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Past

Procedural Justice: Change and Continuity

Feb•6•26

9:00am - 3:30pm

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Procedural Justice: Change and Continuity | Public Interest Law Journal Symposium, 2026 ed.

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  • Agenda
  • Speakers

Boston University School of Law
Barrister’s Hall, First Floor
Friday, February 6th

Please join us on Friday, February 6th for the 2026 Public Interest Law Journal Symposium, “Procedural Justice: Change and Continuity.”

Substantive justice—liberty, equality, rights, guarantees, protections—dominates legal discourse. However, promises of justice are incomplete by themselves: adequate procedures are equally important for the promises of substantive justice to be realized. The symposium will focus on procedure’s often-overlooked role in determining outcomes, and will highlight the impact of procedures as they have existed and how they should change. The symposium will be broadly inclusive of procedure in all its forms, including procedures in the courtroom, the workplace, the ballot box, and beyond.

Agenda

  • Friday, February 6, 2026

  • 9:00am - 10:00am

    Check In

  • 10:10am - 10:30am

    Welcome & Opening Address 

    Olivia Byrd & Bryan Cruz, Co-Editors-in-Chief

  • 10:40am - 11:30am

    Panel #1: The Lifecycle of a Criminal Defendant

    Barry Edwards, University of Georgia

    Michael Wetmore, Albany Law School

    Judge Michael Vitali, Commonwealth of Massachusetts District Court

  • 11:30am - 11:40am

    Coffee Break

  • 11:40am - 12:30pm

    Panel #2: Access and Change in Civil Procedure

    Bradley Baranowski, Boston University School of Law

    Naomi Mann, Boston University School of Law

    Judge Richard Simons, Berkshire Probate and Family Court

  • 12:30pm - 1:30pm

    Lunch

  • 1:30pm - 2:00pm

    Keynote Address

    Portia Pedro, Boston University School of Law

  • 2:10pm - 3:00pm

    Panel #3: Procedure in Society

    Ali Mahdi, Lower LLC

    Heather Friedman, Northeast Justice Center

    Ben Pyle, Boston University

  • 3:15pm - 3:30pm

    Closing Remarks and Thank You

    Elise Chigier, Symposium Editor

Speakers

Barry Edwards

Instructor

Barry Edwards

Instructor
Dr. Edwards is the founder and lead researcher at Fair Trial Analysis and a former lecturer at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He earned his Ph.D. from UGA in 2014 and teaches part time, usually online classes during the summer sessions.

Michael Wetmore

Professor

Michael Wetmore

Professor
Professor Michael C. Wetmore joined Albany Law School in August of 2022 as a Visiting Assistant Professor.  He teaches Evidence, Criminal Law, and Trial Practice.  He previously taught at Albany Law School as an adjunct professor. Prior to joining Albany Law School, Professor Wetmore served as an Assistant District Attorney for the Albany County District Attorney’s Office, where he worked as both a trial and appellate prosecutor.  In all, he has practiced in state and local trial courts, intermediate appellate courts, and the New York Court of Appeals.  Professor Wetmore is also regularly asked to serve as critiquing faculty for the New York Prosecutor’s Training Institute and the New York State Bar Association’s Trial Academy where he provides feedback to newly admitted attorneys learning trial skills. A 2014 graduate of Albany Law School, Professor Wetmore was an active competitor in the Anthony V. Cardona ’70 Moot Court Program.  He is a former winner of both the Donna Jo Morse Negotiations Competition and Client Counseling Competition; the latter of which he has assisted coaching since 2014.  Professor Wetmore is also the current faculty advisor to the law school’s Karen C. McGovern Senior Prize Trial Competition.
Michael Vitali

Michael Vitali

Associate Justice, Commonwealth of Massachusetts District Court

Brad Baranowski

Bradley M. Baranowski

Visiting Assistant Professor

Bradley M. Baranowski

Visiting Assistant Professor
Brad Baranowski (’20) holds a PhD in American history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a JD from Boston University School of Law. He previously clerked for the Honorable David A. Lowy of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the Honorable Karen Nelson Moore of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Baranowski was a Supreme Court Fellow assigned to the Federal Judicial Center during the Court’s October 2022 term. While there, his research focused on recent developments in civil procedure and the history of judicial rulemaking and administration. Baranowski rejoins BU after practicing civil litigation at Jones Day.  His current research extends the work that he did as a Supreme Court Fellow.
Naomi Mann

