POSTPONED TO APRIL 9: Lawyering for Racial Justice

March 21, 2018 • 12:30 PM • Law School 4047

Please join Darius Charney, Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, for "Lawyering for Racial Justice." He will discuss the various ways in which lawyers engage in efforts to achieve racial justice, ranging from litigation to advocacy, media, and partnering with and supporting grassroots social movements and activists. This is part of the Human Rights in Practice series, which is co-sponsored by the International Human Rights Clinic, and Center for International and Comparative Law. Additional co-sponsors include the Black Law Students Association, Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke Human Rights Center at the Kenan Institute for Ethics, International Law Society, and Human Rights Law Society. Lunch will be provided. For more information, please contact Ali Prince at ali.prince@law.duke.edu.

Biography

Darius Charney is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). He works primarily on CCR’s government misconduct and racial justice cases. He is lead counsel on Floyd v. City of New York, CCR's landmark federal civil rights class action lawsuit that found the New York City Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practices racially discriminatory and otherwise unconstitutional.  He is also counsel in Vulcan Society Inc. v. the City of New York, a Title VII class action lawsuit on behalf of African-American applicants to the New York City Fire Department that successfully challenged the racially discriminatory hiring practices of the FDNY, and Bellant v. Snyder, a case challenging Michigan’s racially discriminatory “emergency manager” law. Before joining CCR in 2008, Darius worked for two and a half years as an associate at the New York law firm of Lansner & Kubitschek, where he litigated federal civil rights cases challenging various aspects of New York City and New York State’s child welfare and foster care systems.  Darius received his J.D. and M.S.W. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley in 2001.  From 2003-2005, he was law clerk to the Honorable Deborah A. Batts, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York.