Salmah Y. Rizvi, Executive Director, ACLU of Hawai‘i

Ms. Rizvi is the Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaiʻi. An appellate litigator, community organizer, and crisis manager, Ms. Rizvi works to build lasting peace that safeguards civil rights by seeking truth, justice, and healing. Rizvi is a former Associate of Ropes & Gray LLP and Clerk for Judge Theodore A. McKee of the U.S.

Court of Appeals and Judge J. Michael Seabright of the U.S. District Court of Hawai‘i. Ms. Rizvi founded the American Muslim Bar Association and was a Board Director for Witness to Mass Incarceration. She has also provided legal support to the ACLU of Maryland, NYCLU, and the U.S. Department of Justice. Ms. Rizvi received her J.D. from NYU School of Law, M.S. from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, and B.A. from Johns Hopkins University. She is a Soros Fellow, Vanderbilt Medalist, and Truman Scholar.

Maria Burnett, Senior Legal Coordinator, Project Expedite Justice

Maria Burnett is currently Senior Legal Coordinator at Project Expedite Justice (PEJ). Previously, she served at Human Rights Watch for a decade, where she conducted research and advocacy on human rights issues across East and Central Africa, including Uganda, Somalia, and Kenya. She has also been a non-resident Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). She received her J.D. from Yale Law School and her BA from Princeton University.

Justice Sabrina McKenna, Hawaiʻi Supreme Court

Sabrina McKenna has served on the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court since 2011, becoming the first openly LGBTQ Asian American to serve on a state court of last resort. She is a graduate of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM) and UHM’s William S. Richardson School of Law (WSRSL) and also has an LLM from Duke Law. She was a civil litigator, general counsel to a Japan-based international business organization, and a WSRSL assistant professor before her 1993 appointment as a Hawaiʻi state trial court judge. As a trial judge, she served on the District, Circuit, and Family Courts, and she also served as Senior Judge of the First Circuit Family Court. From October 2025 to May 2026, she was Acting Chief Justice of the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court.

Throughout her career, she has promoted social justice and access to justice issues.
Eric L. Muller, Law Professor, UNC Chapel Hill Eric L. Muller, Dan K. Moore Distinguished professor in Jurisprudence and Ethics at UNC Chapel Hill. He is an award-winning teacher and internationally recognized expert on the removal and imprisonment of people of Japanese ancestry in the United States from 1942 to 1946. He has published four books on the incarceration of Japanese Americans: “Lawyer, Jailer, Ally, Foe: Complicity and Conscience in America’s World War II Concentration Camps”; “Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II”; “American Inquisition: The Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty in World War II”; and “Free to Die for their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II.” He has also published articles on this and other subjects in many academic journals, including the Yale Law Journal, the Harvard Law Review, the Texas Law Review, and the North Carolina Law Review. Most recently, he submitted an Amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court case, Trump v. Barbara, in the United States Supreme Court, No. 25-365. He received his JD from Yale Law School and his BA from Brown University.

Elizabeth A. Strance, Judge (Ret.)

Judge Elizabeth A. “Betsy” Strance (Ret.) has extensive legal experience across civil, criminal, and public-sector law. She graduated from Willamette University and Northwestern School of Law of Lewis and Clark College. Her experience has included private practice attorney, Per Diem Judge, Hawai’i Third Circuit District and Family Courts, Circuit Court Judge, Hawai’i Third Circuit, and Corporation Counsel for the County of Hawai’i. Since 2025, Ms. Strance’s work has focused on alternative dispute resolution work and projects involving civics education and improving civil discourse.

Cynthia Tai, Executive Director, Project Expedite Justice (PEJ)

Cynthia founded PEJ in 2016 to expand access to justice for victims of atrocity crimes in fragile and failed democracies. Under her leadership, PEJ has partnered with more than 140 organizations worldwide, trained over 1,000 justice actors, documented more than 12,000 pieces of evidence, supported survivor-centered documentation and strategic litigation to advance accountability and the rule of law. She has over 3 decades of experience in both domestic and international strategic litigation covering domestic courts, regional mechanisms, and international tribunals. She has also served domestically as a deputy prosecutor for the County of Hawai’i and as a per diem judge for the District Court of the Third Circuit. In recognition of her lifelong commitment to justice and the rule of law, she was selected in 2026 by the Hawaiʻi Women Lawyers non-profit as the recipient of its Outstanding Women Lawyer Award. MODERATORS

5:00 PM Reception and Sign In
5:30 PM Welcome: Cynthia Tai
5:45 PM Justice Sabrina McKenna What is the Rule of Law and How Do We Preserve It?
6:00 PM Professor Eric Muller Historical Insight from WWII Japanese Internment and Birthright Citizenship
6:15 PM Salmah Rizvi International Authoritarianism and Its Tool: Immigration Enforcement
6:30 PM Maria Burnett Shrinking Civil Liberties: Parallels and Concerns 6:45 PM Break
6:50 PM Panel Discussion
7:30 PM Closing: Elizabeth Strance
7:35 PM Refreshments