Southwestern’s Access To Social Justice Fund (ASJ)
The Access to Social Justice Fund (ASJ) was created by a private donor to support education and advocacy on behalf of sane sex offense laws and to empower the voice of the registrant.
The Fund is housed at Southwestern Law School; Professor Catherine Carpenter is the Executive Director.
Slaying the Government Dragon
Registrants are not alone. Check out the litigation chart which identifies the lawsuits filed and won by Janice Bellucci, civil rights attorney and executive director of Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws (ACSOL) on behalf of registrants and their families.
ASJ Invites Student Scholarship: A National Writing Contest for Law Students 2020-21
A law student’s voice matters! The law review article that a student writes can impact the law; it can change minds. ASJ invites student scholarship on sex offense registration and notification laws that is critical of the collateral consequences associated with registration, notification, residency or presence restrictions, satellite-based monitoring, or other practices that severely impact the rights of registrants.
- Contest Rules
The contest is open to all current law students at ABA-approved law schools. Submissions to ASJ must have been published or will be published in an upcoming journal. Publication is determined by the law school’s policies and procedures.
ASJ will award two cash prizes from those submitted articles that meet the qualifications:
- Finalist award to a Southwestern Law Student ($1,000)
- Finalist award to a non-Southwestern Law Student ($1,000)
The selection of the awards will be determined by ASJ.
Advocacy Organizations Fighting against Registration Injustice
- Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws
Click image to visit website Started by civil rights attorney Janice Bellucci, ACSOL is dedicated to protecting the Constitution by restoring the civil rights of registrants and their families.
- National Association of Rational Sex Offense Laws
Click image to visit website NARSOL opposes dehumanizing registries and works to eliminate discrimination, banishment, and vigilantism against persons accused or convicted of sexual offenses through the use of impact litigation, public education, legislative advocacy, and media outreach in order to reintegrate and reconcile affected individuals and restore their constitutional rights.
- Women Against The Registry
Click image to visit website The vision of this organization is to abolish the multiple Sex Offender Registries across this nation. Women Against Registry also seeks to restore life, health, and freedom to all individuals injured by the requirements of registration - especially innocent family members.
- Caution Click National Campaign for Reform
Click image to visit website - Florida Action Committee
Click image to visit website
Journalism at Its Best: Shining a Light on Injustice
These are must-reads.
- Sarah Stillman, The List. New Yorker Magazine 2016. Tells the compelling story of children on the registry whose lives are ruined for an act they committed as kids
- Serena Solomon, When a Sex Offender Calls, She’s There to Listen. Vox Magazine, Jan 8, 2020
- Hallie Lieberman, Sex Offender Laws Are Broken. These Women Are Working to Fix Them. Reason Magazine, February 2020.
- Lenore Skenazy, Kid Criminals. Reason Magazine, May 2016
- Maura Ewing, No Pets For Pariahs: Travails of a Teenage Sex Offender, The Marshall Project, August 7, 2015.
Meet ASJ's Executive Director
Catherine L. Carpenter, The Honorable Arleigh M. and William T. Woods Professor of Law
Southwestern’s Professor Catherine Carpenter has dedicated the past sixteen years to scholarship that emphasizes the injustice and unconstitutionality of sex offense registries and the egregious collateral consequences resulting from banishment and restrictive employment laws. She has been quoted in newspapers and magazines and her scholarship has been cited by attorneys and courts, including the Maryland Court of Appeals in Doe v. Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, 62 A.3d 123 (Md. 2013), which overturned Maryland’s sex offender registration laws on ex post facto grounds. Professor Carpenter is also the Vice President of Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws (ACSOL), an advocacy organization dedicated to protecting the Constitution by restoring the civil rights of registrants and their families.