Clinical Law Prof Blog

International Conference on Legal Clinics and Access to Justice - online August 4-6, 2021

Ibmec University law school and Mackenzie Presbyterian University law school in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Universidad del Rosario law school in Bogota, Colombia, and Pepperdine Caruso School of Law in Los Angeles, USA, are co-hosting the online (and free) International Conference on Legal Clinics and Access to Justice on August 4-6, 2021. 

This is a gathering of law school clinics and clinical professors from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other nations to discuss our work, build collaborations, and advance clinical legal education, access to justice, and the rule of law in our communities. 

See the schedule, speakers, panels, and more details in Portuguese, Spanish, and English below. 

The conference has space for 250, so please register here if you're interested in joining these conversations. 

Midwest Clinical Conference (Nov. 5-7, 2021) and CFP for the Drake Law Review Symposium Issue on Clinical Legal Education

Via Prof. Suzan M. Pritchett:

While it was wonderful to see many of you virtually at the AALS Clinical Conference last week, we are excited to extend an invitation to you to attend the Midwest Clinical Conference in person this fall (circumstances permitting) at Drake Law School. We hope you can join us.

The Midwest Clinical Conference will be held on November 5-7, 2021 in Des Moines Iowa.  Additional information regarding the conference theme and a request for proposals will be circulated early this summer.

In addition, 2021 marks the Drake Legal Clinic’s 50^th anniversary. The Drake Law Review is sponsoring a symposium issue celebrating clinical legal education and invites submissions for its Spring 2022 volume. Please see the attached Call for Papers for additional details. Authors will be invited to present at the Midwest Clinicians Conference in November.

Please contact Suzie Pritchett, Director of Clinics and Experiential Education, (suzan.pritchett@drake.edu) with any questions, and we hope to see you in November.

Next GAJE/ IJCLE/ ACCLE Conference: June 16-18, 2021 (Virtual)

GAJE/IJCLE/ACCLE

Global Alliance for Justice Education

International Journal of Clinical Legal Education

Association for Canadian Clinical Legal Education

 

Worldwide Online Conference

Hosted by Northumbria University

 

16^th-18^th June 2021 

"Turning Challenges into Opportunities: Justice Education in Times of Crises"

 
A reminder of the GAJE/IJCLE/ACCLE Worldwide Online Conference which will take place on 16th, 17th and 18th June 2021. The conference is hosted and organized with the technical support of Northumbria University (UK).  
 
Information about the conference is attached and available here: https://gaje.org/Upcoming-Conferences or https://northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/news-events/turning-challenges-into-opportunities. 
 
If you wish to make a proposal (using the new symposia or our usual interactive workshops format), please click here: https://northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/news-events/turning-challenges-into-opportunities/taking-part. 
à Proposal Deadline: 7th May 2021
 
If you wish to register, please click here: https://northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/news-events/turning-challenges-into-opportunities/fees-and-registration 
à Registration Deadline: 21st May 2021
 
The conference will offer – amongst others – the following highlights: 

International Clinicians’ Café: Sharing and Reflecting on Stories of Transformation and Resilience : Susan L. Brooks, Associate Dean and Professor, Drexel University Kline School of Law; Neil Gold, Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor.  This interactive workshop will provide a lively and enjoyable forum for our international clinical community to share and reflect on our stories of transformation. An opportunity to bring along the beverage of your choice and meet clinicians in small groups. By listening deeply to each other’s stories of transformation and resilience we will identify common themes and threads. These will lead us to more tools and strategies for continuing to thrive as we face ongoing conditions of uncertainty.
 
Lightning Talks
The conference will offer rooms for “Lightning Talks”. Here anyone can book a space/time for a maximum 5 minutes presentation in order to give others a quick glimpse at a work in progress in your clinic, or seek out for fellow campaigners to join you in an access to justice project, or share an innovative legal education method etc. It will be the ideal space to share ideas, projects, funny moments and of course to get in contact with other legal educators/justice activists from all over the world. 
 
e-TOT
At this conference, an e-TOT course program including three 90-minute interactive sessions will be held with experienced instructors and facilitators. The titles of these three sessions are:1- Designing a Clinic; 2- Lesson Plans and Interactive methods; 3- Supervision and Student Assessment.
 
