Jacob Jones ‘21
Features Editor
Last Saturday, February 20, students, faculty, and experts gathered for the Fifth Annual Shaping Justice Conference. The event, sponsored by the Mortimer Caplin Public Service Center, the Program in Law and Public Service, and the Public Interest Law Association, brings in various speakers with a central theme each year. This year, the conference was titled “Shaping Justice in a Time of Crisis” and addressed a wide variety of topics related to justice.
Panels started at 10 a.m. The panels covered a range of topics, from racial justice and supporting people of color, to the fight for voting rights, a movement to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security, to sex discrimination in the workplace, and environmental justice. Each panel was moderated by a UVA professor, and each panel brought in several experts to discuss the topic.
The keynote address was given by Terrica Ganzy ’02. Ganzy boasts an extensive resume and has fought for civil rights since graduating from the Law School. Ganzy has been involved in representing capital defendants[1] from the trial stage to appeals to habeas petitions. She has also organized capital defense teams and helped manage investigations in those cases. Importantly, she has also engaged with the public and advocated to abolish the death penalty. Ganzy now holds the position of Deputy Director of the Southern Center for Human Rights.
Pictured: Keynote Speaker Terrica Redfield '02, Deputy Director of the Southern Center for Human Rights. Photo Credit: Warren Craghead
Rather than expressing her own view of what shaping justice looks like in 2021, Ganzy’s speech took a much more personal tone and offered advice for those looking to go into public service at some point. She offered several tips for those looking to make change.
Tip number one: you are enough. Ganzy discussed how the challenges facing those who are looking to shape justice can often feel overwhelming. Other activists and advocates who have succeeded have been in the same spot and felt the same way. If they could overcome those challenges, then so can you.
Tip number two: continue to expand your vision of what is possible for justice. Be an artist who gets closer to a masterpiece with each work, or an architect who develops the blueprint for a new vision of justice. If you are seeking to make change, it’s important you don’t limit yourself to the custom of the time; normal and accepted does not equal right.
Tip number three: know who you are, and embrace your values. Ganzy related this tip to her own story: After graduating from UVA Law, she had a choice between going to a firm or taking a fellowship at a legal nonprofit. She didn’t want to have to sacrifice her values and felt that at a firm she would have to conform to being someone she is not.
Ganzy also offered advice on working with community members: Be mindful of going into the conversation thinking you have all of the answers. A law degree does not give you everything you need, and people within the community are experts on matters on which you are not an expert. Ganzy also discussed the importance of caring about those you advocate for: Some people are not going to win in court. The justice some people get will be that you advocated for them and fought for them. Ganzy’s final piece of advice is that if you follow your passions, everything else will come. It may sound cheesy, but it was true for Ganzy.
After the keynote speech was finished, three separate alumni were honored for their role in public service. Elizabeth Epps ’11 was awarded one of the Shaping Justice Rising Star Awards for her work in founding the Colorado Freedom Fund, “a revolving community bond fund that pays ransom for our neighbors unjustly detained in cages across Colorado who cannot afford to buy their own freedom” that seeks to abolish wealth-based detention.[2] Ms. Epps also serves as a Smart Justice organizer for the ACLU. April Nicole Russo ’11 received the other Rising Star Award. Ms. Russo is a U.S. Attorney in the Department of Justice’s Human Trafficking & Child Exploitation Section. Ms. Russo talked about the overwhelming challenge in public service work: In response to someone not being able to save all the starfish dying on a beach, she says: “Well, I just saved that one.” Professor Toby Heytens ’00, who is on leave as a professor, received the Shaping Justice Award for Extraordinary Achievement. What could be so important and such an extraordinary achievement that one would take a break from being a professor of law at UVA? Well, arguing in front of the US Supreme Court, being the Solicitor General of Virginia, and winning “General Supreme Court Best Brief Award in 2020” are all pretty good starts. One would expect nothing less from someone who, according to rumor, dropped pincites in his final exam.
---
jmj3vq@virginia.edu