|
John C. Brittain
John C. Brittain, a native of Norwalk, Connecticut, is a
product of its public schools. Brittain earned his B.A.
and J.D degrees from Howard University in 1966 and 1969,
respectively. Upon graduation, he moved to Mississippi to
practice civil rights law. He then traveled to the Far West
Coast to create his own small law firm with a partner in
San Francisco. After eight years of civil rights and private
law practice experience, he heeded the call to teach law,
and joined the faculty at the University of Connecticut
Law School. He remained in Hartford on the UConn Law School
faculty for two decades while developing a special expertise
in international and domestic human rights as a public interest
advocate and author of published articles. He regularly
taught civil and political rights, torts, administrative
law and civil procedure. In addition, he coordinated the
Business Law Research Project, and frequently served as
faculty advisor for the Latino and Black Law Student Associations.
In August of 1999, Brittain accepted the position as Dean
of Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University
in Houston, Texas. He quickly recognized the tremendous
opportunity to help shape the future of this proud historically
Black law school. After three years as the head of one of
the most diverse law schools in the nation that trains a
significant number of African American and Latino lawyers,
Brittain resigned as dean in May 2002. He returned to his
passion for teaching and scholarship as a tenured member
of the faculty at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law. During
his three-year tenure, Brittain restored stability after
four and a half years of interim deans, was instrumental
in increasing the admissions profile of entering students
and raised nearly three-quarters of a million dollars for
educational programs.
He joined the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
as the chief counsel and deputy director in March 2005 from
a background of thirty-five years in the legal profession
and the past twenty-eight years in legal education with
substantial experience in public interest litigation. In
a sense, he has come full circle because he worked for the
Lawyers Committee litigation office in Jackson, Mississippi
from 1971-73.
Brittain has devoted much of his time to public service
in numerous leadership roles; his most notable, being that
of President of the National Lawyers Guild from (1991-93).
Currently, he is a member of the National Board of the American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In the past, he has been an
active leader as: a Senior Fellow in the American Leadership
Forum (ALF); member of the Teach for America – Houston
Advisory Board (TFA); legal counsel to the Connecticut Conference
of the NAACP; Chairperson of the Hartford Charter Revision
Commission; Chairperson of the Hartford Human Rights Commission;
Chairperson of the ACLU Academic Freedom Committee, and
a long time member of the National Conference of Black Lawyers
and the National Bar Association. Further, Brittain was
member of the Board of Directors of the Hartford Foundation
for Public Giving, the eighth largest community foundation,
which had $550 million in assets, and it distributed nearly
$26 million in grants for charitable purposes in 1999.
Brittain is one of the lawyers who filed the landmark Sheff
v. O’Neill school desegregation case in 1989. This
lawsuit challenged the racial, economic, and educational
segregation between Hartford and the surrounding school
districts as a denial of a student’s fundamental right
to an equal education under the Connecticut Constitution.
The Connecticut Supreme Court issued a precedent setting
ruling in July 1996. A majority of justices found that the
extreme racial and ethnic isolation of African American
and Latino students denied the schoolchildren in Hartford
their fundamental right to an equal educational opportunity.
Further, this court became the only one to hold the State
responsible for de facto segregation. In declaring the district
boundary lines that separate urban and suburban school districts
unconstitutional, the court placed an affirmative obligation
on the legislature and governor to initially remedy the
problem.
Shortly after the coup d’etat in Haiti in 1991, Brittain
accompanied former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark on
a visit to the island nation to investigate human rights
conditions. He continues to frequently speak about human
rights and democracy throughout the world. In fact, Brittain
has investigated conditions in Northern Ireland, Israel
and the Palestine Territories, Nicaragua, Cuba, Puerto Rico,
Mexico and Spain.
In 1993, the NAACP awarded Professor Brittain the coveted
William Robert Ming Advocacy Award for legal service to
the NAACP without a fee. The Ming award was named in honor
of a former African American law professor at the University
of Chicago and a brilliant civil rights lawyer. Further
the Texas Bar Association awarded Brittain and a fellow
faculty colleague the Gavel Award 2004 for outstanding service
to the community in their weekly radio newsmagazine show
entitled, “That’s The Law,” broadcast on
KSTU 90.0 FM radio, an NPR affiliate.
Brittain and his wife, Sondra, have been married for thirty-five
years, and they have two adult children, Karim and Kensei.
Brittain has been a vegetarian for twenty-seven years and
a competitive runner and tennis player. He enjoys reading
books and sailing.
top
back
to Staff
|