Newcomer’s rooms
GAJE and IJCLE conferences have always been important meeting points in order to connect and to get engaged with other justice educators around the world. Albeit online, we are planning to create specific rooms/spaces at the conference, where “newcomers" can connect to each other and to already connected clinicians/educators/justice activists from all over the world.

GET INVOLVED - YOUR SUPPORT FOR THE CONFERENCE: 
- SHARE INFORMATION OF THE CONFERENCE: Please help us spreading the information about the conference around!
- GET INVOLVED: GAJE conferences have always been ideal occasions of GAJE members to get involved. We are still looking for persons who would be available to support the conference planning, in particular linked to the “Conference Program - Stream Coordination”. If you are interested, please send a us a message (email to program@gaje.org)!
- SEEKING OUT FOR CONFERENCE SUPPORT: Inspired by the experiences of the prior successful GAJE conferences, we believe that GAJE conferences - also the upcoming online edition - are ideal occasions to create collaborative opportunities with interested institutions and organizations. Support could include but are not limited to: (1) Undertaking part of the technical costs of holding the Conference online, (2) Supporting the registration fees of some participants, who are otherwise unable to attend, etc. Please contact us, if you have any idea related to potential supporters (email to program@gaje.org).

 

Beyond Recruitment: Inclusion, Equity, and Belonging in Externships - Webinar on March 25th, 2021

The Bay Area Consortium on Externships (BACE) and Southern California Externships (SoCalEx) invite you to a free one-hour CLE program on March 25th for attorneys and judges who supervise our students in field placements. BACE and SoCalEx have identified diversity and inclusion as a critical issue, and have chosen the Inclusion Design Group (IDG) for its expertise in training on these topics. Dr. Erin Conner, IDG’s co-founder, will deliver a keynote to deepen our awareness and understanding about power and privilege and social identity, and how to identify and remove obstacles that keep law students and lawyers from reaching their full potential. Attendees will receive written materials designed to help them identify issues and implement solutions at their organizations.

 

Please feel free to share – we hope to see you there!  

Register: www.tinyurl.com/1tx6mx1v

Explore the event website at https://www.swlaw.edu/CalExWebinar. 

 

CLEA New Clinicians Conference - May 17-20, 2021 - Registration is now open

Via Profs. Danny Schaffzin and Lisa Martin: 

The CLEA New Clinicians Committees is excited to share that registration is now open for the 2021 Virtual New Clinicians Conference!  This year's Conference, which will again be FREE, will take place from Monday, May 17th to Thursday, May 20th.  

 

Like last year's conference, which brought together more than 250 attendees, the 2021 CLEA Virtual New Clinicians Conference will convene over four days.  Each day's program will begin at 11:00 a.m. Eastern and conclude at 1:30 or 2:00 p.m. Eastern.  Our varied conference format will include live and asynchronous webinar programming, concurrent sessions, and facilitated small group discussions.  We also expect to offer some fun networking opportunities, including an evening social event during the week of the conference.

 

Registrants can sign up to participate in all or some webinars and can choose whether to participate in small group discussions.  To build community and maximize the value of small group discussions, we ask participants who register for small groups to plan to join all four scheduled discussions.  To participate in a small group, please register by May 3.

 

To see the full conference schedule and program, and to register, please visit https://www.cleaweb.org/NCC2021/.  

23d Annual Trina Grillo Public Interest and Social Justice Retreat (online March 12 at Pepperdine Caruso)

The Trina Grillo Public Interest and Social Justice Retreat, now in its 23d year, is an annual event for California and Nevada law students, law professors, and public interest attorneys. It's usually a smaller weekend gathering, sponsored by several area law schools and SALT, to learn, develop friendships and mentorship, and to gain new energy for public interest and social justice work. This year, Pepperdine Caruso School of Law is hosting the event online, and the sponsoring schools have eagerly agreed to throw wide the doors and invite law students, profs, and lawyers from around the nation for a single day event on Friday, March 12. 

You can find more information on the program and registration here. 

The 2021 Consortium Schools: 

UC Hastings School of Law
UC Irvine School of Law
Santa Clara University School of Law
Pacific McGeorge School of Law
Pepperdine Caruso School of Law
Southwestern Law School
UCLA School of Law
UC Berkeley School of Law
UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law
University of San Francisco School of Law
USC Gould School of Law

LSU Law Journal for Social Justice & Policy Symposium: Fighting White Supremacy in the 21st Century (March 19)

Via Prof. Clare Ryan: 

The LSU Law Journal for Social Justice & Policy is hosting its inaugural symposium, “Fighting White Supremacy in the 21^st Century,” on Friday, March 19, 2021 (3-5 PM CST). The panel will consist of five distinguished legal scholars. 

The virtual symposium is free and open to the public. To register – and learn more about the event, the journal, and the panelists – please visit https://www.law.lsu.edu/ljsjpsymposium/

 

From the site: 

At its inaugural symposium on Friday, March 19, at 3 p.m. (CST), the LSU Law Journal for Social Justice & Policy will host a panel of legal scholars from law schools across the country to discuss the fight against white supremacy in the 21^st century, present their research, and submit their papers for publication in the journal’s first issue this spring. The event will be held virtually via Zoom and 1.3 CLE credit hours (Course #: 5170210319) are available for participants.

About the LSU Law Journal for Social Justice & Policy

The LSU Law Journal for Social Justice & Policy is a student-edited, academic journal based at the LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center. The journal was spearheaded in Fall 2019 by a pair of students who were interested in promoting the discussion of issues relating to social justice and public policy at LSU Law. The mission of the journal is to reach current and future members of the legal profession with fresh perspectives on controversial issues relating to social justice and policy, and address a gap in the types of matters explored in the context of academic legal writing at LSU Law. Moreover, the journal hopes to provide students with an additional forum to express their views concerning this subject and develop their legal writing skills through journal membership. The journal is committed to elevating the voices of law students, practitioners, and academics of color in legal scholarship.

CLEA: 2021 New Clinicians Conference Online May 17-20

Via co-chairs Prof. Lisa Martin and Danny Schaffzin: 

We are excited to share that CLEA will again offer a FREE Virtual New Clinicians Conference on May 17-20, 2021.

Like last year's conference, which brought together more than 250 attendees, the 2021 CLEA Virtual New Clinicians Conference will convene over four days. Each day's program will begin at 11:00 a.m. Eastern and conclude at 1:30 or 2:00 p.m. Eastern. Our varied conference format will include live and asynchronous webinar programming, concurrent sessions, and facilitated small group discussions. We also expect to offer some fun networking opportunities, including an evening social event during the week of the conference. Session topics will include:

Foundations of Clinical Teaching: An Overview of Best Practices

Racial Justice in the Classroom and in Practice

Technology Innovations in Clinical Teaching and Practice

Teaching Movement Lawyering

Clinical Teaching and Practice During Crisis

Pedagogy Deep-Dive: Clinic Design

Pedagogy Deep-Dive: Externship Design

Plus: Case Rounds, Supervision, and More!

We will be back in touch later this month to share a detailed schedule and information for how you can register to attend the 2021 CLEA Virtual New Clinicians Conference. For now, please SAVE THE DATES (May 17-20, 2021) and do not hesitate to contact us or any of the CLEA New Clinicians Committee members identified below with questions.

We look forward to “seeing” you in May for the 2021 CLEA Virtual New Clinicians!

