41st Annual Section 1983 Civil Rights Litigation Conference

Sheldon H. Nahmod Related Seminars and Products

University Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus (Program Chair)

Chicago-Kent College of Law

Sheldon H. Nahmod is a well-known expert on constitutional law, the First Amendment, civil rights and liberties and the law of Section 1983. He is the author of the three-volume Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Litigation: The Law of Section 1983 (2024-25)(West/Westlaw); A Section 1983 Civil Rights Anthology (1993); a casebook, Constitutional Torts (6th ed. forthcoming in 2025, with Wells, Smith and Smith-Drelich); and numerous law review articles. He has written many certiorari petitions and amicus briefs in the Supreme Court. He has also successfully argued civil rights cases in the Supreme Court and the First, Seventh, Eighth and Tenth Circuits, and consults nationally with attorneys on civil rights, civil liberties and constitutional law issues. In addition, he has lectured on civil rights and civil liberties matters to federal judges and attorneys throughout the country, including founding, organizing and speaking at Chicago-Kent's own annual Conference on Section 1983 for the past 40 years. He lectures to lay groups on constitutional law and the First Amendment, most recently on the Religion Clauses.

Professor Nahmod graduated from the University of Chicago, Harvard Law School and the University of Chicago Divinity School (1996). He practiced with a corporate law firm in Chicago and was a legal services staff attorney before entering academia. He also was a teaching fellow at Harvard Law School, where he earned an LL.M. After joining Chicago-Kent from Duquesne Law School in Pittsburgh, he served as associate dean for three years, and was named IIT University Distinguished Professor in 1992. Over the years he has won awards for his teaching, including the Brill Award from the Student Bar Association. In 2001, he received the Jefferson Fordham Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in Section 1983 jurisprudence from the American Bar Association's Section on State and Local Government Law. In 2018, he received the Abner Mikva Award from the Chicago Chapter of the American Constitution Society for his contributions to civil rights and civil liberties. Also in 2018, he was named University Distinguished Professor Emeritus.

Professor Nahmod blogs on Section 1983, constitutional law, the First Amendment and other law-related topics at nahmodlaw.com.

Rory Patrick Quinn Related Seminars and Products

Litigation Counsel

Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission

Rory P. Quinn is Litigation Counsel at the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois (ARDC), where he presents educational seminars regarding various ethical issues, provides ethical guidance for practicing attorneys through the ARDC’s ethics hotline, and investigates and, where necessary prosecutes allegations of lawyer misconduct. He received his undergraduate degree from Western Illinois University and his law degree from Chicago-Kent College of Law. Prior to joining the ARDC, Rory worked as an associate for Swanson Martin & Bell in Chicago and as a Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney.

Noah Smith-Drelich Related Seminars and Products

Assistant Professor of Law

Chicago Kent College of Law

Noah Smith-Drelich is an assistant professor of law at the Chicago-Kent College of Law.  His scholarship seeks to better understand the incentive structures underlying tort law, with a current focus on constitutional torts.  Smith-Drelich also writes on the constitutional right to travel.  His articles have been published or are forthcoming in the Ohio State Law Journal, Florida Tax Review, Southern California Law Review (twice), Indiana Law Journal, Public Health Nutrition, and Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, as well as the California Law Review Online and Texas Law Review Online.

In addition to his academic research, Smith-Drelich maintains an active pro bono practice in civil rights and civil liberties impact litigation with a focus on indigenous rights and environmental justice. Currently, Smith-Drelich is the originating attorney and lead counsel on Thunderhawk v. County of Morton, a putative class action lawsuit challenging police abuses related to the Standing Rock-led resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline.  The case is in discovery against two defendants. The remaining defendants filed an interlocutory appeal of the district court's denial of their motions to dismiss, which Smith-Drelich argued in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in February 2022.

Before joining the legal academy, Smith-Drelich worked as a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union’s North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming affiliate, and as an attorney at the litigation boutique Korein Tillery. He is a graduate of Stanford Law School, where he was an articles editor on the Stanford Law Review and the editor-in-chief of the Stanford Law & Policy Review.

Teri Ravenell Related Seminars and Products

Associate Dean for Faculty Research & Development, Professor of Law

Villanova University and Charles Widger School of Law

Teri Ravenell joined Villanova Law in 2006 and began serving as associate dean for faculty research and development in June of 2019. She teaches Civil Procedure, Criminal Procedure, Civil Rights Litigation and Police Conduct. Her scholarship focuses on § 1983, the federal civil remedy for constitutional deprivations, and examines the points at which § 1983 jurisprudence converges with other areas of the law. She is an expert on qualified immunity, municipal liability and federal civil rights litigation against police officials. In 2020, she contributed to the American Constitution Society’s What’s the Big Idea? project, a collection of essays by leading scholars in the legal field recommending policy changes to incoming federal and state administrations. Her scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in Temple Law Review, North Carolina Review, Texas Law Review and other leading journals.  

Ravenell received her BA from the University of Virginia and her JD from Columbia University School of Law.  While at Columbia, she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. Following law school, Ravenell was an associate with Wilmer, Cutler, & Pickering in Washington, DC and clerked for the Honorable Raymond A. Jackson of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, before joining the College of William and Mary law faculty as a visiting assistant professor.  Since October of 2023, she has served on the board of the National Police Accountability Project (NPAP), an organization dedicated to combating police misconduct.

