The first week of May is also the start of law school finals. The Law Library, along with Student Affairs and the Mental Health Counseling team, would like to remind our law students, faculty, and staff about the importance of supporting their mental health and encourage everyone to practice wellness and self-care. The Student Wellness Research Guide contains helpful online resources and books available at the law library related to the topics of stress-relief, wellness, and mindfulness with a particular focus on law school and/or the legal profession.
If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed by exam stress, remember that the law library is there to help you every step of the way. UConn law library has a team of knowledgeable reference librarians ready to assist students with their research needs. Whether struggling to find relevant materials for a paper or need guidance on navigating complex legal databases, reference librarians are there to help, reach out to us! We are passionate about connecting students with the resources they need to succeed!
UConn Law Library is excited to launch a new series of student-authored posts with a thought piece on a timely topic – presidential immunity. In this inaugural post, UConn Law 3L William Roberts comments on the current debates surrounding the concept of presidential immunity. As courtrooms and headlines continue to spotlight this issue, this piece offers a sharp-well-researched overview that invites readers to think critically about the limits of executive power. We are proud to feature this work and look forward to sharing more student perspectives in the weeks ahead.
William Roberts, UConn School of Law class of 2025
I am a Teacher’s Assistant for Professor Chill’s Legal Profession course. We are required to take a course in professional responsibility because in 1974 the ABA mandated this course in response to the Watergate scandal.1 In the Watergate scandal, President Nixon ordered the Attorney General to fire the special prosecutor to protect the President’s allies from a criminal investigation. Twenty-nine lawyers were convicted or pleaded guilty to perjury, fraud, obstruction of justice, campaign law violations, and conspiracy. According to Lerman, “[t]he nation was horrified to find that so many elite lawyers had facilitated massive corruption in government.”2 Professional responsibility courses were deemed necessary to “prevent another shameful episode.”3
Prosecutorial independence has been a critical component for upholding the rule of law. Removing politics from prosecution was a central reason in creating the Department of Justice to begin with and prosecutorial independence is deeply entrenched in the nation’s history.4 And yet, in what can only be described as a bullshit5 opinion, the so-called originalists of the Court—Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh—obliterated the very concept of prosecutorial independence in their presidential immunity ruling by overtly stating for the first time in history that “[t]he President may discuss potential investigations and prosecutions with his Attorney General and other Justice Department officials. . . .”6 The Roberts Five decided this specifically in reference to an allegation that Trump repeatedly threatened to fire the Acting Attorney General for personal political reasons—the very same action that horrified the nation and forced Nixon to resign!
The dissent laid out the stark consequences for allowing such an irresponsible vision of Presidential immunity. Sotomayor writes, “[t]his new official-acts immunity now ‘lies about like a loaded weapon’ for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation.”7 This warning is entirely obvious to anyone who values the rule of law. Indeed, not three months into his second term President Trump has already realized this warning. He—very expressly and very publicly—directed the DoJ to investigate private citizens that Trump personally disagrees with. The first is Miles Taylor, who exercised his First Amendment rights and published an anonymous book that said he was part of the secret “resistance” to President Trump. 8 The second is Chris Krebs, a former Trump official in his first term who took his oath to the Constitution seriously and refused to denounce the legitimacy of the 2020 election that Trump lost. 9 The Roberts Five, the White House, and Trump’s sycophants will have us believe that we must take Trump’s word at face value, that these orders are for the best interest of the nation to punish the definitely real crimes the individuals have committed. Bullshit. 10 There is zero evidence that either of them committed any sort of crime. 11 Indeed, Trump paradoxically accuses Miles Taylor of simultaneously both disclosing sensitive information and fabricating those stories he disclosed. The 2020 election has been endlessly litigated and zero evidence has ever been produced of election-determinative impropriety. The real reason these two are being targeted is because Trump personally dislikes them. We do not have to pretend that this is anything but political persecution.
It cannot be overstated how instrumental the Presidential Immunity decision was in creating this overt politicization of the DoJ. In a Reuter’s interview in 2018, Legal Ethics law professor Rebecca Roiphe of New York Law School said that the norm of prosecutorial independence was “stronger than people make it out to be.” 12 She noted Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein’s efforts to preserve the principle of DoJ independence, and stated that she believed the institution was strong enough to withstand Trump’s attacks. Roiphe’s prediction turned out to be mostly correct. Trump did, in fact, try many times to direct investigations into his political opponents in his first term. 13 While some investigations did indeed occur, such as against Andrew McCabe, most of them did not, resisted by DoJ officials who believed in the importance of prosecutorial independence and the rule of law. And certainly, Trump never signed an Executive Order officially directing the DoJ to investigate individuals.
