Law Day

Vincent D. Rougeau, a nationally respected expert in legal education and Catholic social thought, became the 33rd president of the College of the Holy Cross in July 2021. Rougeau previously served as dean of the Boston College Law School and the inaugural director of the Boston College Forum on Racial Justice in America. Prior to his role at Boston College, Rougeau was a tenured professor of law at Notre Dame Law School, and served as their associate dean for Academic Affairs from 1999–2002.

Vince’s early focus at Holy Cross has been on preparing for campus capital improvements; supporting the College’s workforce and strengthening its organizational structure; and launching, in collaboration with the Board of Trustees and the Speaker of the Faculty, a review of shared governance. In addition, the College is continuing strategic planning efforts that began with the identification of strategic themes and are now taking shape in future-focused strategies.

Vince has written extensively on law and religion with a particular focus on Catholic social teaching and the law. His book Christians in the American Empire: Faith and Citizenship in the New World Order was released by Oxford University Press in 2008. His research considers the relationships among religious identity, citizenship, and membership in highly mobile and increasingly multicultural democratic societies. He served as senior fellow at the Centre for Theology and Community (CTC) in London, where he researched broad-based community organizing, immigration, and citizenship in the U.K. as part of the Just Communities Project.

He is past president of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) and previously served on the Council of the Boston Bar Association. He currently serves on the boards of Newton-Wellesley Hospital and Commonwealth Magazine.

Vince received his AB magna cum laude from Brown University in 1985 and his JD from Harvard Law School in 1988, where he served as articles editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal. He and his wife, Robin Kornegay-Rougeau, MD, have three sons, Christian, Alexander, and Vincent (V.J.).

Vera Sung is a director on the board of Abacus Federal Savings Bank and an attorney at Sung & Co., P.C. Prior to that, she served as an assistant district attorney at the Kings County District Attorney’s Office from 1990 to 1993. She is a member of Manhattan Community Board 1 and is on the board of CITYarts. She also serves as a trustee of the Isaac H. Tuttle Fund and is a founding member of the Brooklyn Bridge South Neighborhood Association. Vera has a JD from Boston College and a BA from Wellesley College. 

Chanterelle Sung is an executive assistant district attorney and chief of strategic operations at the New York County District Attorney’s Office, where she previously served as an assistant district attorney in the Trial Division from 2004 to 2011. Her work focuses on implementing the office’s goals and priorities by identifying solutions, measuring outcomes, and aligning resources and functions for efficient and effective programmatic operations. As part of her role, Chanterelle oversees the expansion of the Office’s Hate Crimes Unit and AAPI community engagement initiatives. From 2015 to 2021, Chanterelle was a director of compliance for governance and advocacy at Pfizer and director of strategic planning and operations for Pfizer’s Global Security team. Prior to that, Chanterelle served as director of monitoring and compliance for the New York State Governor's Office of Storm Recovery and as an inspector general for the New York City Department of Investigation. Chanterelle has a JD from Boston College Law School and an AB from Princeton University.

Andrés Torres is an assistant district attorney at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. He is currently assigned to the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor where he is co-chief of the Special Investigations Bureau. Throughout his career, Mr. Torres has successfully prosecuted multiple transnational drug trafficking and money laundering organizations and New York City-based criminal networks. Among other successful cases, he led an investigation that dismantled a global heroin and cocaine smuggling operation onboard the Spanish Navy’s officer training vessel, the Juan Sebastián Elcano. In recognition of his professional achievements, the New York City Bar Association awarded him the Thomas E. Dewey Medal in 2019. Before becoming an attorney, Mr. Torres studied Colombian history and politics as a Fulbright Scholar at the Universidad Javeriana and the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá. Upon completion of his fellowship, he worked five years for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Bogotá, Colombia, where he helped implement the U.S. Government’s policy known as “Plan Colombia.” Mr. Torres received his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University and was awarded the Father Robert Drinan, S.J. Scholarship at Boston College Law School.