Best wishes,

Lisa Martin and Danny Schaffzin

On behalf of the CLEA New Clinicians Committee:

Lisa Martin (University of South Carolina) (Co-Chair)

Danny Schaffzin (University of Memphis) (Co-Chair)

Jeff Baker (Pepperdine)

Kathryn Banks (Washington University in St. Louis)

Lauren Bartlett (St. Louis University)

Christine Cerniglia (Stetson)

Crisanne Hazen (Harvard)

Rachael Kohl (Michigan)

Praveen Kosuri (Penn)

C. Benjie Louis (Hofstra)

Nickole Miller (University of Baltimore)

Sue Schechter (Berkeley)

Shonda Sibley (Temple University)

Anita Sinha (American University)

Kele Stewart (Miami)

Wendy Vaughn (Northern Illinois University)

My Postcard from Camp (Northwest Clinical Conference)

The Sleeping Lady Resort (Leavenworth, WA) on the ancestral land of the Yakima and Wenatchi tribes provided a stunning mountain backdrop and intimate meeting space for the Northwest Clinical Conference November 8-10, 2019. We paused to breathe, reflect, and plan for the year to come. We shared and learned from different schools, different disciplines, and different countries. We brainstormed and strategized. We nourished our minds and bodies (the food was not exaggerated). We walked, listened to poetry, sang, and embraced new mottos complete with stickers ("Transcend the Bullshit.") Our northwest clinical colleagues kindly welcomed those of us who work outside the traditional boundaries of the Northwest. The founder’s quote on the back page of the resort’s notebook was spot on:

“I want people to leave here and feel as though they can change their corner of the world.” – Harriet Bullitt    

Many thanks to all of the planners!

 

Applied Feminism and #MeToo - 11th Feminist Legal Theory Conference

Please join us for the 11th Feminist Legal Theory Conference at University of Baltimore School of Law sponsored by the Center on Applied Feminism, University of Baltimore Law Review, and CLEA. The focus of the conference is “Applied Feminism and #MeToo,” and our keynote speaker is Debra Katz, who represented Christine Blasey Ford in the Justice Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. The conference is being held at the University of Baltimore School of Law April 11 and 12, 2019. There is no registration fee, but we do ask that people RSVP.

 Conference webpage including the RSVP is available here: http://law.ubalt.edu/centers/caf/conference/EleventhFeministLegalTheoryConf.cfm

 

Mid-Atlantic Clinicians' Writing Workshop Fall 2018 remaining sessions

The next session of the Mid-Atlantic Clinicians’ Writing Workshop is taking place at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law on Friday, October 27 at 9:30 am.  Lindsay Harris, Assistant Professor of Law, University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law, will present her paper entitled Withholding Protection.

The schedule for the remaining fall writing workshops is as follows:

At 10 am on November 16, Professors Medha Makhlouf of Penn State Dickinson Law and Tomar Pierson-Brown of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law will be presenting at Penn State Dickinson Law.

At 9:30 am on December 7, professors Nichole Tuchinda of Georgetown University Law Center, Saba Ahmed of the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law, and Kim Rolla of the University of Virginia School of Law will be presenting at Georgetown University Law Center.

Sessions of the Mid-Atlantic Clinicians’ Writing Workshop are open to all area clinicians.  For more information, please contact Katie Ladewski, Sherley Cruz, Andrew Budzinski, or Joe Pileri.

Registration Deadline Extended for Northwest Clinical Law Conference

via Jessica Long (University of Idaho) and Kathryn Moakley (University of Oregon)

For anyone still considering attending the Northwest Clinical Law Conference on Oct. 19-21, 2018 in Sunriver, Oregon, there is good news. Yesterday's registration deadline was extended to accommodate those who needed a little more time. Please complete the registration form Download NWCLC2018Invitation, and send it to Kathryn Moakley ASAP at the address provided on the form.   