However, both Roiphe and Fordham Law Ethics Professor Bruce Green admitted that in 2018 the concept of prosecutorial independence was not yet settled by Supreme Court precedence. Well, the Roberts Five settled the issue. And now we’re here. Second term Trump wasted no time in starting politically motivated criminal prosecutions green lit by the Supreme Court.
How can any DoJ official resist now when the Supreme Court explicitly abolished the concept of prosecutorial independence that our nation cherished for so long? The ramifications of the immunity decision are as damaging as they are obvious.
The oldest of the Roberts Five is Justice Clarence Thomas, born in 1948. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1974, the same year the ABA mandated professional responsibility courses. Perhaps Thomas was not required to take a professional responsibility course, but all the others certainly were. By judicial fiat, the Roberts Five have created a whole new wave of political corruption by lawyers, completely ignoring the lessons learned from Watergate. Only this time, I fear the nation at large will not recoil in horror as we did half a century ago. At the very least, I will.
About the Author
William Roberts is a 3L at UConn School of Law. He has both undergraduate and graduate degrees in chemistry and will be entering the field of patent law upon graduation.
References
1Lisa G. Lerman, et al., Ethical Problems in the Practice of Law 44–46 (2023).
2Id.
3Id.
4Andrew Nisco, Note, The Independent Attorney General: An Analysis of Why the Office Should be Insulated from Presidential Political Imperatives, 36 Geo. J. Legal Ethics 743, 759 (2023) (“[P]rosecutorial independence was of such paramount importance that Congress created a department to insulate prosecutors from political influence.”); Bruce A. Green & Rebecca Roiphe, Can the President Control the Department of Justice?, Ala. L. Rev., Forthcoming, Fordham Law Legal Studies Research Paper, at 38–68 (Feb. 20, 2018) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3126856 (detailing the nation’s history of prosecutorial independence).
5If you’ll forgive the vulgarity, this term refers to “statements by a speaker who is indifferent to the truth or falsity of what is espoused.” Michael L. Smith, Is Originalism Bullshit?, 28 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 779, 788 (2025) (quoting Harry G Frankfurt, On Bullshit, in The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays 130 (1988)). The speaker is not misrepresenting facts, which may or may not be true, but is instead misrepresenting the speaker’s intentions. Id. In the legal context, Smith argues this term applies to decisions in which the Court has started with a conclusion in mind and worked backwards from there. See id. at 809–10 (“Unlike the genuine interpreters, each of these [disingenuous] actors had a conclusion in mind before embarking on their originalist analysis.”) The dissent to the immunity case discusses the majority’s complete lack of historical and textual basis for their decision. Trump v. U.S., 603 U.S. 593. 659–67 (2025) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting). This strongly suggests that the majority—who often stylize themselves as originalists and/or textualists—indeed started out with the result in mind, “Trump must be immune” and worked backwards from there.
6Trump v. U.S., 603 U.S. 593, 620 (2024).
7Id. at 684 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (quoting Korematsu v. U.S., 323 U.S. 214, 246 (1944)).
8White House, Presidential Memoranda, Addressing Risks Associated with an Egregious Leaker and Disseminator of Falsehoods, April 9, 2025 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/addressing-risks-associated-with-an-egregious-leaker-and-disseminator-of-falsehoods/.
9White House, Presidential Memoranda, Addressing Risks from Chris Krebs and Government Censorship, April 9, 2025 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/addressing-risks-from-chris-krebs-and-government-censorship/.
10See supra, note 5.
11Aaron Blake, Trump Crosses the Rubicon on Ordering Investigations of Foes: About as Stunning as the Concept of Trump’s Executive Actions Targeting Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor is Their Substance, Wash. Post Online (Apr. 10, 2025) https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/10/trump-doj-ivestigations-krebs-taylor/.
12 Alison Frankel, DoJ Independence, Entrenched and Ingrained, Will Survive Trump: Historian, Law Prof, Reuters (May 21, 2018) https://www.reuters.com/article/world/doj-independence-entrenched-and-ingrained-will-survive-trump-historian-law-p-idUSKCN1IM2DO/.