Stephen H. Weil Related Seminars and Products

Senior Attorney

Romanucci Blandin

Stephen H. Weil serves as a Senior Attorney at Romanucci & Blandin, where he focuses his legal practice on cases involving civil rights, police misconduct, wrongful convictions and prisoners’ rights, working closely with Founding Partner Antonio Romanucci and Partner Bhavani Raveendran.

Steve brings extensive experience to the firm.  Most recently, he led the Prisoner Rights Project at a Chicago-based civil rights law firm, where he handled all aspects of case investigations, discovery, depositions, briefing, trial, and overall management of the firm’s portfolio of prisoner rights cases. He has also led multiple civil rights and Americans with Disabilities Act cases involving police misconduct and conditions of confinement across the country. Previously, Steve defended class actions and other complex civil litigation for a national defense firm in Washington D.C., and he served as a litigation fellow with the MacArthur Justice Center, affiliated with the Northwestern University School of Law, where he litigated police coverup and wrongful conviction matters. 

Steve earned his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago, with studies at the London School of Economics.  After law school, Steve served as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert E. Payne of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

He is admitted to practice in Illinois before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth and Seventh Circuits and the U.S. District Courts for the Northern, Central, and Southern Districts of Illinois, Western District of Wisconsin, Western District of Michigan, District of Columbia, and Northern District of Indiana.

Steve speaks Spanish. He enjoys spending time with his wife and two children in his free time.

Anthony G. Becknek Related Seminars and Products

Partner

Klein, Thorpe & Jenkins, Ltd. Attorneys at Law

Anthony Becknek joined Klein, Thorpe and Jenkins Ltd. in 2019 after significant roles in both the city of Chicago’s government and as a Senior Associate Litigation Attorney at a Chicago-area law firm. Anthony has extensive experience handling a wide array of complex litigation matters and internal and external investigations for government entities and municipalities.

Anthony concentrates his practice on representing a wide array of municipal entities and their employees from pre-litigation matters through trial and appeal in federal and state courts regarding alleged police misconduct, constitutional and civil rights, torts, personal injury, class action, employment and other complex and municipal litigation matters.

In addition, Anthony also represents municipalities and their Police and Fire Command Staff in administrative litigation, such as the investigation and discipline of police and fire officials and employees. He conducts internal investigations, interrogates those charged or alleged to have committed administrative misconduct and conducts arbitrations and hearings before Police and Fire Boards related to administrative discipline, including potential termination.

Anthony is an impassioned litigator who dedicates much of his practice to representing first responders and municipal employees and leadership. He is honored to represent, and at times investigate, those who protect and serve our communities.

David B. Owens Related Seminars and Products

Assistant Professor of Law and Partner

University of Washington School of Law and Loevy & Loevy

David B. Owens is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Washington and directs the Civil Rights and Justice Clinic (CRJC). The CRJC represents plaintiffs in civil rights lawsuits in federal courts in Illinois, Washington, California, Hawaii, Ohio, and beyond. David is also a partner at Loevy & Loevy, a national civil rights firm originally based in Chicago. As a litigator, David has litigated dozens of civil rights suits in state and federal courts throughout the country. These suits most frequently involve constitutional violations that have caused wrongful convictions, claims of police violence and excessive force, race discrimination, and some First Amendment issues. David taught at the University of Chicago Law School as a Lecturer in Law with the Exoneration Project, a post-conviction innocence clinic between 2012 and 2017. David also taught at Stanford Law School as an adjunct lecturer in the Spring of 2021.

Before begining practice at Loevy and the Exoneration Project in 2012, David clerked for Diane P. Wood of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago and Myron H. Thompson for the Middle District of Alabama in Montgomery.

Michael Avery Related Seminars and Products

Professor Emeritus

Suffolk Law School

After beginning as an ACLU staff lawyer during the Black Panther murder trial in New Haven in 1970, Michael Avery enjoyed a career over four decades as a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer. On the civil side, he represented the victims of police abuse and racial and sexual discrimination. In criminal cases, he defended people charged with everything from peaceful protesting to murder. In Boston in 2007, working with a team of lawyers, he obtained the largest judgment ever awarded against the FBI, $101.7 million, for the wrongful conviction of four innocent men for murder. His client, Peter Limone, had spent 33 years in prison for a murder of which he was innocent. The crime was actually committed by an FBI informant.  

He has served as the President of the National Lawyers Guild and is one of the founders and a past president of the National Police Accountability Project. He enjoyed a sixteen-year career as a law professor at Suffolk Law School in Boston, where he is now professor emeritus. He has published several non-fiction books, including The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liberals, We Dissent: Talking Back to the Rehnquist Court, Handbook of Massachusetts Evidence, and Police Misconduct: Law and Litigation. He has published three novels: The Cooperating Witness, Murder in Blue, and Mama’s Boy. He is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School and spent a year as an exchange student in the former Soviet Union at the University of Moscow. After retiring as a professor of law, he obtained a Master of Fine Arts from Bennington College. He resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico.