Total Credits: 1.5 CLE
This seminar will discuss the history of the Voting Rights Act and the origin and evolution of the term "gerrymandering".
| Seminar Handout (154.5 KB) | 24 Pages | Available after Purchase |
Professor Zhang received her PhD in Political Science in 2022 from Stanford University and her JD. From Stanford in 2016. She serves as an Assistant Professor of Law at Berkley Law. Before joining Berkley, she was a Skadden Fellow at the ACLU Voting Rights Project. Her areas of expertise include civil procedure and litigation, election law and racial and social justice.
A nationally recognized scholar of constitutional law and the law of democracy, Professor Justin Levitt has returned to Loyola after serving from 2021-22 as the White House's first Senior Policy Advisor for Democracy and Voting Rights. There, within a team devoted to racial justice and equity, Levitt assisted the President in his efforts to make sure that every eligible American has secure, reliable access to a meaningful vote; to provide equitable representation in government; to restore trust in a democracy deserving of that trust; and to bolster avenues by which Americans build community and engage in civic participation. Levitt had previously served in federal government as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. At DOJ, he primarily supported the Civil Rights Division’s work on voting rights and protections against employment discrimination (including federal statutory protections against workplace discrimination based on race, ethnicity, sex -- including pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity -- religion, national origin, citizenship status, and military service). Levitt served in various capacities for several presidential campaigns, including as the National Voter Protection Counsel in 2008, helping to run an effort ensuring that tens of millions of citizens could vote and have those votes counted. Before joining the faculty of Loyola Law School, he was counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, for five years. He also worked as in-house counsel to the country's largest independent voter registration and engagement operation, and at several nonprofit civil rights and civil liberties organizations. Levitt served as a law clerk to the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He holds a law degree and a masters degree in public administration from Harvard University, and was an articles editor for the Harvard Law Review. He is admitted to the bar in California, New York, and the District of Columbia, and to the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts of Appeal for the Fourth Circuit, Ninth Circuit, and Eleventh Circuit, and the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.
Dean Tokaji became Dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School in 2020. From 2003 to 2020, he was on the faculty at Ohio State University, where he served as Associate Dean for Faculty and Charles W. Ebersold & Florence Whitcomb Ebersold Professor of Constitutional Law. He has taught a wide variety of courses, including Civil Procedure, Civil Rights Lawyering, Comparative Constitutional Law, Election Law and Voting Rights, Federal Courts, First Amendment, Legal Analysis and Writing, Legislation and Regulation, and the U.S. Legal System. He has also taught at Harvard Law School, Hong Kong University, and Oxford University. A leading authority in the field of Election Law, Dean Tokaji’s scholarship addresses questions of voting rights, free speech, and democratic inclusion. He has published over 50 law review articles, book chapters, and other scholarly papers on a wide range of topics. His recent work includes "Election Law, Democracy, and Legal Education" in Beyond Imagination? The January 6 Insurrection (2022), “Voter Registration in a Pandemic,” University of Chicago Law Review Online (2020), “Denying Systemic Equality: The Last Words of the Kennedy Court,” Harvard Law & Policy Review (2019), and “Gerrymandering and Association,” William & Mary Law Review (2018). He is the author of Election Law in a Nutshell (2d ed. 2016), and co-author of Election Law: Cases and Materials (7th ed. 2022). His recent scholarship addresses the challenges facing democracies around the globe, including the free speech issues surrounding digital disinformation, the need for trustworthy electoral institutions, and the role of law schools in strengthening democratic governance.
Media have frequently relied on Dean Tokaji’s expertise on election law, voting rights, and free speech issues. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and National Public Radio, and many other outlets. Dean Tokaji graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, with an A.B. degree in English and American Literature and Language and Philosophy, then earned a J.D. from Yale Law School. Dean Tokaji clerked for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. A former civil rights lawyer, he has brought many free speech, racial justice, and voting rights cases over his career.