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The New Jersey Law Center will be closed Friday, June 16 in observation of Juneteenth. It will reopen on Monday, June 19. Earlier this month, in celebration of the holiday NJSBA’s Minorities in the Profession Section hosted our Juneteenth event on June 8 which commemorated the end of chattel slavery in the United States. Over 80 people came to the New Jersey Law Center for our program which featured a panel discussion with notable Black leaders in the law on empowerment and why representation matters. The panel was moderated by Cheyne R. Scott, a member of the MIPS Board of Directors. Speakers included U.S. District Court Judge Julien X. Neals, ...

Join New Jersey State Bar Association’s Minorities in the Profession Section for its Juneteenth commemoration at the New Jersey Law Center on June 8. The program will feature a panel discussion with notable Black leaders in the law on empowerment and why representation matters. Speakers include U.S. District Court Judge Julien X. Neals and Bergen County Sheriff Anthony Cureton. Additional panelists are being added. The evening includes music, food and refreshments. Register to attend at njsba.com or call the NJSBA customer service department at 732-249-5000.

The NJSBA’s MIPS hosted a celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month on Oct. 12 with a fireside chat with Tabatha Castro, president of the Hispanic Bar Association of New Jersey, about her professional journey. Dozens of attorneys and judges attended the conversation about the issues facing the diverse legal community.

Over 70 people attended the Feb. 24 Minorities in the Profession Section’s annual Black History Month Celebration. The crowd enjoyed food from Delta’s in New Brunswick, thrilled in meeting in person at the New Jersey Law Center once again while cheering on high school students in a Black history trivia contest. Raymond M. Brown delivered the evening’s keynote address, a searing reflection on the hopeful lyrics in J. Rosamond Johnson and James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” also known as the Black national anthem. He urged continued vigilance on racial justice, and all the inhumanities of our time. “We have to be victorious,” he said. “There is ...

The New Jersey State Bar Association (NJSBA) Minorities in the Profession Section (MIPS) has taken the lead on often difficult but important conversations about race and the legal profession, particularly after the murder of George Floyd spawned a national reckoning about systemic racism in society and the justice system in particular. James Alexander Lewis V, chair of MIPS and former chair of the Diversity Committee and NJSBA trustee, has been an active participant in those conversations. He is executive director of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion for the New York City Bar Association. For nearly a decade, Lewis litigated civil rights and employment ...

A Message from New Jersey State Bar Association President Kimberly A. Yonta, Esq. As the New Jersey State Bar Association celebrates Black History Month throughout February, we also commit to finding more ways to amplify and promote our Black colleagues throughout the year. This is part of our ongoing effort to examine anti-Black bias and search for ways to combat persistent systemic racism in our society and make lasting changes in our profession. Daryl Williams, chair of the Minorities in the Profession Section (MIPS) shared wise words about BHM: “It’s all year long, but we celebrate it in February, so we are going to celebrate it to its fullest. Hopefully ...

The closest Anthony Gartmond came to creating art during his 25 years as an Essex County assistant prosecutor was doodling during meetings. So, it is no small feat that seven years into retirement, Gartmond has achieved a measure of success as an artist and that his work is being featured all month in a virtual art gallery on the New Jersey State Bar Association (NJSBA) website as part of the Minorities in the Profession Section Black History Month celebration on Feb. 25. To be sure, Gartmond’s talents did not come out of left field. He showed artistic promise in his youth, particularly in his pencil drawings, and was encouraged by teachers to keep at ...

At a time when Twitter and Facebook face increasing criticism for spreading disinformation, the New Jersey State Bar Association (NJSBA) Minorities in the Profession Section (MIPS) Black History Month high school essay contest deals with the landmark law that shields social media companies from liability from the content users post. Daryl Williams, chair of MIPS, said the section chose to use Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 as this year’s essay topic because it’s an issue that would connect students to the law. “This is a generation of kids that was raised on the internet, raised on Twitter. This topic is ripe” he said. “If we don’t ...

Editor’s note: This is part of an ongoing series that looks at how New Jersey State Bar Association members’ work lives have changed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nine months into the pandemic that has gripped the country, James A. Lewis V has learned to adapt to a new paradigm for how and where to practice law. In terms of the setting, Lewis has adopted a hybrid approach since August, when he joined Chasan Lamparello Mallon & Cappuzzo in Secaucus as a partner, practicing employment and civil rights litigation. “I find for some activities, such as research and review, I have increased productivity at the office where I can get a prolonged time ...

Group will study legal system to identify methods to address root causes of inequities in the profession, law New Jersey State Bar Association (NJSBA) President Kimberly A. Yonta has created the NJSBA Commission on Racial Equity in the Law, a panel of leaders in the profession that will take an incisive look at the legal system to identify methods of addressing root causes of inequities in the profession and in the law. “The murder of George Floyd, the disparate impact of COVID-19 and numerous other events have put the nation’s structural inequities into sharp focus,” Yonta said. “This is an inflection point after centuries of oppression and inequality. ...

Affirmative action in higher education is the focus of Virtual Annual Meeting Panel There is tremendous value to all students to have an inclusive and diverse student body in our colleges and universities. The landmark case Brown v. Board of Education was supposed to end segregation in the nation’s k-12 schools, but research has unequivocally shown that re-segregation has occurred, including in New Jersey. Rhasheda Douglas, a ssistant dean of the Minority Student Program at Rutgers Law School, said in 2015 a typical white student in the Garden State went to a school where 67 percent of the students were white. The experience was similar ...