Colorado Law Talks

In this Colorado Law Talk, Professor Deborah Cantrell explored the current landscape of heightened social protest and consider whether and how the law matters to social activists. When we think of recent protests, images come easily to mind of protestors marching down streets holding signs and chanting. Just as easily, images come to mind of counter-protestors yelling back, and law enforcement engaging protestors, often trying to control them with notable force. Those images remind us that protestors often engage with speech, silence, and the law in very pragmatic, but important ways. How does a locality handle permitting for protests? Are there noise restrictions to know about? How likely will it be that law enforcement will be present and making arrests? If there are arrests, who will post bail? While those practical choices are important, focusing on those choices often means that protest gets framed as being about speech rights—who gets to speak and how, and who gets to control speech and how. That framing obscures that protest is as much about silence as it is about speech. As Professor Cantrell will discuss, protest is a deeply relational activity and choices about speech always involve choices about silence—or silencing. Similarly, the law is deeply relational as it sets up ways to order how people can, or cannot, engage and interact with each other. Professor Cantrell will inquire how more carefully investigating the relationality involved in protest work unearths a new and powerful dynamic—transformative silence. She will posit whether transformative silence can upend the typical zero-sum qualities of protest, and can increase the possibility that protest leads to social change.

In this talk, Professor Skinner-Thompson drew from his new book, Privacy at the Margins, to explain how privacy can serve as a form of expressive resistance to government and corporate surveillance regimes. Limited legal protections for privacy leave minority communities vulnerable to concrete injuries and violence when their information is exposed. Professor Skinner-Thompson demonstrated why efforts undertaken by vulnerable groups, including queer folks, women, and racial and religious minorities, to protect their privacy should be entitled to constitutional protection under the First Amendment and related equality provisions. By examining the ways even limited privacy can enrich and enhance our lives at the margins in material ways, Professor Skinner-Thompson showed how privacy can be transformed into an anti-subordination legal tool.

In this talk, Professor Ming Hsu Chen elaborated on the concept of pursuing citizenship by drawing on her newly released book, Pursuing Citizenship in the Enforcement Era (Stanford University Press 2020). Her talk included stories based on interviews with 100+ immigrants in Colorado and proposals in light of the contemporary immigration policy context.

The global spread of COVID-19 exposed many vulnerabilities in our food system. While some consumers experienced food shortages, others felt heightened levels of food insecurity. And yet, as federal, state and local programs were re-worked and legislation passed to keep our food supplies intact, less attention has focused on the role of the essential food system workers (the farmers and food processors, among others) who have kept us fed.  In this Colorado Law Talk, Professor Alexia Brunet Marks combined stories of essential workers with necessary reforms, driven by her work on the Colorado COVID Food Systems Rapid Response Team.

The COVID-19 crisis has raised public health, economic, and institutional challenges for our state and nation.  In this talk, Colorado Attorney General and former Colorado Law Dean Phil Weiser discussed the nature of these challenges and what lasting changes will come from this crisis.  In particular, he discussed the need for greater resilience and grace in our society.  He also discussed how our commitment to federalism as a system of governance serves us during these challenging times.

In this talk, Professor Loewenstein led a discussion about cases every business lawyer should know. He covered essential case law around the country related to limited liability companies, corporations, and partnerships. These cases raise issues that come up frequently in a business law practice and, for the most part, the cases reflect recent treatment of those issues. Not all cases are well-known, yet they are important to understand. 

Ann England, Clinical Professor of Law, and Anne-Marie Moyes, Director of the Korey Wise Innocence Project, will lead a discussion about wrongful convictions in the American criminal justice system. Since DNA technology became available in the late 1980s, scores of innocent people have been freed from prison, often after spending decades behind bars. Though we have learned a lot about how these mistakes happen, our system of mass incarceration continues to operate with an alarming error rate. In this presentation, we will explore why wrongful convictions happen, how our system of appeals makes it difficult to correct these tragic mistakes, and what reforms might reduce their frequency. 1 general CLE credit approved for Colorado attorneys.

Professor Suzette Malveaux engaged in an important and timely conversation about the appropriateness of national injunctions (federal court orders that have halted Administration policies nationwide).  Have judges gone wild or are they just doing their jobs? Administrations on both sides of the aisle have had their signature policies compromised by national injunctions that touch issues central to our lives—from environmental protection to civil rights to immigration. This talk explored the advantages and disadvantages of this powerful legal remedy, and its particular salience as a check-and-balance on government power when democracy is under siege.This Colorado Law CLE was made possible through the generous sponsorship of Polsinelli LLP.

Colorado was first to allow the sale of recreational marijuana to adults. The plan was based on an analogy to alcohol regulation, but five years in, we are still a long way from a match with alcohol laws. Federal regulation is a big reason why, but Colorado can do more. Will this year's legislative session move us closer? Join us for the second lecture of the 2019 Colorado Law Talks series, where Professor Collins will discuss all this and more.

Thank you to our host Vicente Sederberg LLC .

Phil Weiser is Colorado’s newly elected AG and comes with an unusual background for an AG, but a fitting background for Colorado. In the past election, Colorado chose a successful entrepreneur—Jared Polis—as its governor, succeeding another entrepreneur, John Hickenlooper. For attorney general, Colorado elected Phil Weiser, former dean of the University of Colorado Law School, former deputy assistant attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice under President Obama, former law clerk to Supreme Court Justices White and Ginsburg, and a leader in Colorado’s entrepreneurial community. Over the last 20 years, Phil has founded the Silicon Flatirons Center at CU, the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network, Startup Colorado, and the Governmental Entrepreneurial Leadership Accelerator. In this talk, Phil explains what it means to bring an innovative mindset to the Attorney General’s Office, tying in his prior leadership experience, his scholarship on this topic, and his plans for the AG’s office.

The slogans are ubiquitous: "Only 'Yes' Means 'Yes'"; "Got Consent?"; "Consent is Hot, Assault is Not!" Clear consent is the rule, but the meaning of sexual consent is far from clear. The current state of confusion is evident in the numerous competing views about what constitutes mental agreement (grudging acceptance or eager desire?) and what comprises performative consent (passive acquiescence or an enthusiastic "yes"?). In the final lecture of the 2018 Colorado Law Talks series, Gruber will seek to clear up the consent confusion and chart the contours of the sexual consent framework, categorizing different definitions of affirmative consent, and critically describing arguments for and against affirmative consent. Examining the consent framework and the affirmative consent debate reveals exactly what is at stake in this new world of reform—a revelation necessary for meaningful dialogue on acceptable sex and acceptable sex regulation.

Gruber's forthcoming book, The Feminist War on Crime, is under contract with the University of California Press.

This talk focused on recent challenges and threats to human rights in America and around the world. Professor Anna Spain Bradley discussed the historical connection between America's Civil Rights Movement and the promotion of human rights under international law, shared common challenges, and a future vision that deepens the relationships among communities across borders. Her forthcoming book, The Impact of One: How Individual Choice Shapes International Law, is under contract with Cambridge University Press.

In this talk, Schwartz explored the nascent field of securities crowdfunding, discussing the policy goals behind this new form of capital raising and comparing the different models followed in different jurisdictions.

This Colorado Law CLE was made possible through the generous sponsorship of Akerman, LLP.