13Adam Klasfeld, Ryan Goodman, Chronology of a Dozen Times Trump Pushed to Prosecute His Perceived Enemies, Just Security (Sept. 3, 2024) https://www.justsecurity.org/98703/chronology-trump-justice-department/.
As this semester concludes, we want to pay tribute to our graduating library student employees! Sinead Brennan-Gatica, Farah Jean, Olivia Kaminski and Josh Maddox have been instrumental in keeping the library services running! They assist with faculty research and staff the desk on weekends, nights, and during finals. They assist students with course reserves, printing, scanning and library computers and are a terrific source of information about the library and law school. In the words of Anne Rajotte, Associate Director of Research, Instruction, and Scholarship:
Sinead and Olivia are a vital part of our student employee team. As our weekend workers, we would not have been able to be open Saturdays and Sundays without them. We will miss them!
Our Research Assistants work behind the scenes conducting legal research for the law school faculty members, greatly contributing to the research needs of the law school, law library and society as a whole. Tanya Johnson and Adam Mackie note the contribution Josh, Farah and Olivia have made to the law library:
Farah and Josh have been the backbone of our research assistant team for the past two years. Last May, we were also fortunate to have Olivia join us, and her contributions quickly became an integral part of our work. The quality of their efforts has enabled us to meet the research needs of our faculty, contributing to the reputation of the library and ultimately, UConn Law. We can’t thank them enough and wish them all the best with what comes next!
To all of our graduating 3L’s, thank you! We wish you all the best and hope you stay in touch as you embark upon your legal careers! We will miss you all!
Senator Gaylord Nelson promoted Earth Day, calling upon students to fight for environmental causes and oppose environmental degradation. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was formed later that year and legislation was passed to increase recycling and conservation efforts.
For ideas on what you can do to protect the environment check out the Earth Day page at the EPA and Earth day.org for activities taking place throughout the world and to register for an Earth Day activity in Connecticut or your home state! Check out the as well. In the meantime, enjoy the weather and UConn Law School campus!
Image courtesy Alexis Rockman, created for Earthday.org
Keeping track of executive orders (EOs) and other policy decisions is vital for remaining current with the evolving legal environment, they are critical to understanding how the shifting political landscape will impact national governance, law, and policy.
UConn Law Library features a new research guide titled Presidential Actions Resources and Trackers to resources that help track, analyze, and interpret the executive orders and policy changes that will define the new administration. This resource includes executive order resources, trackers, federal funding, state resources and advocacy info that will help you stay informed and engaged with these critical developments.
Also featured are links to pages for resources geared towards immigrants and LGBTQIA+ alike to understand their rights during our current political era. Be sure to check out our Advocacy Organizations and Connecticut Actions tabs to learn more about how your involvement can help marginalized groups find peace and prosperity.
UConn Law Library is highlighting Women’s History month by showcasing resources focusing on women and the law.
We March On – Celebrating 100 Years of Women’s Suffrage Exhibit was designed to commemorate the 100th anniversary of this achievement. The online exhibit features a historical narrative, recognizes the efforts of the suffrage movement in Connecticut, and showcases contributions to women’s equality by women at UConn School of Law.
Originally produced as six large banners, which were on display at the UConn Law Library, We March On was intended as a traveling exhibit. The online version was created during COVID so that more people could learn about these important individuals and events. Accompanied by stunning period photos and powerful quotes, it’s a riveting view of this movement.
The We March On research guide contains additional information about women at UConn Law, the Equal Rights Amendment and a multitude of resources dedicated to this subject.
Women’s History Month has been recognized in the United States since President Reagan issued Presidential Proclamation 5619 on March 16, 1987, with all the succeeding presidents following suit on an annual basis. In 2024 President Biden’s Proclamation urged us to recognize “the long, storied history of great women helping to realize our Nation’s founding promise and highest aspirations.” Biden’s Proclamation also called upon Americans to celebrate International Women’s Day, celebrated within Women's History Month on March 8th every year.
The first International Women’s Day gathering was in 1911 and is now celebrated by more than one million individuals. Read more about the history here.
Be sure to stop by the library to check out our print resources in honor of both Women’s History Month. Take a moment to learn about pioneers in women's history , with a timeline of significant milestones in the journey of these trailblazers. Earn a prize from the library front desk after naming all these women who broke barriers!
