Second Annual Pace Access to Justice Workshop Spotlights the Important Issues Surrounding Voting Access, Elections, and Democracy

On Wednesday, March 29, Haub Law presented the Second Annual Pace Access to Justice (A2J) Workshop themed: Voting, Democracy, and the Law. The Workshop brought together national voting rights and election law experts and advocates with Haub Law faculty, staff, students, and community guests to learn and engage in a dialogue centering on the important issues of voting access, election law, and our democratic process. The Workshop was hosted and moderated by Adjunct Professor Elyse Diamond, Director of the Public Interest Law Center, and featured a panel discussion with Sophia Lin Lakin, Interim Co-Director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, Perry Grossman, Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, Jarret Berg, Founder of VoteEarlyNY, and Brianna Cea, Executive Director and Founder of the national youth advocacy organization Generation Vote. The panel was followed by a special video message from March For Our Lives Founder and Activist David Hogg and an interactive community discussion to generate and explore action steps for how we as a law school community might actively contribute to efforts to promote voting access, engagement and our democracy.

Last year, the inaugural Pace Access to Justice Workshop focused on the critical importance of housing access, the current housing crisis, the status of “right to counsel” in eviction cases, and public service careers in housing law and related fields. The annual workshop is part of the larger initiative launched by Haub Law, the Pace Access to Justice Project. Pace A2J, housed and coordinated within Haub Law’s existing Public Interest Law Center, is serving as a hub for community collaborations, programs, scholarship, policy initiatives, and hands-on innovative academic and non-credit bearing experiential law student opportunities. Together, Pace A2J is designed to more actively engage students in learning about and contributing to real-world efforts to address the access to justice gap.  

“I am incredibly excited to have hosted our Second Annual Pace A2J workshop and deeply grateful to our panelists for sharing their immense expertise and insights on voting access, elections, and democracy and the larger implications of all,” said Professor Elyse Diamond. “Voting access and participation in our democratic process is fundamental and our hope is that programs like this one bring awareness to the issues and empower our community to discuss innovative ways to contribute.”