Summary

Today, the richest 0.1 percent of Americans holds 22 percent of the country's wealth — the same share held by the bottom 90 percent of the population. As has become a common refrain, we are living in a new Gilded Age.

On October 16-17, 2015, the Yale American Constitution Society will host a national conference to discuss how law shapes and is shaped by extreme economic inequality. Our speakers will discuss the ways that concentrated economic power imperils democracy and constitutional ideals, the trends in jurisprudence and policy that have gotten us here, and how these same tools might be used to redress the current crisis. Our speakers — who include prominent scholars, policymakers, litigators, activists, and journalists — will engage these questions from different perspectives, aiming to identify the jurisprudence and legal methods driving inequality across various areas of law.

Please feel free to get in touch with any questions, at inequality.yls@yale.edu. We hope to see you there!