2010 Nation’s Best Advocates: 40 Lawyers Under 40” Announced

IMPACT and the National Bar Association (NBA) announced the “Nation’s Best Advocates: 40 Lawyers Under 40 to recognize talented individuals (age 40 and under) within the African American legal community who have achieved prominence and distinction.  Selected nominees demonstrate a strong commitment to empowering, uplifting, and advocating within the legal community.  They represent a cross-section of legal professionals: solo practitioners, government lawyers, judges, academicians, corporate counsels, young elected officials, and others lawyers who are using their law degree in innovative ways.  Below is a partial list of those who made the list:



Charles Hamilton Houston III, Esq.
Partner/Managing Member
Gonzalez Saggio & Harlan LLP

Attorney Houston is an experienced litigator, having managed high-volume premises liability and security cases for a multinational retailer in state and federal court. Mr. Houston has conducted trial, arbitration, and mediation proceedings, and he has taken depositions of plaintiffs, experts, and fact witnesses. His experience includes the development of strategy for case resolution and making recommendations regarding the merits and proposed resolutions of cases directly to national in-house counsel. Mr. Houston earned a B.A. in German from Loyola University and a J.D. from The University of Texas School of Law.  He was a Dean’s List Student at Loyola and was awarded a Full Tuition and Fees Scholarship by the University of Texas. 

Public Policy Counsel - NFL Players Association - Joe D. Briggs, Esq,  

Born and raised in Dundee, Florida, Joe Briggs was a scholarship athlete at Texas Christian University earning three varsity letters as a committed student leader on campus. After working in corporate America for a few years, Mr. Briggs transitioned into education as the Special Assistant to the President of Florida A&M University while also pursuing a master’s degree at the same institution as a State University System Fellow. Once he completed his master’s degree, Mr. Briggs decided to further his education goals once again at the Florida State University College of Law earning his juris doctorate in 2006.

 
During his time in law school, Mr. Briggs was employed as a law clerk by the top tier public finance firm Bryant Miller Olive and was also selected as a United States Senate Legal Extern. Mr. Briggs also completed two years of national leadership on the National Black Law Students Association Executive Board while also serving as a Lieutenant Governor in the ABA Law Student Division, Vice President of the Student Bar Association and as a member of his law school trial team.

Michelle Alexander, Esq.

Whether you are a Republican, Demoncrat, Independent or other, the  book,The New Jim Crow, written by civil rights lawyer and professor Michelle Alexander, Esq. is an eye opening account of America's war on drugs. It is an examination and analysis of the disproportionate representation of African-Americans in what has become our country's industrial incarceration complex.

Her exceptional work chronicles the emergence of the 'tough on crime' stance of the Republican Party, which resulted in tougher prison sentences for possessions of crack cocaine than powdered cocaine. The 'marketing campaign of the Reagan Administration which targeted African-Americans as 'the problem', when, in fact, crime was declining - all in an effort to draw poor and anxious white voters from the Democratic Party during in the aftermath of the passage of Civil Rights legislation.

Ms. Alexander doesn't spare the Democratic Party, though. She cites their complicity through their strategies to retain white voters by showing themselves equally tough on crime, by enacting policies which stripped formerly incarcerated non-violent drug offenders of citizenship rights, resulting in a new form of Jim Crow, relegating blacks, Hispanics and even poor whites to a caste system of second class citizenship.

Professor Alexander joined the OSU faculty in 2005. She holds a joint appointment with the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Prior to joining the OSU faculty, she was a member of the Stanford Law School faculty, where she served as Director of the Civil Rights Clinic.

Professor Alexander has significant experience in the field of civil rights advocacy and litigation. She has litigated civil rights cases in private practice as well as engaged in innovative litigation and advocacy efforts in the non-profit sector. For several years, Professor Alexander served as the Director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California, which spearheaded a national campaign against racial profiling by law enforcement. While an associate at Saperstein, Goldstein, Demchak & Baller, she specialized in plaintiff-side class action suits alleging race and gender discrimination.

Professor Alexander is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Vanderbilt University. Following law school, she clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the United States Supreme Court, and for Chief Judge Abner Mikva on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The Statistics

• The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid.

• In Washington, D.C., three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison.

• In some states, African Americans make up to 90 percent of drug prisoners and are up to 57 times more likely to be incarcerated for drug crimes than whites.