Naomi Mann

Clinical Professor of Law

Naomi Mann

Clinical Professor of Law
Naomi Mann is the Executive Director of the Civil Litigation & Justice Program. She is Founding Director of the Access to Justice Clinic (A2J Clinic), an innovative clinic which pairs individual client representation with systems change projects. Students in A2J represent individual clients facing multiple systemic barriers (e.g., gender, race, class, and disability) in housing, family law, and employment cases. Students actively analyze and tackle the individual and structural injustices that their clients face and learn how individual client representation and/or systems change projects can address important access to justice gaps. Students build their own access to justice systems change projects in the second semester, and, in the process, develop their own professional networks. Before coming to Boston University, Professor Mann worked as a Civil Rights Attorney in the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights where she investigated, mediated, and resolved claims involving educational institution compliance with federal civil rights laws including Title IX, Title VI, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. From 2003 to 2010, Professor Mann worked as a staff attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services and Washington Empowered Against Violence, representing low-income domestic violence and sexual assault survivors in family law and restraining order cases. Professor Mann writes in the areas of Title IX, sexual assault, and constitutional due process.

Richard Simmons

Judge, Berkshire Probate and Family Court

Richard Simmons

Judge, Berkshire Probate and Family Court
Judge Richard A. Simons currently serves as the First Justice of the Berkshire Division of the Probate and Family Court. He was appointed to the Court by Governor Deval L. Patrick in March, 2008. He serves as Chair of the Court’s Education Committee and is a Trustee of the Flaschner Judicial Institute. He serves on the Advisory Committee for both the J2J Mentor Program and Changing Lives Through Literature Committee. In 2014, he and his Chief Probation Officer conceived of and implemented a program, “Enhancing Families Through Literature” based on the successful alternate sentencing program, “Changing Lives Through Literature.” The program works with families caught up in litigation before the Probate and Family Court to develop parents’ communication skills in a non-adversarial environment while at the same time, promoting the value of reading to children. In 2017, Enhancing Families Through Literature was recognized with the Irwin Cantor Innovative Award given by the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts for innovative court-connected programs. Judge Simons is the Chief Justice of the Trial Court’s designee to sit on the Board of the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation.
Portia Pedro

Portia Pedro

Associate Professor of Law

Portia Pedro

Associate Professor of Law
Portia Pedro, a former public interest litigation fellow who also worked as a litigation associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, joined the full-time faculty of Boston University School of Law as an associate professor in July 2018. She teaches civil procedure, remedies, and critical civil procedure. Professor Pedro studies the ways in which racial subordination and subordination of other marginalized groups is embedded in civil procedure, remedies, and federal courts. She attempts to identify the marginalizing effects of seemingly technocratic or neutral rules, mechanisms, and doctrines in order to work against inequality that is embedded in the structure of the U.S. legal system. Her co-edited book volume, A Guide to Civil Procedure: Integrating Critical Legal Perspectives (NYU Press), is a resource of critical legal perspectives about civil procedure that focus on issues such as race, sex, gender identity and expression, disability, class, immigration status, and sexual orientation. Her scholarship has been published, or is forthcoming, in journals including the California Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, and Virginia Law Review Online. During her two years as a litigation associate at Debevoise in New York, Professor Pedro conducted motions practice, second-seated a trial, prepared witnesses for federal investigations, and litigated class action claims. She also practiced law for two years as a John J. Gibbons Fellow in Public Interest and Constitutional Law at Gibbons PC in Newark, New Jersey, where she litigated civil rights claims, negotiated attorneys’ fees, and filed amicus briefs. Professor Pedro co-authored briefs that secured marriage equality for same-sex couples in New Jersey, and she successfully opposed a motion to dismiss the equal protection claims of Muslim plaintiffs in New Jersey who were surveilled by the New York Police Department for their religious beliefs. Prior to her doctoral studies, Pedro served as a clerk to the Honorable Joseph A. Greenaway, Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Professor Pedro holds her PhD in Law at Yale Law School with a research focus on civil procedure, a JD from Harvard Law School, and a BA in International Development Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. At Harvard Law School, she served as treasurer and vice president of the Harvard Law Review, as an editor of the BlackLetterLaw Journal and Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, and as Harvard Black Law Students Association’s political chair.
Ben Pyle

