Town Halls

Join Dr. John C. Eastman, Founding Director of the Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, for our next tele-town hall. Dr. Eastman and his guests will discuss the newest Voting Rights Act cases before the Court and debate if and when racial gerrymandering is permissible. They will also take up a case addressing when the government must provide bond hearings to detained illegal aliens.

To discuss Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections and McCrory v. Harris, Dr. Eastman will be joined by seasoned litigator Michael Lieberman of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. The Voting Rights Act bans racial discrimination in voting practices by the federal government as well as by state and local governments. Our panelists will discuss the predicament in which state legislatures find themselves, sandwiched between the rock of precedent requiring them to draw majority-minority electoral districts and the hard place created by the lower court forbidding race to predominate “even where it is the most important consideration in drawing a given district unless the use of race results in ‘actual conflict’ with traditional districting criteria.”

To discuss Jennings v. Rodriguez, Dr. Eastman will be joined by Kevin Johnson, dean of the UC Davis School of Law and Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law. Current law requires the government to detain illegal aliens during proceedings to remove them from the country. Some aliens, including certain criminals and terrorists, are held without a bond hearing; others may be released on bond pending the conclusion of their removal proceedings. The Court is asked to decide whether all illegal aliens must be afforded a bond hearing that may result in the their release on bond into the United States, if they are detained for six months or more.

Dr. Eastman is the Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service at Chapman University Fowler School of Law. He served as a law clerk with Justice Clarence Thomas in 1996-97.