UPDATE: Loyola Chicago will  be hosting the 2012 Norman Amaker Public Interest Retreat on February 24-26, 2012, and students there have already set the theme: "Breaking Barriers and Building Bridges: Public Interest Initiatives for a Better Tomorrow"  inspired by the quote....

“The legal system can force open doors and sometimes even knock down walls. But it cannot build bridges. That job belongs to you and me.”
 - Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall Speech at the National Constitution Center, 1992

The 2012 Amaker Program is now available.  Download the PDF.
 

February 18-20, 2011:  SALT is proud that after several years in hiatus the Norman Amaker Public Interest Retreat, located in the midwest, relocated from the University of Indiana, Indianapolis’ Branford Woods Center to Loyola-Chicago’s Resurrection Retreat Center, just outside of Chicago.  Under the able guidance of SALT member Professor Emily Benfer, herself an Amaker alumna, the program for the February 18-20 Retreat was an extraordinary success.  The theme is “Building Public Interest Leaders to Overcome Social Injustice.”  READ THE PROGRAM.   

Read Drew McCormick's account of this weekend's activities.  Drew is 3L, Loyola University Chicago School of Law, Beazley Institute for Health Law & Policy – Health Law Fellow.

Read Sarah Pierce, 2L, Iowa's blog.

ABOUT THE NORMAN AMAKER RETREAT: Named in honor of Norman Amaker, a beloved Indiana law professor who dedicated his life to civil rights and racial justice, the inaugural Amaker Retreat, held in March 2002, was organized around the theme “Ground Zero is Everywhere There is Poverty: Ensuring Rights, Liberties & Opportunities In the Current Anti-Terrorist Climate.”

The Amaker Retreat offers students, faculty, and practitioners from the Midwest an opportunity to gather together to examine public interest issues.



Like the Cover Retreat, the purpose of the Amaker Retreat is to offer public-interest minded law school students an opportunity to break the isolation by meeting and networking with other students from around the country. Not only does this provide students with a network while in school, it provides the foundation for a professional network to support their public interest ambitions later.
 
Students also get to interact with lawyers, legal academics, and other professionals who can offer guidance and act as role models for the variety of ways in which one can serve the public interest. By putting together students, faculty, and practitioners, the Retreat offers a chance to examine legal education to assure that what occurs in the classroom prepares students for a career in public interest law.

Lastly, the Retreat can spawn creative ways to approach using law as an instrument for social change.

The themes of past Amaker Retreats include:

2003 “Building Community: Finding Support and Resources for Social Change”
2004 “Access to Justice”
2005 “Human Rights in the 21st Century.”
2006 “Injustice and the Impoverished”
2007 “Holistic Justice”
2008 "Recommitment to Social Change: Where You Were, Where You Are, Where You are Going"

2011 "Building Public Interest Leaders to Overcome Social Injustice"  Read more about this year's program.

For fuller descriptions of each Amaker Retreat, go to the Equalizer portion of the website, where annual reports on each public interest retreat are published.

The Amaker Retreat is currently being relocated.  Check this page for updates on location and dates for the next Amaker Retreat.