PUBLISHED:January 29, 2018

Lawyering for Racial Justice

Lawyering for Racial Justice 12:30p Lawyering for Racial Justice 12:30p

Weds, March 21  Monday, April 9
12:30 pm | Room 4047 3000
Duke Law School

Darius Charney from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) 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. Charney will share examples of the strategies that he and CCR have used to challenge the racially discriminatory stop-and-frisk practices of the New York City Police Department, pass landmark police reform legislation through the New York City council, and expose the surveillance of the Movement for Black Lives by federal law enforcement.

This talk will be moderated by Professor Jayne Huckerby, Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Duke International Human Rights Clinic. 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. 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.

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.