center fellow and Professor of Law, Stetson University College of Law
Panel 6: The role of practicing lawyers
Moderator:
- Emily Rong Zhang, Assistant Professor of Law, UC Berkeley School of Law
Panelists:
- Bob Bauer, Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence Co-Director of the Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic, NYU School of Law
- Ben Ginsberg, Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution and Lecturer, Stanford Law School
- Janai Nelson, President and Director-Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense Fund
- Nina Perales, Vice President of Litigation, Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund
Images from the Conference
Images from the Conference
Images from the Conference
Images from the Conference
Images from the Conference
As always, we welcome you to support the UCLA School of Law's Safeguarding Democracy Project. By donating you enable UCLA Law to put on events like this, which respond to the current legal and societal issues facing us today.
Generously supported by:
UCLA School of Law’s Program on Philanthropy and Nonprofits has received a $100,000 gift from the education company ECMC Group to create the Maurice Salter Endowed Lecture in Nonprofits and Philanthropy. Through the lecture series, leading academic, government and industry experts will address critical issues in the nonprofit field and connect with students and practitioners in the sector.
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J.D. Business Law & Policy
E. Tendayi Achiume recently concluded her five-year term as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. An international expert on human rights law, Achiume is the inaugural Alicia Miñana Professor of Law and former faculty director of UCLA Law’s Promise Institute for Human Rights.
Key takeaways
The twin impacts of the 2022 elections and the work of the Jan. 6 committee in Congress continue to develop as the new year begins. In this dynamic atmosphere, UCLA School of Law’s Safeguarding Democracy Project has assembled a slate of events for the spring semester, kicked off by a conversation with celebrated journalist Rachel Maddow on Jan. 26.
For more than two decades, UCLA School of Law professor Joanna Schwartz has been a leading authority on civil rights, with a focus on police misconduct. In 2020, with the murder of George Floyd and the national reckoning that followed, her work was thrust into the national spotlight.
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J.D. David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law & Policy
Key takeaways
For the past six years, the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy has fostered entrepreneurship through the Lowell Milken Institute–Sandler Prize for New Entrepreneurs, a business plan competition exclusively for teams of UCLA students, each of which must include one student from the law school.