The project is directed by Prof. Eric Janus, former President and Dean of the law school, who has written extensively and participated in extensive litigation on this subject. The project has several goals:
- Outreach and networking: We will seek to establish connections with lawyers, advocates, and academics who are involved with or knowledgeable about litigation about sex offender regulation laws, as well as academics in the social sciences who are involved with research and writing on the efficacy of these laws.
- Collection: We will establish a case tracking system for cases in the United States (and possibly other jurisdictions) dealing with sex offender policy and laws. The project will actively identify and then track cases in state and federal courts that implicate important sex offender-related laws including those that deal with civil commitment, registries, zoning restrictions, ex post facto issues, and privacy issues. We will collect pleadings, briefs, discovery information, and court decisions. Scope: we will seek out all currently pending and recently decided (within the past two years) lawsuits raising constitutional or other systemic (e.g., pre-emption) challenges to sex offender regulation laws.
- Dissemination: We will establish means for making the collected information available to attorneys and advocates on a timely and accessible basis.
- Capacity and strategy development. We will develop and strengthen a national capacity and strategy for effective litigation approaches to redirecting sexual violence policy in the United States. We will identify certain cases to support via communications work, amicus briefs, or direct support to lawyers on the case. We will seek litigation strategies and capacity that integrate the social science findings on the efficacy and consequences of these policies.