2025 Symposium
The Power of State Constitutional Rights
November 6-7, 2025
Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
Northwestern University Law Review is thrilled to announce its fall symposium, The Power of State Constitutional Rights, produced in partnership with The Brennan Center for Justice and State Court Report.
State courts and constitutions are increasingly in the spotlight as significant sources of rights. In areas ranging from abortion to education to property rights, many state constitutions offer protections that are distinct from and often more expansive than those found in the U.S. Constitution.
Join the Brennan Center for Justice, State Court Report, and the Northwestern University Law Review for a two-day symposium at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law exploring the future of state constitutional rights, including the substantive rights protected by state constitutions, state constitutional amendments, and emerging issues in areas such as LGBTQ+ rights and voting rights.
Symposium sessions include:
- A Conversation with Chief Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton, Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
- LGBTQ+ Rights and State Constitutions
- Unique Rights in State Constitutions
- Federalism and Interstate Conflicts
- Voting Rights and Democracy
- Constitutional Amendments and State Conventions
- Breakout sessions on Criminal Sentencing and Protections for Incarcerated People, Reproductive Rights, and Hurdles to Vindicating State Constitutional Rights
To register for NULR’s 2025 Symposium, please visit: https://brennan.swoogo.com/stateconstitutionalrightssymposium/register?ref=Law+Review.
CLE Information and Written Materials
This program is approved for 9.5 general CLE credits in Illinois. To receive Illinois CLE credit, please fill out the CLE request survey after the program by Friday, November 21st, 2025. Late requests for credit cannot be processed. This program is only approved for CLE credit in Illinois. If you would like an attendance certificate to use when you self-apply for credit in another state, please indicate this on the survey.
A Conversation with Chief Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton, Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
- Judgement Calls, A Conversation with Judge Jeffrey Sutton (Bolch Judicial Institute, Duke L. Sch. (Nov. 10, 2019).
- Evan Ribot, Sixth Circuit Judge Explores “Imperfect” Approach to Constitutional Law, U. Chi. L. Sch. (Nov. 5, 2018).
- Chihiro Isozaki & Maryjane Johnson, State Justices Continue to Challenge Originalism, State Court Report (Aug. 12, 2025).
Voting Rights and Democracy in State Courts
- Jessica Bulman-Pozen & Miriam Seifter, The Democracy Principle in State Constitutions, 119 Mich. L. Rev. 859 (2021).
- Michael S. Kang, Electoral Due Process, 120 Nw. U. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2025).
- Jessica Bulman-Pozen & Miriam Seifter, Countering the New Election Subversion: The Democracy Principle and the Role of State Courts, 2022 Wisc. L. Rev. 1337 (2022).
The Diversity of Rights in State Constitutions
- Ting Ting Cheng & Naomi Young, Putting State Equal Rights Amendments to Work, State Court Report (Dec. 5, 2024).
- Martha F. Davis, How Do State Constitutions Evolve?, State Court Report (June 22, 2023).
- Anthony B. Sanders, Baby Ninth Amendments and Unenumerated Individual Rights in State Constitutions Before the Civil War, 68 Mercer L. Rev. 389 (2017).
- Martha F. Davis, American Indians and Indigenous Peoples in State Constitutions, State Court Report (Aug. 5, 2025).
Breakout Session: Criminal Sentencing and Protections for Incarcerated People
- David M. Shapiro, Solitary Confinement in the Young Republic, 133 Harv. L. Rev. 544 (2019).
- Josephine Wonsun Hahn & Rosemary Nidiry, Federal Cuts to Behavioral Health Will Harm Public Safety, Brennan Center for Justice (Sept. 23, 2025).
- Megan Byrne & Elisa Epstein, Death Row Case Exposes Failures to Protect Childhood Trauma Survivors, ACLU (Apr. 8, 2025).
- Cassandra Stubbs, Megan Byrne, & Henderson Hill, Challenging the Racist Death Penalty in North Carolina, ACLU (Feb. 22, 2024).
- Lalita Moskowitz, Beyond the Concrete Box: Human Stories from Solitary, ACLU of New Mexico (Aug. 12, 2025).
- Hernandez D. Stroud & Rosemary Nidiry, A Federal Agenda to Promote Safety and Justice, Brennan Center for Justice (Jan. 30, 2025).
Breakout Session: Reproductive Rights
- Cathren Cohen & Diana Kasdan, The Promise of Reproductive Freedom Amendments: An Analysis of State Constitutional Protections and Their Impact on Anti-Abortion Laws, UCLA Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy (Sept. 2025)
- Deborah Tuerkheimer, Supreme Court Abortion Punt Adds Chaos for Providers and Patients, Bloomberg Law (July 1, 2024).
- Karen Thompson, How Viability Limits End Up Criminalizing Pregnancy, Mother Jones (June 30, 2025).
- Hillary Schneller, Diana Kasdan, Risa E. Kaufman, & Alexander Wilson, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization: Reckoning with its Impact and Charting a Path Forward, 25 J. Const. L. 1002 (2023).
- Deborah Tuerkheimer, Attacks on Reproductive Control: Echoes from the U.S., VerfBlog (Aug. 20, 2025).