Also check out UConn Law Library's own research guide, We March On, which features an online exhibit highlighting the women's suffrage movement, UConn Law women and Connecticut's role in the movement, and this blog post featuring HeinOnline's database: Women and the Law (Peggy).
Members of UConn Law Black Law Students Association (BLSA).
May 1803 – Treacherous waves crashed against the jagged rocks on the shores of St. Simons Island, Georgia. A ship sailing across the rocky shore was tossed back and forth, desperate not to topple over. Just another day, right? Not quite. On a normal day, it would be the sheer force of the waves that would cause a ship to struggle to maintain its balance. But on this day, the cause had been a struggle onboard. It had been so loud that the sound reverberated across the entire United States. After a while, the ship came to a halt. But the sound didn’t stop. To onlookers, it had sounded almost like… singing. Could it be that Homer had seen sirens after all?
Only, these Sirens did not resemble those from The Odyssey. The color of their skin was an assortment of browns, and underneath the sun, they shimmered like gold. As their singing got louder, people started going overboard. Those had been their captors, sent to recover them from a distant land. It was after the last pirate went overboard that the brown-skinned singers did the unthinkable. They began to jump into the water themselves. Those currents were too treacherous to swim to shore, and they must have known that having had sailed on the water. It begs the question – why did they jump to certain death?
The answer lies in who these people were and where they came from. This was the story of Igbo Landing. It had not been called that before, but the actions of the singers that day – the Igbo people of West Africa – demanded recognition from the force of nature we call history. They had been abducted from their native lands to be made slaves, and not only slaves in the sense history had known them to that point. They were made out to be chattel. Property, that could be bought or sold at will. But they would not have it so. It was their dignity that compelled them to jump that day, and they carried a dignity that transcended generations, across those who, even if they were not direct descendants or related, shared the same hues. They include names such as Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey, two men who were never going to cross paths. Indeed, the latter had been killed years before the former met a similar fate. What they shared was that they rebelled. Despite knowing that they would not live to see their people in their entirety free, they rebelled to free those they could. It was a risk Harriet Tubman took decades later as the brainchild and conductor of the Underground Railroad, and while she survived to tell the tale, and to see a world in which her people were free, she did so at tremendous personal cost. Struck in the head by a two-pound weight by a plantation overseer, Tubman persisted the rest of her life dealing with a condition resembling temporal lobe epilepsy or narcolepsy.
This is the story of the ancestors of the people we today call African Americans, or Black Americans. These were people who never passively nor begrudgingly consigned themselves to the existence of chattel slaves. Indeed, these ancestors were fighters against oppression, and fight against their oppression they did, even under the sting of the lash, and worse, under the threat of death. Dr. Cornel West is fond of saying that Black Americans taught the world about love and how to love. But what if I told you that for as eloquent as Dr. West is, his words only scratch the surface of this group of people’s greatness?
Black Americans have historically been and are one of, if not the world’s most downtrodden people. And yet, despite the sheer oppression they have been and continue to be confronted with, they have always offered humanity its greatest hope at the seemingly illusive prospect of world peace. So often, when asked if they think world peace is possible, many are quick to shoot down the idea of it on the altar of “human nature,” and in so doing, they unknowingly deny themselves their own humanity. These are people who believe that without incentives, human beings will naturally destroy their environment, one another, and themselves. Black Americans, however, ever solution-oriented and not defeatist, know a different way. Consider what Martin Luther King had to say in his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community (1967):
The wealthy nations of the world must promptly initiate a massive, sustained Marshall Plan for Asia, Africa and South America. If they would allocate just 2 percent of their gross national product annually for a period of ten or twenty years for the development of the underdeveloped nations, mankind would go a long way toward conquering the ancient enemy, poverty.
Dr. King’s proposal would represent a constructive use of the United States’ vast and unearned resources, and it is indicative of the type of work people operating in good faith and in good conscience should be striving for in the modern day. Martin Luther King was more than a nonviolent preacher. He was a political and social scientist who saw the bigger picture. He knew that racism against Black Americans could never be defeated without restorative justice, justice which restored not only the poisoned soul and blackened heart of America, but of everyone the world over America helped to suppress. That is why he spoke out against the war in Vietnam, cognizant of the fact that decision would cost him dearly. It is why he had been planning to wage an aggressive war against American poverty, only to have been murdered before he could see it through to the end.