Ben Pyle

Associate Professor of Law

Ben Pyle

Associate Professor of Law
Benjamin Pyle teaches and writes in empirical legal studies, employment law, and criminal law, with a particular focus on how the law influences employment prospects and post-conviction opportunities for people with criminal records. He has published work in law reviews and peer-reviewed journals, including the Notre Dame Law Review and the International Review of Law and Economics. His research has won several prizes, including The University of Chicago’s Donald M. Ephraim Prize in Law and Economics and The John E. Parker Memorial Prize in Labor Economics and Human Resources. In addition to theoretical and methodological contributions, Professor Pyle’s scholarly contributions have been relevant to legal practice. His work has been cited by advocates, judicial opinions, and policy makers. His work has been featured in the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers journal, the Champion Magazine, as part of its Getting Scholarship Into the Courtroom Project. Professor Pyle’s work has been supported by grants from the Vital Projects Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the University of Michigan. Professor Pyle has been active in providing research for the Criminal Justice Administrative Record System (CJARS) at the University of Michigan, a data infrastructure project revolutionizing research and statistical reporting on the US criminal justice system. He has also worked with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on federal employment of people with criminal records and “Ban-the-Box” policies and provided analysis and consulting for employment law cases to support expert witnesses. Professor Pyle has also worked with the National Employment Law Project on projects to improve the design and implementation of unemployment insurance systems. He has also worked with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Washtenaw County, Michigan Prosecutor’s office to improve local prosecutor data transparency. Professor Pyle earned his JD from the University of Michigan, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude and Order of the Coif. He will join Boston University School of Law with a Master’s degree and PhD in economics from the University of Michigan. In addition, he earned a BA, Magna Cum Laude, in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) and Mathematics from Claremont McKenna College.

Ali Mahdi

Ali Mahdi

Ali Mahdi is a practicing lawyer, who currently works as an in-house attorney for a financial services company. Previously, he was an Honors Attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice. He has written scholarship for various legal publications, including the Sustainable Development Law & Policy Brief at American University's Washington School of Law, the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law at Widener University Delaware Law School, and the Public Interest Law Journal at Boston University School of Law. His academic scholarship touches an array of issues, such as regulatory mechanisms, corporate governance, and constitutional matters.
Ali earned his Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the University of Baltimore School of Law, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the University of Baltimore Law Forum. He also holds a Bachelors' Degree in Economics and Political Science, with a Sustainable Infrastructure Minor, from the University of Delaware. Ali grew up in Delaware and currently resides in Washington, D.C.

Heather Friedman

Supervisory Attorney at the Northeast Justice Center

Heather Friedman

Supervisory Attorney at the Northeast Justice Center
Heather Friedman serves as Supervisory Attorney at the Northeast Justice Center, where she leads a team of committed attorneys and paralegals who fight for the rights of low-income and other vulnerable immigrants in the northeast corner of Massachusetts, including the gateway cities of Lawrence, Lynn, and Lowell. With a background in humanitarian immigration and removal defense, Ms. Friedman strives to zealously defend the rights and human dignity of noncitzens navigating an overwhelming and bewildering legal process. She also enjoys helping attorneys thrive in this challenging and ever-evolving field of law. Before joining the Northeast Justice Center, Ms. Friedman represented low-income immigrants at the Post-Deportation Human Rights Project (PDHRP) at Boston College Law School, the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation (PAIR) Project, and the Boston-based law firm, Graves & Doyle. Ms. Friedman earned her B.A. from Harvard College and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.

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Procedural Justice: Change and Continuity | Public Interest Law Journal Symposium, 2026 ed.

Posted 7 months ago

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