Bill Quigley is a law professor and Director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans. Bill has been an active public interest lawyer since 1977. Bill has served as counsel with a wide range of public interest organizations on issues including Katrina social justice issues, public housing, voting rights, death penalty, living wage, civil liberties, educational reform, constitutional rights and civil disobedience. Bill has litigated numerous cases with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the Advancement Project, and with the ACLU of Louisiana, for which he served as General Counsel for over 15 years.
Bill teaches in the Law Clinic and teaches courses in Law and Poverty and Catholic Social Teaching and Law. His research and writing has focused on living wage, the right to a job, legal services, community organizing as part of effective lawyering, civil disobedience, high stakes testing, international human rights, revolutionary lawyering and a continuing history of how the laws have regulated the poor since colonial times. He has served as an advisor on human and civil rights to Human Rights Watch USA, Amnesty International USA, and served as the Chair of the Louisiana Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights. Bill received the 2006 Camille Gravel Civil Pro Bono Award from the Federal Bar Association New Orleans Chapter. Bill received the 2006 Stanford Law School National Public Service Award and the 2006 National Lawyers Guild Ernie Goodman award. He has also been an active volunteer lawyer with School of the Americas Watch and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.
Bill is the author of Ending Poverty As We Know It: Guaranteeing A Right to A Job At A Living Wage (Temple University Press, 2003). In 2003, he was named the Pope Paul VI National Teacher of Peace by Pax Christi USA and is the recipient of the 2004 SALT Teaching Award presented by the Society of American Law Teachers.
MLK Injustice Index 2013: Racism, Materialism and Militarism in the US
“We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values…when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1967 While the US celebrates the ...
Remember All the Children, Mr. President
Remember the 20 children who died in Newton Connecticut. Remember the 35 children who died in Gaza this month from Israeli bombardments. Remember the 168 children who have been killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan since 2006. Remember the 231 children killed in Afghanistan in the first 6 months ...
Neither Candidate: Fifteen Issues this Election is Not About
Neither candidate is interested in stopping the use of the death penalty for federal or state crimes. Neither candidate is interested in eliminating or reducing the 5,113 US nuclear warheads. Neither candidate is campaigning to close Guantanamo prison. Neither candidate has called for arresting and prosecuting high ranking people on ...
Katrina Pain Index 2012: 7 Years After
1 Rank of New Orleans in fastest growing US cities between 2010 and 2011. Source: Census Bureau. 1 Rank of New Orleans, Louisiana in world prison rate. Louisiana imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of the other 50 states. Louisiana rate is five times higher than Iran, ...
Five Reasons Drone Assassinations Are Illegal
US civilian and military employees regularly target and fire lethal unmanned drone guided missiles at people across the world. Thousands of people have been assassinated. Hundreds of those killed were civilians. Some of those killed were rescuers and mourners. These killings would be criminal acts if they occurred inside the ...
Bradley Manning, Solitary Confinement and Occupy 4 Prisoners
Today US Army Private Bradley Manning is to be formally charged with numerous crimes at Fort Meade, Maryland. Manning, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by members of the Icelandic Parliament, is charged with releasing hundreds of thousands of documents exposing secrets of the US government to the ...
Social Justice Quiz 2012: Thirteen Questions
Written with Sam SchmittQuestion One. The combined pay of the 299 highest paid CEOs in the US is enough to support how many median salary jobs? 45,000? 83,000? 102,325? Two. The median net worth of black households in the US is $2,200. What is the median net worth of white ...
Ten Steps for Radical Revolution in the US
“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.” --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1967 One. Human rights must be taken absolutely seriously. Every single person is entitled to dignity and ...
“Our nation, so richly endowed with natural resources and with a capable and industrious population, should be able to devise ways and means of insuring to all our able-bodied men and women, a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1937 Millions of people in the ...