A couple of things are noteworthy. For one, Dr. King’s words, while relevant, were not ideas unique to him only. His contemporaries had said similar things. Consider what the criminally underrated Ella Baker, the founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an organizer beyond compare, and a King ally and critic, had to say in the clip below:
One of UConn Law’s very own, Professor John C. Brittain, thought as Dr. King did as he traversed the scourge of school segregation in the landmark Connecticut state case Sheff v. O’Neill. A brilliant article was published in The Century Foundation by then-senior fellow Richard D. Kahlenberg on Professor Brittain’s admirable exploits, stating
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. championed both racial and economic justice during his lifetime, and in the five decades since King’s assassination, no one has pursued that dual agenda more faithfully than and consistently than civil rights attorney and law professor John C. Brittain.
The article details how, two decades after the 1996 Sheff Connecticut Supreme Court decision that struck down de facto segregation as illegal, the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation’s filing suit to dismantle the integrated school system in Hartford was stymied by Professor Brittain’s emphasis on poverty concentrations during litigation of Sheff to “shift the student assignment algorithm to consider socioeconomic status.”
But the truth is much more complex than that. Their philosophies intersected at critical points, and at some points, Malcolm was even more comprehensive and forward-thinking than King. He recontextualized the Black rights struggle from one of civil rights to one of human rights. He thought by doing so, the struggle would be “internationalized,” the world would serve as the court of law, Black people as the petitioner, and America as the respondent, as opposed to America, the criminal perpetrator, serving as the court. He was a pioneer in what is known as People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHR), which is defined as “those non-oppressive rights that reflect the highest commitment to universal human dignity and social justice that individuals and collectives define for themselves through social struggle.” Unfortunately, he died reviled by the mainstream media and White society, his message falling on deaf ears from those unwilling to hear it. Malcolm was a firebrand by nature, and he was unwilling to change his message or the way in which he delivered it for anyone’s comfort. In his 1963 speech “Message to the Grassroots,” he compared himself to black coffee:
It’s just like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black, which means it’s too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won’t even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.
The lesson here is that it doesn’t matter how the message is packaged, too Black is too Black. Therefore, we who are Black students shouldn’t be concerned with respectability and fitting within a mold predetermined for us. Many of our greats, past and present, do not fit within such molds. Names such as Fannie Lou Hamer and Chris Smalls come to mind, who fly in the face of what most people would consider to be “eloquent,” or “well-spoken.” It is important never to underestimate anyone for how they speak, sound, look, dress, wear their hair, or for their level of education, for brilliance comes in all forms. Fannie Lou Hamer received only a sixth-grade education and yet she became one of the most formidable and underrated leaders in the Civil Rights Movement, building a robust agricultural cooperative for Black Mississippians to own land and farm collectively with no federal assistance whatsoever. Chris Smalls captivated the nation in 2022 by leading a union crusade against Amazon, unprecedented in its scope and success. He was labeled as not smart or articulate by the Amazon general counsel, and critics derided his durag, baseball cap, hoodie, sunglasses-laden appearance. Smalls simply told The New York Times that if he were running for president, he would dress just the same. That very Amazon general counsel underestimated Smalls, pushing to make him the face of the union organizing campaign. In doing so, he created the corporation’s biggest problem in its history. Yet, Black Americans remain underestimated, and the harsh truth is that for as many Chris Smalls as there are, there are many more whose potential is never allowed to flourish in an anti-Black society. As someone who had been incarcerated before he entered his name into the annals of history, Malcolm X in his autobiography recounted one fellow inmate of his, “West Indian Archie,” who was among the best “numbers runners” in his day for his ability to file people’s numbers in his head without ever writing them down or even acknowledging that he heard them. Malcolm notes that, had he lived in a different society, or if he had not been Black, his math genius might have been put to better use.
For as much as we talk about Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and others, and for as universally recognized as their names are, we know so little of who what they really did, what they really stood for, and who they really were at their core. Their stories have been consumed but not digested. Heard, but not listened to. Told with style, but lacking completely in substance. Now, politicians threaten to take their stories off the menu entirely. Now more than ever before, it is important that these stories are not only told but told as accurately, correctly, and viscerally as possible. We can and should be critical of them where their ideas no longer stand the test of time, but it is only by respecting and showing reverence for our heroes of the past will we ourselves be able to achieve greatness in the present. They suffered so that we today can have hope for something better.
