Upholding Justice: Why the Courts Matter!

Upholding Justice: Why the Courts Matter!
June 2, 2025 - Virtual Meeting
5:45 pm - Social and Committee Updates
6 pm - 7:30 pm - Discussion with Q&A
Speakers: Colleen Connell and Carolyn Shapiro
Moderator: Aurie Pennick
Online Registration Required

The presentation will focus on Challenges facing the justice system and what can be done.  

Carolyn Shapiro is a Professor of Law at Chicago-Kent College of Law, where she is also the founder and co-director of Chicago-Kent's Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States (ISCOTUS), and the faculty director of the Constitutional Democracy Project, a civic education initiative. Professor Shapiro’s scholarship is largely focused on the Supreme Court, its relationship to other courts and institutions, and its role in our constitutional democracy, as well as on other structural constitutional matters. She teaches classes in constitutional law, legislation and statutory interpretation, and public interest law and policy, and she directs the Chicago-Kent Public Interest Certificate Program. 

Professor Shapiro attended the University of Chicago Law School. After graduating, she served as a law clerk for Judge Richard A. Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and for Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the United States Supreme Court. Before joining the faculty at Chicago-Kent in 2003, she held a Skadden Fellowship at the Shriver National Center on Poverty Law and worked in private practice at a plaintiff’s side civil rights firm. From 2014 through mid-2016, she took a leave of absence from Chicago-Kent to serve as Illinois Solicitor General in the office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. Professor Shapiro maintains a small appellate practice and is Of Counsel to Schnapper-Casteras PLLC.

Colleen Connell joined the ACLU of Illinois in 1984, and has previously served as its Associate Legal Director and Director of the Reproductive Rights Project. Her legal practice has taken her to courts of all levels in both the state and federal justice system, litigating on issues including on rights of the mentally ill; equal access to education; housing discrimination; employment discrimination on behalf of women, freedom of speech and association; and other constitutional rights. She has argued before the Supreme Court of the United States on important matters involving the rights of women to control their own reproductive health.

In January of 2001, Colleen Connell became the first woman attorney to lead the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. As Executive Director, Ms. Connell has expanded the organization’s legislative and communications programs, its national security and informational privacy docket, and its institutional reform litigation. Under her direction, the ACLU of Illinois has adopted a strategy of integrated advocacy, using every tool at its disposal – public communications, litigation, community engagement, and advocacy – strategically and in concert to defend and expand fundamental liberties and rights in the most effective ways possible.  

Aurie Pennick was the Executive Director of the Field Foundation. While in law school she was as a minority fellow at the Chicago Community Trust. Later she became Assistant Director for Special Grants at the MacArthur Foundation. After obtaining her law degree, from 1987 to 1992 she was Managing Attorney Administration for the Chicago Transit Authority’s Legal Department. From 1992 to 2002, she was the President and CEO of the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, the fair housing organization founded by Dr. King in 1966. Aurie has received other numerous awards and appointments, including the 1986 appointment to the Chicago Police Board by Mayor Washington. In 2013, she was appointed by Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle to chair the now dismantled Cook County Violence Prevention, Intervention and Reduction Advisory Committee. In 2016, she served on the board of Housing Action Illinois, she was awarded the Neighborhood Housing Services - Gale Cincotta Visionary Award, Public Narratives - Studs Terkel Uplifting Voices Award. Aurie’s oral history is documented in The HistoryMakers Collection which is a part of The Library of Congress. Currently serves on the board of Trustees of the Field Museum and the Dovie Thurman Affordable Community Land Trust in Uptown.

Carole Levine is a Principal at Levine Partners Consulting providing consulting services to nonprofit organizations. She has held senior management positions in four national nonprofits: the National PTA (Deputy Executive Director); Communities in Schools, National (Vice President of Expansion and Technical Assistance); The Family Resource Coalition (Director of Technical Assistance); and the National Lekotek Center (Director of Development and Communications). Carole holds a BA from Washington University in education and political science, teaching certification and an M.Ed from National Louis University. She consults, trains, writes and speaks on issues of nonprofit development, often focused on work with underserved communities. Carole also serves on the boards of local, national and international organizations.