The Bureaucracy of Human Caging

Date & Time Feb 27 2019 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Speaker(s)
Alec Karakatsanis, civil rights lawyer, social justice advocate, co-founder of Equal Justice Under Law, and founder and executive director of Civil Rights Corps
Audience Open to the Public

Alec is visiting the School as part of its Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation Leadership through Mentorship Program.

Alec Karakatsanis graduated from Yale College in 2005 with a degree in Ethics, Politics, & Economics and Harvard Law School in 2008, where he was a Supreme Court Chair of the Harvard Law Review.  He is the Founder and Executive Director of Civil Rights Corps, a non-profit organization dedicated to groundbreaking systemic litigation and advocacy challenging pervasive injustices in the American criminal legal system. 

Alec is the author, among other things, of Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers, 128 Harv. L. Rev. F. 253 (2015), and The Human Lawyer, 34 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 563 (2010).

Alec is interested in ending human caging, surveillance, the death penalty, immigration laws, war, and inequality.  Alec was awarded the 2016 Trial Lawyer of the Year by Public Justice for his role in bringing constitutional civil rights cases around the country challenging the money bail system and the 2016 Stephen B. Bright Award for contributions to indigent defense in the South by Gideon’s Promise.  Alec’s work at Civil Rights Corps challenging the money bail system in California was recently honored with the 2018 Champion of Public Defense Award by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.  His civil rights work to end modern debtors’ prisons was recently profiled in Harvard Magazine.