Topic: Public Interest
86 results
Features Fall 2014
Mary Frances Berry, ’70: A Trailblazer in the Fight to End Discrimination
Mary Frances Berry, ’70, served from 1980 until 2004 on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, including as chair. Later, she stood with Nelson Mandela to end apartheid in South Africa and was imprisoned for it. At the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, she looks back on her career, her accomplishments, and the long list of items still outstanding in the fight to end discrimination.
Cover Story
Reviving Detroit at its Roots with Urban Agriculture
Surrounded by a sea of crumbling concrete, the lush green landscape of the market garden on Plum Street sits as an oasis in a city forged of steel and cement. For many, it is merely one example of efforts to revitalize Detroit. For Nicholas Leonard, it is the very essence of the urban agricultural model that has inspired his professional career.
Features Fall 2014
Bagenstos on Class-Not-Race
Throughout the civil rights era, strong voices have argued that policy interventions should focus on class or socioeconomic status, not race. At times, this position-taking has seemed merely tactical, opportunistic, or in bad faith. I am more interested in the people who clearly mean it.
Features
Imprisoned, Exonerated — and Now an “Unsecured Creditor”
Dwayne Provience spent almost a decade in prison before the Michigan Innocence Clinic at the U-M Law School won his exoneration in 2010. He filed a civil lawsuit against the city, and a settlement panel proposed a payment of $5 million. Now he's on a list of Detroit’s unsecured creditors.
Briefs
Michigan Innocence Clinic Client Exonerated From Arson Conviction
Victor Caminata, the Michigan Innocence Clinic client whose arson case was featured in the fall 2013 issue of the Law Quadrangle, was exonerated in January.
Cover Story Fall 2014
Civil Rights Act at 50
This Civil Rights Act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities and our states, in our homes and in our hearts, to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country.” So said President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964 when he signed the Act into law. Here, we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Act by sharing the stories of alumni who fought for its passage and those who worked to preserve its legacy.