News Releases

Poverty, Economic Inequality focus of conference

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

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The possibilities for the law and legal institutions to alleviate poverty and economic inequality throughout the world will be addressed during a conference taking place April 3 and 4 at the Valparaiso University School of Law.

“Poverty is an impediment to freedom and equality and undermines dignity,” said Penelope Andrews, a visiting professor of law and expert in international human rights law who organized Valparaiso’s Law, Poverty and Economic Inequality Conference. “The consequences are felt most severely by vulnerable constituencies including children, minorities, indigenous communities, immigrants, refugees, women and the elderly.”

Andrews said the conference was prompted in large part from rising concerns about the adverse affects of globalization, including widespread loss of jobs, diminishing labor rights, depressed wages and the pervasive privatization of governmental functions, which have led to greater disparities of resources between nations and groups within nations. Speakers will address poverty both in the United States and around the world.

“The conference will explore contemporary constitutional strategies, formal legal strategies and the relationship of both to grassroots anti-poverty campaigns,” Andrews said. “This investigation also will examine the limitation of legal strategies in the face of entrenched, economic and social structural impediments to equality.”

More information about the conference, including a complete listing of sessions and speakers, is available online at valpo.edu/law/conference. The deadline to register for the conference is March 15 for those interested in University-arranged hotel accommodations or March 27 for those who do not need hotel accommodations. Visit the conference Web site or call the School of Law at (219) 465-7829 for registration forms and information.

During the two-day conference, legal scholars, judges, lawyers and non-profit advocates throughout the world will attend sessions that address topics including courts and access to justice, legal strategies for eliminating poverty, indigenous communities and poverty, globalization and human rights, and poverty and aging.

Approximately 60 legal scholars, judges and attorneys from the United States, Australia, Canada, Liberia, the United Kingdom and other countries will speak at the conference, including:

• Justice Robert Rucker of the Indiana Supreme Court and a Valparaiso alumnus,
  
  
• Judge Dennis Davis of Cape Town High Court in South Africa,
  
  
• Chief Magistrate Ian Gray of the Magistrates’ Court of Victoria in Australia,
  
  
• Henry Freedman, executive director of the National Center for Law and Economic Justice,
  
  
• Donna Greschner, a professor of law at the University of La Verne and former head of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission,
  
  
• Jallah Barbu, a research fellow at the Center for Constitutional Democracy in Plural Societies, and
  
  
• Dr. Siobhan Mullally, a professor of law at University College in Ireland who has consulted with a number of United Nations agencies and to international non-governmental organizations in East Timor, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In addition to sharing knowledge about the potential for the law to address poverty in the world, Andrews said the conference will provide an opportunity for legal scholars, law students and others interested in poverty issues to build relationships with one another.

“I hope that as a result of this conference, people will know who else in the world is working on these issues and who they can approach for support, because developing solutions to the complicated problems associated with poverty will take the combined effort of concerned people,” Andrews said.

The evening of April 3, those attending the conference will gather at St. Timothy Community Church in Gary for a banquet at which local community activists and Valparaiso law graduates from Gary will be guests.

 

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