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The Capitol Connection
The College of Public Affairs and Education and the Center for State Policy and Leadership, University of Illinois Springfield

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  • Photo of a woman in the witness seat and a judge in the UIS DCFS Mock Courtroom, part of the Child Advocacy Studies Program

    The Law of Motherhood in the Gender-Dependent Application of Criminal Responsibility for Failing to Protect Children

    When a child is injured or killed by an adult in the home, a marked gender division appears in the application of criminal responsibility against the non-abusing parent. When children are harmed by a man in the home, mothers are regularly prosecuted under statutes criminalizing the failure to protect one’s children, yet men virtually never face charges when the roles are reversed and the mother has harmed the children while the father has failed to protect them.

  • Headshot of Dr. Brook Depenbusch, Assistant Professor of Legal Studies

    CPAE Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Brooke Depenbusch, Legal Studies

    CPAE Faculty Spotlight on Dr. Brooke Depenbusch, Assistant Professor in the Department of Legal Studies, whose teaching and research center on the intersection between economic inequality, state structure & social policy, and social movements in the modern United States.

  • Photo of Dr. Daniel Platt, Assistant Professor of Legal Studies

    CPAE Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Daniel Platt, Legal Studies

    CPAE Faculty Spotlight on Dr. Daniel Platt, Assistant Professor of Legal Studies, whose research focuses on the intersection of legal history, legal culture, and the history of capitalism.

  • Prof. Anthony, UIS Students, and other volunteers with the Dilley Pro Bono Project in Dilley, Tx, 2019.

    Inside an Immigrant Detention Center

    “Will he hurt me?” She shrank back in her seat, her eyes filling with tears as she clung to the toddler in her lap.  It was the summer of 2019, and a group of six UIS students and I were at STFRC for a week, volunteering with the Dilley Pro Bono Project. We spent 15-hour days working directly with asylum-seeking women and children, preparing them for their credible fear interview—the first step in the asylum application process—and drafting legal documents.

  • Photo of woman's hands holding dollar bills

    Other People’s Money: Married Women and Indebted Husbands in U.S. Law

    I am currently writing a book that explores the rights of debtors in the United States in the late nineteenth century.  In the chapter I’m currently revising, I focus on these themes as they related to married women. Under the common law of marriage, married women had no independent legal personality. All of this meant that wives were largely dependent on their husbands’ financial fortunes.

  • The Status of Black Lives Matter: A shift in Policy, Culture, Justice, and Reform - A video presentation.  Images of four preserters.

    The Status of Black Lives Matter: A Shift in Policy, Culture, Justice, and Reform

    As part of Black History Month, this panel discussion by African-American faculty and staff from the University of Illinois at Springfield, Tessica C. Dooley J.D., Assistant Professor in Legal Studies, Dr. Ty Price Dooley, Associate Professor in Public Administration, Dr. Tiffani Saunders, Lecturer in Sociology/Anthropology and African American Studies, and Justin J. Rose, Director of Diversity and Inclusion, will encourage students and the general audience to learn about societal issues including policing, healthcare, housing, and other economic disparities in the African American community, in twenty-first century America, that inform and led to the formation and evolution of the Black Lives Matter Movement.  

  • U.S. Supreme Court

    What Has Health Got to Do with It?

    Supreme Court Determines Fate of the Affordable Care Act During a Pandemic.  Health policy has absolutely nothing to do with the United States Supreme Court’s pending decision in California v. Texas, according to newly confirmed Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett

  • Image of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on sign in Springfield

    The Great Dissenters: “Writing not for today but for tomorrow”

    In the last decade of her life, Justice Ginsburg was revered as a genuine American cultural icon.  Her life serves as a testimony of the importance to fight for the equal citizenship stature of men and women in the U.S.

  • A Place to Call Home – But Not For Everyone

    Dismantling systemic racism must include addressing the denial of rentals to voucher holders. The seemingly neutral policy of refusing to accept Housing Choice Vouchers (commonly known as Section 8), often disproportionately affects minorities.