Save the Date: 2018 Southern Clinical Conference, October 19 and 20 at South Carolina

Calling all fans of clinical education and warm weather:  mark your calendars for the 8^th Annual Southern Clinical Conference “Overcoming Divisions.”  The conference will be hosted by the University of South Carolina School of Law on Friday October 19^th and Saturday, October 20^th, 2018. 

Requests for proposals coming later this Spring.  We look forward to seeing you in Columbia next Fall!

For more information please contact Emily Suski at esuski@law.sc.edu.   

 

The Southern Clinical Conference planning committee:  

Danny Schaffzin, Memphis,

Alex Scherr, Georgia

Kendall Kerew, Georgia State

Susan Donovan, Alabama

Lauren Aronson, LSU

Bob Lancaster, LSU

Crystal Schin, Virginia

Lisa Martin, South Carolina

Emily Suski, South Carolina

Ken Gaines, South Carolina

Annie Eisenberg, South Carolina

Claire Raj, South Carolina

Josh Gupta-Kaga, South Carolina

Clinical Writers' Workshop Scheduled for September 22, 2018, at NYU Law

The Clinical Law Review will hold its next Clinical Writers’ Workshop on Saturday, September 22, 2018, at NYU Law School.

 The Workshop provides an opportunity for clinical teachers who are writing about any subject (clinical pedagogy, substantive law, interdisciplinary analysis, empirical work, etc.) to meet with other clinicians writing on related topics to discuss their works-in-progress and brainstorm ideas for further development of their articles. Attendees will meet in small groups organized, to the extent possible, by the subject matter in which they are writing. Each group will “workshop” the draft of each member of the group.

Participation in the Workshop requires the submission of a paper because the workshop takes the form of small group sessions in which all members of the group comment on each other’s manuscripts. By June 30, 2018, all applicants must submit a mini-draft or prospectus, 3-5 pages in length, of the article they intend to present at the workshop.  Full drafts of the articles will be due by September 1, 2018. 

As in the previous Clinical Law Review Workshops, participants will not have to pay an admission or registration fee but  will have to arrange and pay for their own travel and lodging. To assist those who wish to participate but who need assistance for travel and lodging, NYU Law School has created a fund for scholarships to help pay for travel and lodging. The scholarships are designed for those clinical faculty who receive little or no travel support from their law schools and who otherwise would not be able to attend this workshop without scholarship support. Applicants for scholarships will be required to submit, with their 3-5 page prospectus that is due by June 30, a proposed budget for travel and lodging and a brief statement of why the scholarship would be helpful in supporting their attendance at this conference.  The Board will review all scholarship applications and issue decisions about scholarships in early July. The scholarships are conditioned upon recipients’ meeting all requirements for workshop participation, including submission of drafts by the deadlines set forth above, and will be capped at a maximum of $750 per person.

 If you have any comments or suggestions you would like to send us, we would be very happy to hear from you. Comments and suggestions should be sent to Randy Hertz at randy.hertz@nyu.edu.

 -- The Board of Editors of the Clinical Law Review

Call for Panelists: AALS Annual Meeting Open Source Program on Teaching Access to Justice

Via Prof. Colleen Shanahan:

Call for Panelists

Innovations in Teaching Access to Justice Across the Law School Curriculum

 

2018 AALS Annual Meeting – Open Source Program

Friday, January 5, 2018, 8:30 – 10:15 a.m.

 

We invite applications to speak on a panel about how law school faculty can innovate in the classroom to create future attorneys who are concerned about access to justice and playing a role in solving the access to justice crisis.  Each panelist will speak about a recent experiment incorporating access to justice into the law school curriculum.  We hope to identify an additional panelist who has (or will in the Fall 2017 semester) integrated access to justice concepts in a first-year or core law school course.

            The program will begin with a roundtable discussion of each panelist’s recent efforts to highlight and incorporate access to justice in their own classrooms.  The program will continue with a facilitated discussion that will allow audience members to share and develop their own classroom experiments, including ideas to incorporate access to justice in core and first-year courses.  The planned panelists are Anna Carpenter (Tulsa), Lauren Sudeall Lucas (Georgia State), Victor Quintanilla (Indiana), and Colleen Shanahan (Temple).

