Professors Ariel Jurow Kleiman and Clare Pastore hosted the 2026 Poverty Law Conference: Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Community in a Time of Attacks on the Vulnerable on February 20-21, 2026, at USC.
The panels were as follows:
- The Rent is Too Damn High: Topics in Housing Affordability
- Courts, Rights & Access to Justice
- Healthcare Under Assault
- Local Public Finance, Local Power
- Work, Labor & Economic Margins
- The Collateral Consequences of Vulnerability in the Criminal System
- Taxes, Estate Planning & Economic Dignity
- Invisible People, Invisible Data, and Vulnerability
- Teaching Innovative Immigration Advocacy in Tumultuous Times
- Supporting Women and Children
- Creative Poverty Lawyering
- Building, Bolstering, and Dismantling the Safety Net
- Can’t Buy Me Justice: The Real Cost of Financial Sanctions
- Teaching about Homelessness
- Gaps and Disparities in Safety Net Design
- Street Medicine & the Law: Challenges & Opportunities
- Scholarly Approaches to Understanding Poverty and Inequality
Thank you to Mira Dalpe and Angela Houff for their work making the conference possible.



