Race, poverty, justice topic of law school lecture

Bryan A. Stevenson, director of the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, will speak on Race, Poverty and the Criminal Justice System at 3:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 2 in 109/129 Condon.

The Equal Justice Initiative, based in Montgomery, Alabama, challenges bias against the poor and people of color in the criminal justice system. It is not the first time Stevenson has been involved in such efforts. In fact, he has represented poor people in the deep south since 1985, when he was a staff attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta. He later was the executive director of the Alabama Capital Representation Resource Center, where he represented death row prisoners and capital defendants.

Stevenson is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where he was awarded the Harvard Fellowship in Public Interest Law, and the Harvard School of Government, where he was awarded the Kennedy Fellowship in Criminal Justice. He has been a visiting professor at several law schools and has written extensively on criminal justice and civil rights issues.

Some of Stevenson's many honors include the Reebok National Human Rights Award, the American Bar Association's Wisdom Award for Public Service, the National Medal of Liberty from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Thurgood Marshall Medal of Justice and the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship Award. In 1996, he was named the Public Interest Lawyer of the Year by the National Association of Public Interest Law.

Stevenson is the Condon-Falknor Lecturer at the law school, a lectureship made possible by a gift from the late Dorothy Condon Falknor. The talk is free and open to the public.¶