Since our founding by Professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr. in 2005, the Houston Institute has regularly authored and filed both amicus and direct representation briefs on behalf of the indigent accused in state and federal courts across the country, as well as briefs on a range of racial justice issues including voting rights, the death penalty, employment discrimination, and the school to prison pipeline.
The Institute honors and continues the work of one of the great civil rights lawyers of the twentieth century. Litigator, scholar, teacher, and Harvard Law alumnus Charles Hamilton Houston dedicated his life to using the law as a tool to reverse the unjust consequences of racial discrimination.
For fifteen years, our dozens of amicus briefs have used social science research to advance racial justice in public policy and the law, with a particular focus on eliminating practices and policies which compound the excessive policing, criminalization, and punishment that created mass incarceration and promoting investments in the social determinants of health and in public health in communities of color that have been most deeply harmed.
Read Our Briefs