            To be considered as a panelist, please email a short (1-2 paragraph) statement of interest and description of your recent or upcoming effort to teach access to justice in the classroom to Colleen Shanahan (colleen.shanahan@temple.edu) by September 1.

RFP and Registration: 2017 Northwest Clinical Law Conference

From the organizers:

2017 Northwest Clinical Law Conference

On behalf of the NWCLC 2017 Planning Committee, we are pleased to provide details regarding the 2017 Northwest Clinical Law Conference, to be held November 3-5 at Sleeping Lady.

 

Our theme this year will be "From Competence to Social Justice: The Role of Legal Clinics in Forming Professional Identity and Values." Below are a request for proposals with additional details regarding the theme and our call for presenters. Please note that we are also seeking proposals from clinic administrators in hopes of having a separate conference track for administrative professionals who wish to attend. Proposals can be sent to me (monte.mills@umontana.edu) for distribution to the Planning Committee and are due by SEPTEMBER 8, 2017.

 

Also attached is a flyer with registration details. The registration and payment deadline is SEPTEMBER 1, 2017 and your completed registration form and fees can be returned to Geri Sturgill (geri.sturgill@umontana.edu).

 

We look forward to seeing your proposals and to a great conference later this year!

 

Download 2017 NW Clinical Conference Registration Flyer

 

Download 2017 NW Clinical Conference Request for Proposals

West Virginia Law Review 2018 Appalachian Justice Symposium: Announcement and CFP

Dear Colleagues,

Please find here the announcement and CFP for the West Virginia Law Review’s 2018 Appalachian Justice Symposium, which will be held on February 23-24, 2018 at the West Virginia University College of Law.  Papers selected by the Law Review will be published in a special symposium edition of the Law Review entitled “Essays on Appalachia.”  

 

I am writing to respectfully request that you (1) consider participating in the Symposium by submitting either a paper or panel proposal and (2) circulate the attached CFP as far and wide as possible.  Additional information will be posted periodically on the Symposium website located at: 

 

http://wvlawreview.wvu.edu/symposium-2018

 

If you have any questions about the Symposium or the CFP, please feel free to reach out to me at your convenience.  Thanks so much for your time and attention and I hope that everyone is enjoying a wonderful summer.

 

Sincerely,

 

Jenn

 

 

 

 

Requests for Proposals and Registration for the 2017 Southern Clinical Conference

Via Prof. Danny Schaffzin:

2017 Southern Clinical Conference

Registration is now open for the 2017 Southern Clinical Conference. Please link to www.law.lsu.edu/scc for registration information and hotel information. 

 

Also, we are still accepting Proposals for concurrent sessions or works in progress. We encourage you to submit your proposal by the July 17^th deadline.  Further information about the conference and RFP is below:

 

The Planning Committee for the 2017 Southern Clinical Conference invites you to submit proposals for this year’s conference “Back to Our Roots: Renewing the Social Justice Mission of Clinics and Externships,” which will take place from Friday morning, October 20th, to mid-day Saturday, October 21st, at the LSU Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Proposals should be submitted by July 17th via the online form located at www.law.lsu.edu/scc  .

 

Early clinical legal education had an identifiable focus on social justice. Now, a divisive election and a change in administration have brought new challenges for law school clinics and externship programs. The political and legal framework affecting the clients and communities we serve is now under extraordinary strain. Cutbacks in legal services and changes in governmental priorities seems likely to fray the already attenuated network of legal services available to those in need. In this context, we seek to revisit and to renew the social justice mission of law school clinics.

 

We invite proposals that address these themes. We encourage you to consider how to explore the past, to assess the present, and to plan for future action by clinics and externships on social justice concerns. We seek proposals that will question the social justice roots of clinical legal education and will offer guidance in responding to current events.