Haiti: Seven Places Where the Earthquake Money Did and Did Not Go
Haiti, a close neighbor of the US with over nine million people, was devastated by earthquake on January 12, 2010. Hundreds of thousands were killed and many more wounded. The UN estimated international donors gave Haiti over $1.6 billion in relief aid since the earthquake (about $155 per Haitian) and ...
Challenging the Old Boys Network in the Vatican
We never thought it would end up on a hard wooden bench inside a police station in Piazza Cavour. Maryknoll priest Fr. Roy Bourgeois, young Erin Saiz Hannah of Women’s Ordination Conference in the US and Miriam Duignan from Womenpriests.org from the UK were sitting there when my wife and ...
Katrina Pain Index 2011: Race, Gender, Poverty
Written by Bill Quigley and Davida Finger Six years ago, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast. The impact of Katrina and government bungling continue to inflict major pain on the people left behind. It is impossible to understand what happened and what still remains without considering race, gender, and poverty. ...
Displaced Women Demand Justice in Port au Prince.
By Bill Quigley and Jocelyn Brooks. Bill teaches at Loyola University New Orleans and is Associate Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). Jocelyn is an Ella Baker associate at CCR working at Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) in Port au Prince. If you want to join the campaign ...
Haiti Facts Seventeen Months after Earthquake
Haiti experienced a major earthquake January 12, 2010. Tens of thousands died, estimates range from 65,000 to 230,000 people killed. About 2 million more people were displaced. Haiti was already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with a per capita income of about $2 a day. Seventeen months later, ...
Over Two Thousand Six Hundred Activists Arrested in US Protests
Since President Obama was inaugurated, there have been over two thousand six hundred arrests of activists protesting in the US. Research shows over 670 people have been arrested in protests inside the US already in 2011, over 1290 were arrested in 2010, and 665 arrested in 2009. These figures are ...
Robin Hood in Reverse in US: Seven Examples
The rich have been getting richer and the poor and middle have been getting poorer in the US recently. Here are seven examples that show how the US is going through Robin Hood in Reverse.Between 1948 and 1979, the richest 10 percent of families in the US claimed 33 percent ...
Two Grandmothers, Two Priests and a Nun go onto a Nuclear Base: Prison for Peacemakers in Tacoma WA
Two grandmothers, two priests and a nun were sentenced in federal court in Tacoma, WA Monday March 28, 2011, for confronting hundreds of US nuclear weapons stockpiled for use by the deadly Trident submarines. Sentenced were: Sr. Anne Montgomery, 83, a Sacred Heart sister from New York, who was ...
Blind Human Rights Lawyer Beaten and Isolated in Chinese Crackdown
Chen Guangcheng, a blind, 39 year old, self-taught, human rights lawyer in China who was recently released after years in prison has been put in home detention, isolated and beaten by authorities. Winner of numerous human rights awards, Mr. Chen was imprisoned for investigating violence and forced abortions against families ...
Swiss Miss Bush – GWB Ducks Geneva Criminal Torture Charges
Justice for George W’s torture violations jumped much closer this weekend. Ex-President George W Bush was supposed to fly to Switzerland to speak in Geneva February 15. But his speech was cancelled over the weekend because of concerns about protests and efforts by human rights organizations asking Swiss prosecutors to ...
Honduras Human Rights Abuses Worse One Year After President Lobo Took Office
By Bill Quigley and Pam Spees. Bill is Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. Pam is a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights and is currently on a fact-finding mission in Honduras. In recent remarks on ...
Guns and Terrorism: Two Unasked Question in Tucson Mass Murder
Question: How does a mentally unstable man who was kicked out of school and had run-ins with the law buy an assault weapon? The weapon reportedly used in the mass murders in Tucson was an assault weapon - a Glock 19, semi-automatic pistol, with an extended magazine. That weapon was ...
Eight Homeless Youth Die in New Orleans Fire – What Does It Say About US?
