Law School journal sponsors conference on race and crime

Professors at some of the country's most prestigious law schools arrived on campus this weekend to discuss some of the country's most controversial issues. "Symposium 2000: Race, Crime and the Constitution," was a two-day conference sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law that attracted many prominent law professors and practitioners from around the country. The conference was held on Friday afternoon and all day Saturday at the Penn Law School's Silverman Hall and drew a large audience of both law students and professionals. The conference featured four panels of legal experts, which addressed issues such as racial profiling; race and juries; and rates of incarceration and race. Each of the panels featured law school professors who presented their own research, referenced particularly influential cases or simply offered insight into the issues being discussed. The program also included introductory remarks from both David Leibowitz, a third-year Penn Law student and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Constitutional Law, and Charles Mooney, interim dean of Penn's Law School. Judge Nathaniel Jones of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals delivered the endnote address. The presentations and discussions combined statistical data and analysis with broader questions of jurisprudence and legal rights, all of which focused on how the Constitution deals with race and crime in modern-day society. "I was most surprised by the statistics," said Angelique Kaounis, production editor of the Journal of Constitutional Law and a third-year Penn Law student. "You know that [racism is] out there, but until you hear the statistics and the studies, you have really no idea the extent to which it exists." Several audience members and panelists said they believed the forum offered a unique means of communication. "[The conference] has once again brought to the surface questions that many of us as academics and lawyers know and talk about amongst ourselves, but it's a chance to have lawyers and students and other members of the audience see once again the intersection of race and the criminal justice system," said Tracey Maclin, a professor at the Boston University School of Law and one of the conference panelists. According to George Washington Law School Professor Paul Butler, a moderator of one of the discussion panels, the conference was particularly timely. "The things that we've discussed at this conference have immediate implications in the real world," Butler said. And Jordan Barnett, a second-year Penn Law student and associate editor of the Journal of Constitutional Law, said the conference demonstrated the importance of presenting such topical issues to the law school community. "The nature of Law School is very abstract. We tend to get lost in the intellectual mind tricks of it all, and the good thing about a conference like this is that it focuses on practical realities -- things that are current issues and include people outside of law school or outside of the academy."