Jay Blitzman, formerly served as the First Justice of the Middlesex Division of the Massachusetts Juvenile Court. Jay consults on juvenile and criminal justice issues, mentors new attorneys, and is serving as the interim Executive Director of Massachusetts Advocates for Children. Prior to his judicial appointment he was a founder and the first director of the Roxbury Youth Advocacy Project, a community based, interdisciplinary public defender’s office which became the template for the creation of the statewide Youth Advocacy Division. Jay was also a co-founder and board member of Massachusetts Citizens for Juvenile Justice (CfJJ), and Our RJ, a community based juvenile justice restorative justice program. Jay serves on the advisory boards of CfJJ, UTEC (a late teen and emerging adult program based in Lowell), and also works with More Than Words (MTW), as a Massachusetts Access To Justice Fellow. He was a member of the ABA Youth At Risk Commission, the Boston Bar Association’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline Steering Committee and is the co-chair of Massachusetts Bar Association Juvenile and Child Welfare Section. Jay also chaired the Massachusetts Juvenile Court Best Dispositional and Sentencing Practices Committee and currently serves on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Standing Committee on Eyewitness Identification. Jay teaches juvenile law at Northeastern University School of Law, Deconstructing The Cradle to Prison Pipeline at Boston College, and trial advocacy at Harvard Law School. Jay is also on the faculty of the Center for Law Brain and Behavior (CLBB- M.G.H. and Harvard Medical School), focusing on issues related to adolescents and late teens,  and is  affiliate of Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research. Jay was the 2019 ABA Livingston Hall Juvenile Justice Award. The Committee for Public Counsel Services, the Massachusetts public defender agency, presents the Jay D. Blitzman Award for Youth Advocacy at their annual conference. Jay has consulted on law related television shows (Judging Amy and The Trials of Rosie O’Neill) and is a member of Actors’ Equity and the Screen Actors Guild.

 Jay presents at a wide variety of criminal and juvenile justice forums and has published extensively.  Recent articles include: Let’s Follow The Science on Late Teens and Adolescents (ABA Criminal Justice, October 2022), Shutting Down The School to Prison Pipeline (ABA Human Rights, Civil Rights and Social Justice Oct. 2021), Justice for Some: A Tale of Two Americas (Civic Research Institute Juvenile Justice Update, July 2020) Deconstructing The School-to-Prison Pipeline (Boston Bar Journal, Oct. 2018);  Gault’s Promise Revisited (Juvenile & Family Law Journal, July 2018);  The State of Juvenile Justice 2018 (ABA Criminal Justice, July 2018); The State of Juvenile Justice 2018, 2019,2020,2021,2022  (ABA Criminal Justice).  

Lauren Jacobs, JD’19, is a staff attorney in the Boston College Innocence Program (BCIP). BCIP is a clinical legal program where staff, faculty, and law students represent individuals wrongly convicted in Massachusetts for crimes they did not commit and collaborate with public, private, and nonprofit partners in litigation and public policy reforms. Lauren previously served as a Clinical Legal Fellow, a two-year fellowship with BCIP supported by a U.S. Department of Justice Grant for Upholding the Rule of Law and Preventing Wrongful Convictions. Prior to joining the BCIP staff, Lauren served for one year as a Legal Fellow at the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) Innocence Program, a specialized unit within CPCS which aims to identify and litigate meritorious post-conviction claims of innocence.

Lauren has worked on multiple innocence cases, assisting in the investigation and litigation, which have resulted in the release of clients from wrongful imprisonment and their exonerations. Lauren first discovered her passion for representing the wrongly convicted in 2017, when she joined the BC Innocence Clinic as a law student. At that time, Lauren began representing her first client, and her investigation of his case led to exculpatory evidence that helped secure his release from prison after 19 years of wrongful incarceration. In 2019, in recognition of her work with BCIP, Lauren was awarded the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s Adams Pro Bono Publico Student Award. Lauren is motivated by a desire to seek justice for those who have been wronged by our criminal legal system and to pursue remedies that can prevent these massive injustices from occurring in the future.