This clip is from a 1992 lecture delivered at Florida International University by Kwame Ture. If you don’t know him by that name, you may know him by his original name, Stokely Carmichael
But knowledge without action is meaningless. It is for that reason that this blog is titled as it is, for a lyric in Kendrick Lamar’s song “Pray for Me.” In these turbulent, uncertain times, as Black students, we often find ourselves stuck, looking for our own generation’s version of the civil rights fighters to emerge to lead us into brighter times. But the harsh reality is that no saviors are coming. Every person touched on in this post made their names doing what they did not because they wanted to, but because they were left no choice, because they knew their work needed to be done to build a better future for generations to come. The hero you are looking for is in the mirror. You need only see it.
The late Attorney Kiah Duggins did just that. She graduated from Harvard Law in 2021, where she had been the President of the school’s Legal Aid Bureau, as well as a member of Harvard Defenders – the only legal service in Massachusetts representing low-income for people for free in criminal show-cause hearings – and the school’s chapter of the Black Law Students Association. She had been primed to assume the role of professor at Howard University before her life, along with sixty-six other souls, was tragically cut short in a plane collision with a helicopter over the Potomac River. The clip below is of Attorney Duggins speaking on TEDx about a program she created and spearheaded to empower underrepresented high school girls through college readiness, the Princess Project, and the challenges she faced in trying to bring it into existence. As you will find in the clip, Attorney Duggins, with the help of her parents and trusted counsel, persevered through what she perceived as her blind spots to enjoy great success with the Princess Project:
This Black History Month, the Black Law Students Association at UConn Law affirms that Black Lives Matter. All of them. Men, women, children, the elderly, cisgender, transgender, gay, straight, disabled, abled, dark-skinned, light-skinned, poor, working class, incarcerated, etc. The Black lives in other parts of the world who are suffering – in Haiti, in Congo, in Sudan, in Libya, and elsewhere. We account for them as well. We affirm the lived and living experiences of all Black identities as valid. We will strive to measure Black advancement and Black excellence qualitatively, not quantitatively; by the quality of life enjoyed by all of us, not by how many of us do X or Y.
For anyone who has read this, be they Black or be they a genuine ally, all you need do is see the hero in yourself. Can you do it? Now more than ever before, the world will need you to.
About the Author
Kwaku Aurelien is a 1L at UConn School of Law and a member of BLSA.
Works Cited
5Pillars. “Lessons from the American Mainstream Media’s Coverage of Malcolm X’s Death.” 5Pillars, 18 May 2020, 5pillarsuk.com/2020/05/18/lessons-from-the-american-mainstream-medias-coverage-of-malcolm-xs-death/.
Baraka, Ajamu. “People(S)-Centered Human Rights & Malcolm X – Hood Communist.” Hood Communist, 9 Dec. 2021, hoodcommunist.org/2021/12/09/peoples-centered-human-rights-malcolm-x/.
Bassett, Mary T. “Beyond Berets: The Black Panthers as Health Activists.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 106, no. 10, Oct. 2016, pp. 1741–43, https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2016.303412.
“Cornel West Lecture 6 – a Love Supreme (a Way Through) – Edinburgh Gifford Lectures Blog.” Ed.ac.uk, 17 May 2024, blogs.ed.ac.uk/gifford-lectures/2024/05/17/cornel-west-lecture-6-a-love-supreme-a-way-through/.
“Fannie Lou Hamer Founds Freedom Farm Cooperative – SNCC Digital Gateway.” SNCC Digital Gateway, 2011, snccdigital.org/events/fannie-lou-hamer-founds-freedom-farm-cooperative/.
Kahlenberg, Richard D. “A Civil Rights Hero Is Honored.” The Century Foundation, Apr. 2022, tcf.org/content/commentary/a-civil-rights-is-honored/. Accessed 26 Feb. 2025.
Luther, Martin, and Coretta Scott King. Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Beacon Press, 2010.
Owens, Deidre Cooper. “Harriet Tubman’s Disability and Why It Matters – Ms. Magazine.” Msmagazine.com, 10 Feb. 2022, msmagazine.com/2022/02/10/harriet-tubman-disability-democracy/.
