Conference to address poverty, globalization

Keywords Courts / Government / neglect
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How the law and legal associations can lessen the impacts of poverty both at home and abroad will be the focus of a Law, Poverty and Economic Inequality Conference April 3 and 4 at Valparaiso University School of Law.

Visiting professor Penelope Andrews organized the conference in response to the various ways globalization has affected poverty through job loss, diminishing labor rights, lower earnings, and an increase in private companies taking over the former responsibilities of governments.

The event will consist of approximately 60 legal scholars, judges, lawyers, and non-profit advocates from the United States, Australia, Canada, Liberia, the United Kingdom and other countries who are experts in the area of poverty on a national and global scale.

The conference will consider poverty in the United States and around the world, while providing an opportunity for those with an interest in these issues to network with each other, including members of the public and law students.

Discussion topics will include courts and access to justice, legal strategies for eliminating poverty, indigenous communities and poverty, globalization and human rights, and poverty and aging.

Featured participants are Indiana Supreme Court Justice Robert Rucker, a Valparaiso alumnus; Judge Dennis Davis of Cape Town High Court, South Africa; Chief Magistrate Ian Gray of Victoria, Australia; Henry Freedman, executive director of the National Center for Law and Economic Justice; Donna Greschner, a professor of law at the University of La Verne and former head of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission; Jallah Barbu, a research fellow at the Center for Constitutional Democracy in Plural Societies at Indiana University School of Law – Bloomington; and Siobhan Mullally, a professor of law at University College in Ireland who has consulted with a number of United Nations agencies and international non-governmental organizations in East Timor, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

The evening of April 3, those attending the conference will gather at St. Timothy Community Church in Gary for a banquet at which local community activists and Valparaiso law graduates from Gary will be guests.

The conference will be held at the school, 656 S. Greenwich St. in Valparaiso, and has been approved for CLE credit. The deadline to register for those who need university-arranged hotel accommodations is March 15. For those who do not need hotel accommodations, the deadline is March 27.

For more information about the conference, including a complete listing of sessions and speakers, visit the conference’s Web site, or call the School of Law at (219) 465-7829 for registration forms and information.

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