Closing the Courthouse Door Book Talk

Monday, March 13, 2017
5:00–7:00 p.m.
UC Irvine School of Law, Room EDU 1111 (Directions)

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Closing the Courthouse Door: How Your Constitutional Rights Became Unenforceable is the new book by Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. At this special event, Dean Chemerinsky will discuss the book, interviewed by UCI Law Prof. Rick Hasen. Audience Q&A and book signing will follow.

The Supreme Court’s decisions on constitutional rights are well known and much talked about. But individuals who want to defend those rights need something else as well: access to courts that can rule on their complaints. And on matters of access, the Court’s record over the past generation has been almost uniformly hostile to the enforcement of individual citizens’ constitutional rights. The Court has restricted who has standing to sue, expanded the immunity of governments and government workers, limited the kinds of cases the federal courts can hear, and restricted the right of habeas corpus. Closing the Courthouse Door is the first book to show the effect of these decisions: taken together, they add up to a growing limitation on citizens’ ability to defend their rights under the Constitution. Using many stories of people whose rights have been trampled yet who had no legal recourse, Chemerinsky argues that enforcing the Constitution should be the federal courts’ primary purpose, and they should not be barred from considering any constitutional question.

The event is free, but RSVP is required by Wednesday, March 8. Co-sponsored by the UCI Center in Law, Society and Culture

This event is approved for 1 hour of Minimum Continuing Legal Education Credit by the State Bar of California. UC Irvine School of Law is a State Bar-approved MCLE provider.