Eight young people, who the Fire Department said were “trying to stay warm,” perished in a raging fire during the night in New Orleans. The young people were squatting in an abandoned wood framed tin walled warehouse in a Ninth Ward neighborhood bordering a large train yard. The young people ...
By Bill Quigley and Vince Warren, Executive Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). The right to liberty is one of the foundation rights of a free people. The idea that any US President can bypass Congress and bypass the Courts by issuing an Executive Order setting up a ...
Cover-ups, Coups, and Drones – A Sampler of What Wikileaks Reveals about the US
Human rights advocates have significant new sources of information to hold the United States accountable. The transparency, which Wikileaks has brought about, unveils many cover-ups of injustices in US relations with Honduras, Spain, Thailand, UK and Yemen over issues of torture at Guantanamo, civilian casualties from drones, and the war ...
Why Wikileaks Is Good for Democracy
“Information is the currency of democracy.” Thomas Jefferson. Since 9-11, the US government, through Presidents Bush and Obama, has increasingly told the US public that “state secrets” will not be shared with citizens. Candidate Obama pledged to reduce the use of state secrets, but President Obama continued the Bush tradition. ...
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January 20th, 2013
MLK Injustice Index 2013: Racism, Materialism and Militarism in the US
“We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values…when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, ...
December 17th, 2012
Remember All the Children, Mr. President
Remember the 20 children who died in Newton Connecticut. Remember the 35 children who died in Gaza this month from Israeli bombardments. Remember the 168 ...
September 24th, 2012
Neither Candidate: Fifteen Issues this Election is Not About
Neither candidate is interested in stopping the use of the death penalty for federal or state crimes. Neither candidate is interested in eliminating or reducing ...
August 25th, 2012
Katrina Pain Index 2012: 7 Years After
1 Rank of New Orleans in fastest growing US cities between 2010 and 2011. Source: Census Bureau. 1 Rank of New Orleans, Louisiana in world ...
May 15th, 2012
Five Reasons Drone Assassinations Are Illegal
US civilian and military employees regularly target and fire lethal unmanned drone guided missiles at people across the world. Thousands of people have been assassinated. ...
February 23rd, 2012
Bradley Manning, Solitary Confinement and Occupy 4 Prisoners
Today US Army Private Bradley Manning is to be formally charged with numerous crimes at Fort Meade, Maryland. Manning, who was nominated for the Nobel ...
January 30th, 2012
Social Justice Quiz 2012: Thirteen Questions
Written with Sam SchmittQuestion One. The combined pay of the 299 highest paid CEOs in the US is enough to support how many median salary ...
January 9th, 2011
Guns and Terrorism: Two Unasked Question in Tucson Mass Murder
Question: How does a mentally unstable man who was kicked out of school and had run-ins with the law buy an assault weapon? The weapon ...
January 20th, 2013
MLK Injustice Index 2013: Racism, Materialism and Militarism in the US
“We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values…when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, ...
September 7th, 2010
The United States of Fear – Ten Examples
Since September 11, 2001, fear has been the main engine of change in the United States. Who would have thought that across the US, where ...
May 24th, 2011
Over Two Thousand Six Hundred Activists Arrested in US Protests
Since President Obama was inaugurated, there have been over two thousand six hundred arrests of activists protesting in the US. Research shows over 670 people ...
October 25th, 2010
The rich and their paid false prophets are doing a bang up job deceiving the poor and middle class. They have convinced many that an ...
January 20th, 2012
“Our nation, so richly endowed with natural resources and with a capable and industrious population, should be able to devise ways and means of insuring ...
April 7th, 2011
Robin Hood in Reverse in US: Seven Examples
The rich have been getting richer and the poor and middle have been getting poorer in the US recently. Here are seven examples that show ...
'The East'
Why have you started a comedy festival in northern Michigan in the middle of winter?
Because if you were here in the dead of winter in the middle of nowhere (which is actually somewhere to us), you'd need a few laughs too ... Continue Reading
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Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow Show, 2/27/12