- Carmen Rios & Susan Frietsche, ‘Our Federal Constitution Doesn’t Protect Us’: How the Women’s Law Project Redefined the Fight for Abortion Rights in Pennsylvania, Ms. (July 30, 2025).
Breakout Session: Economic Rights and Economic Justice
- Brian Highsmith, Welfare Reform at Twenty: The Consequences of Making Work Status a Proxy for Deservingness, 34 Yale L. & Pol’y Rev. 545 (2016).
- Brian Highsmith, The Implications of Inequality for Fiscal Federalism (or Why the Federal Government Should Pay for Local Public Schools), 67 Buffalo L. Rev. 101 (2019).
- Andrew Ward, Despite Setback, Momentum Builds for Economic Liberty, Institute for Justice (June 1, 2025).
- Lucien Ferguson, Contesting State Capture, 46 Cardozo L. Rev. (forthcoming 2025).
Breakout Session: Addressing Hurdles to Vindicating State Constitutional Rights
- Matthew Segal & Julie Murray, State Supreme Courts Offer the Best Chance to Advance Rights, ACLU (May 2, 2023).
- Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot, Michigan’s High Court is Charting a Course Against Punitive Excess, State Court Report (Apr. 25, 2025).
- Ava Kaufman, Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot, & Brianna Seid, Extreme Heat Exacerbates Dire Prison Conditions, With Few Paths to Relief, State Court Report (June 26, 2025).
- Matthew R. Segal, Civil Rights and State Courts in the Trump Era, 12 Harv. L. & Pol’y Rev. 49 (2018).
Federalism and Interstate Conflicts
- Adam B. Sopko, The Supervisory Power of State Supreme Courts, 98 S. Cal. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2025).
- Roderick M. Hills, Jr. The Political Economy of Cooperative Federalism: Why State Autonomy Makes Sense and “Dual Sovereignty” Doesn’t, 96 Mich. L. Rev. 813 (1998).
- Adam Sopko, State Supreme Court ‘Shadow Dockets’: More Power with Less Transparency, State Court Report (May 10, 2024).
- Miriam Seifter & Adam Sopko, State Courts are Fielding Sky-High Numbers of Lawsuits Ahead of the Midterms – Including Challenges to Voting Restrictions and to How Elections are Run, The Conversation (Oct. 26, 2022).
- Z. Payvand Ahdout & Bridget Fahey, Layered Constitutionalism, 124 Colum. L. Rev. 1295 (2024).
- Julia Spiegel, Foreign Affairs Federalism: Ukraine and Beyond, 84 Ohio St. L. J. 1489 (2024).
- Roderick M. Hills, Jr., Federalism, Democracy, and Deep Disagreement: Decentralizing Baseline Disputes in the Law of Religious Liberty, 69 Ala. L. Rev. 913 (2018).
- Roderick M. Hills, Jr., Farm-Bloc Federalism: The Rise, Fall (and Rise Again?) of a Constitutional Coalition, 3 J. Am. Con. Hist. 445 (2025).
- Bridget A. Fahey, Data Federalism, 135 Harv. L. Rev. 1007 (2022).
- Bridget A. Fahey, Coordinated Rulemaking and Cooperative Federalism’s Administrative Law, 132 Yale L. J. 1320 (2023).
- Adam Sopko, Constitutional Norms and State Judicial Confirmations, State Democracy Research Initiative (Jan 19. 2023).
- Roderick M. Hills, Jr., Choice of Law in an Era of Abortion Conflict, State Court Report (July 16, 2025).
- Adam B. Sopko, Catch and Release Jurisdiction, 121 Mich. L. Rev. Online 39 (2023).
- Adam B. Sopko, Catalyzing Judicial Federalism, 109 Va. L. Rev. Online 144 (2023).
LGBTQ Rights and State Constitutions
- Evan Wolfson, Where Perry Fits in the National Strategy to Win the Freedom to Marry, 37 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 123 (2013).
- Quinn Yeargain, Litigating Trans Rights in the States, 85 Ohio St. L.J. 355 (2024).
- Evan Wolfson, Freedom to Marry’s Ladder of Clarity: Lessons from a Winning Campaign (That is Not Yet Won), 29 Colum. J. Gender & L. 236 (2015).
- Cross v. State of Montana, 560 P.3d 637 (2024).
- Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000).
State Constitutional Amendments and State Conventions
- Derek Clinger, Constitutional Limits on Legislative Overrides of Statutory Initiatives in Ohio, 76 Case W. Res. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2026).
- Marcus Gadson, Federal Pleading Standards in State Court, 121 Mich. L. Rev. 409 (2022).
- Mothering Justice v. Attorney General, 345 Mich.App. 282 (2024).
- Marcus Alexander Gadson, State Constitutional Provisions Allowing Juries to Interpret the Law Are Not As Crazy As They Sound, 93 St. John’s L. Rev. 1 (2019).
- Marcus Alexander Gadson, Theseus in the Labyrinth: How State Constitutions Can Slay the Procedural Minotaur, 98 Wash. L. Rev. (2023).
- Marcus Gadson, Why Study State Constitutional Law?, 99 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1924 (2024).