Sparer Symposium

At the heart of TPIC’s public interest program is the annual Sparer Symposium which is planned by the Toll Public Interest Scholars each year. The Sparer Symposium commemorates the life and work of the late Edward V. Sparer, Professor of Law and Social Policy. The Symposium brings together legal academics, practitioners, community members, and activists/organizers to provide insight into the dynamic relationship between scholarship and practice in the area of poverty law, merging theory and practice.

Focusing in a Students and alumni attend panels and get to hear from speakers, delving deeply into important issues of our time.

Edward V. Sparer was a professor at the law school from 1969 until his death in 1983. Sparer’s work combined a passionate concern about the poor with intellectual rigor and a profound conviction that the problems of poverty are solvable.

In 1983, he founded Mobilization for Youth Services, the first neighborhood legal services program and then the Columbia Center on Social Welfare and Policy and Law, the first national support center for legal services. In 1984, the first Sparer Symposium was organized.

Over the years, the Symposium has covered various themes. Each year the theme is selected by our Toll Public Interest Scholars in light of what are the important issues of the day. Past themes have included: “Reimagining Freedom: Abolition as a Practice”, “Philly Rising: Organizing and Lawyering for Racial and Economic Justice”, “Buying Justice: How Big Money Defines Our Rights and Solutions that Level the Playing Field”, and “Gender and Social Inequality: Why Women’s Rights Still Matter”.