This podcast features a discussion and commentary by our panel of experts on the recent federal district court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, upholding the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. On this previously recorded Teleforum conference call, the experts provide analysis of the case and the impact of the decision, followed by questions from callers. Featuring Ms. Nancy Abudu of The American Civil Liberties Union's Voting Rights Project; Mr. Hans von Spakovsky of The Heritage Foundation's Center for Legal and Judicial Studies; and Mr. Roger Clegg of The Center for Equal Opportunity as the moderator.

Policies on felon enfranchisement vary from state to state with most states restricting felons from voting to varying degrees. Among other issues, our experts discuss the history of felon disenfranchisement laws and whether such laws violate the Voting Rights Act. On this previously recorded conference call, the speakers discussed these and other issues and took questions from callers. Featuring Ms. Nancy Abudu of The American Civil Liberties Union's Voting Rights Project; Mr. Hans von Spakovsky of The Heritage Foundation's Center for Legal and Judicial Studies; and Mr. Roger Clegg of The Center for Equal Opportunity as the moderator.

While some news reports indicate that discrimination against women on the basis of sex in college admissions is increasingly common, there has been relatively little public discussion about it—especially compared to the much more heated public debate concerning race-based affirmative action. Not surprisingly, therefore, there have been few attempts to study the extent of the problem systematically. One such attempt with which we are both familiar—a study by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights of sex discrimination at nineteen colleges and universities in the mid-Atlantic states—was unfortunately abandoned for what appear to be political rather than substantive reasons. Although the fate of the Commission’s probe may in part be explained by the Commission’s institutional quirks, the muddled politics surrounding the attempted probe may reflect in microcosm the muddled politics of the broader national debate. In this article, we discuss those politics and suggest that the lack of attention the issue has received to date may be unfair. [Read more!]

The Civil Rights Practice Group hosted this panel on "Federal Initiatives on K-12 School Bullying Prevention" on Thursday, November 10, 2011, during the 2011 National Lawyers Convention. The panel featured Mr. Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute; CommissionerTodd Gaziano of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and The Heritage Foundation; Ms. Fatima Goss Graves of the National Women's Law Center; Prof. Eugene Volokh of UCLA School of Law; Prof. William R. Yeomans of American University Washington College of Law; and Mr. Stuart Taylor Jr., Contributing Editor of National Journal and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, as the moderator.