Smiley, Tavis. “The One Single Thing Donald Trump and Martin Luther King, Jr. Have in Common.” Time, 1 Dec. 2017, time.com/5042070/donald-trump-martin-luther-king-mlk/.
Staff, News. “Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver.” Colorado County Citizen, 22 Feb. 2023, www.coloradocountycitizen.com/article/349. Accessed 27 Feb. 2025.
This February, in honor of Black History Month , remember that UConn Law Library houses three important digital resources: the NAACP Papers by ProQuest. The collection is organized into the following groups:
Major campaigns for equal access to education, voting, employment, housing and the military are covered in this module. The education files in this second module document the NAACP’s systematic assault on segregated education that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Files from 1955 –1965 focus on the NAACP’s efforts to implement the Brown decision as well as to combat de facto segregation outside of the South. Click here to go to the LibGuide page for this module
This NAACP module consists of the working case files of the NAACP’s general counsel and his Legal Department staff for the period from 1956 to 1972. The files document the NAACP’s aggressive campaign to bring about desegregation throughout the United States, particularly in the South. In total, this module contains over 600 cases from 34 states and the District of Columbia. The cases in this module pertain to school desegregation, abuses of police procedure, employment discrimination, freedom of speech, privacy, freedom of association, and housing discrimination. Click here to go to the LibGuide page for this module
One of the highlights of this NAACP module are the records on the Scottsboro case, one of the most celebrated criminal trials of the 20th century. This module also contains the key NAACP national office files on the campaign against lynching and mob violence, and NAACP efforts to fight against discrimination in the criminal justice system. Click here to go to the LibGuide page for this module
The NAACP Papers contains excellent material to support the law school community’s research projects on social justice and civil rights topics. If you have any questions about this content, contact our reference team!
Alum and well-known attorney Morton Katz (UConn Law Class of 1951) passed away this month at the age of 105. An active alumnus, Katz attended alumni events as recently as 2019. In 2018 he participated in 100 for 100, an oral history project for the Law School’s 100th Anniversary.
Raised in Hartford, Katz graduated from Weaver High School in 1935. He earned his BS from University of Connecticut in 1939, when it was called Connecticut State College. He was doing graduate work at Iowa State University when Pearl Harbor was attacked and he was called up to active duty. He had been commissioned into the Army reserves since 1940. Katz joined the Army as a 1st Lieutenant serving overseas from 1942-1943 during World War II. He was part of the 82nd Airborne Division and made numerous parachute jumps in Germany, France, North Africa and Italy.
After his discharge from the Army at the end of WWII, Katz remained in the reserves, earning his JD from UConn Law on the GI Bill. As a student, he excelled and graduated with honors. He was editor of the Bar Journal, a precursor to the Connecticut Law Review. In his oral history with the Law School, Katz recalls he found his calling in law during his first class with Professor William F. Starr who he described as a standout educator. While in school, he balanced his studies with a job at the Hartford Courant along with military training, which provided him with financial stability.
Legal Career
Katz began his legal career as an unpaid intern at his uncle’s firm, where he gained experience in title searches and commercial real estate. He later worked at another law firm, before establishing his practice in the basement of his home. Katz focused on criminal law, probate work, and served as a public defender, handling a variety of cases, including drug offenses.
Katz was also active in pro bono work, spurred by his commitment to giving back, inspired by his uncle’s support during his education. In 2010, he received the Hartford Bar’s Pro Bono Award.
Katz received many military honors, among them, the coveted Combat Infantryman Badge, Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, and Legion of Merit. In 2012, the president of France appointed him a chevalier of the Legion of Honor. He served in the reserves for 32 years retiring with the rank of Colonel in 1979. Katz participated in Memorial Day Observances every year right up through 2024 at the age of 105. In 2023, he published “From Paratrooper to Public Defender: Reflections of a 103-Year-Old World War II Veteran” with Aaron Elson, who transcribed hours of oral histories he conducted with Katz.
A full obituary can be found here. The Hartford Courant also ran a story on February 4, 2025. In addition, Katz did an oral history for the Veterans History Project at Central Connecticut State University. His story and those of others can be found on their website.
Keeping track of executive orders (EOs) and other policy decisions is vital for remaining current with the evolving legal environment, they are critical to understanding how the shifting political landscape will impact national governance, law, and policy.
Kwaku Aurelien is a 1L at UConn School of Law and a member of BLSA.