Joyce Vance: Giving Up is Unforgivable

Is this the beginning of a countermovement to Project 2025?

Join us as legal expert Joyce Vance diagnoses our country’s democratic ills and offers a prescription of citizen action as a cure. Vance’s message is a call to action, based on placing our current crisis in historical context and coming up with a vision for what to do next. Despite what she says has been a continued erosion of democratic norms, she remains optimistic and hopeful, even acknowledging the daunting challenges ahead. She’ll explain the legal context, the political history, and the practical reasons behind the rule of law and why it still matters. And she’ll share things you can do—big and small—to right the balance.

Because, as she writes in her Substack columns, we’re all in this together.

Vance is a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama; she is an MSNBC legal analyst, a distinguished visiting lecturer in law at the University of Alabama School of Law, and the co-host of the “#SistersInLaw” and “Café’s Insider” podcasts. October 21, 2025 sees the publication of her first book, Giving Up Is Unforgivable: A Manual for Keeping a Democracy.

October 28, 2025

Vance photo by Amy P Photography; courtesy the speaker.

Speakers

Joyce Vance
Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law, University of Alabama Law School, Author, "Civil Discourse" Substack; Co Host, "#SistersInLaw" and "Café’s Insider" podcasts; Author, Giving Up Is Unforgivable: A Manual for Keeping a Democracy

In Conversation with Steven Saum
Executive Director of Strategic Communications and Content, Saint Mary’s College


Commonwealth Club World Affairs is a public forum. Any views expressed in our programs are those of the speakers and not of Commonwealth Club World Affairs.