 

Proposals might focus on any of the following questions:

 

How has the social justice mission of clinics or externships changed over the years? How do we define it? How can it be renewed?

What institutional challenges now exist for pursuing a social justice mission through clinics or externships? What political or economic challenges now operate to alter how clinics and externships might teach social justice?

Do regional differences exist in how a clinical teacher might approach the challenge of social justice work? 

Does working in the American south pose particular challenges or important opportunities? What can we learn from comparisons to other regions of the country?

Do our students share our appreciation for the social justice mission that may underlie our work? If so, how can we enhance that appreciation? If not, what challenges does that create?

Do changes in the regulation of law schools affect how we address social justice concerns, including questions surrounding status of clinical faculty and around academic freedom?  

How do pressures for bar passage and post-graduate employment for our graduates affect what we do in clinics and externships? 

How can we set learning objectives relating to social justice in our clinics and externships? 

How can we assess our students’ and our courses’ success in attaining those objectives?

 

We welcome proposals for concurrent sessions, plenaries, and workshops devoted to these themes. At recent conferences, concurrent sessions have run for about 90 minutes. We welcome ideas for shorter formats, including TED talks, flash or lightning talks, or similar formats. We expect to offer sessions of varying lengths, intermingled with plenary discussions and opportunities for free-form discussion and networking.

 

Works in Progress

With sufficient interest, we expect to offer sessions devoted to scholarly works-in-progress. These sessions will include both commentary from discussants and support for new and experienced scholars. Proposals for works-in-progress need not be limited to the conference theme.

 

Criteria

In general, the Planning Committee will favor proposals that address the conference theme, are relevant to conference attendees, are well-defined and focused, are timely and important, and show care and thoughtfulness in development.

 

We value diversity, both in the composition of presenting teams, and in your topic’s presentation of diversity as a concern in your work. Diversity includes gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, disability, geographical location, years of experience, type of school, type of program and other factors.

 

Submission of Proposals

Proposals should be submitted using the online form located here no later than July 17th.

 

We encourage you to contact any member of the Planning Committee to discuss your ideas as you prepare a proposal. This group includes:

 

Lauren Aronson, lauren.aronson@law.lsu.edu

Anne Hornsby, ahornsby@law.ua.edu

Kendall Kerew, kkerew@gsu.edu

Robert Lancaster, robert.lancaster@law.lsu.edu

Daniel Schaffzin, dschffzn@memphis.edu

Alex Scherr, scherr@uga.edu

Crystal Shin, csshin@wm.edu

Emily Suski, esuski@law.sc.edu

Call for Papers: "Children's Rights and Responsibilities in Africa"

The AALS Section on Africa is pleased to announce a Call for Papers from which 2-3 additional presenters will be selected for the section’s program to be held during the AALS 2018 Annual Meeting in San Diego on “Children’s Rights and Responsibilities in Africa.” The program is co-sponsored by the AALS Section on Children and the Law and the AALS Section on International Human Rights. The call for papers seeks authors of published or unpublished papers that consider the rights and responsibilities of children on the African continent.

Background: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in the history of the world. A look at the drafting history of the CRC indicates that African countries were not proportionally represented in the drafting process, arguably due to a lack of resources and a dearth of diplomatic representatives in post-colonial Africa. Although some feared that the North-South divide in the drafting process would prevent the universal acceptance of the treaty, the fact is that the continent was strongly represented among the first countries to sign and ratify the treaty.

African countries did not stop there. They criticized the CRC for not going far enough in protecting children’s rights and taking into consideration African cultural values (such as the notion that children also have concurrent responsibilities) and issues, such as apartheid, child marriage, child labor, child trafficking, children in armed conflict, and harmful cultural practices. African nations converted this criticism into the first regional children’s treaty, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. Africa also is home to the first nation, the Republic of South Africa, to include many of the principles of the CRC and the African Children’s Charter in the nation’s constitution.

Despite the leadership that the African continent has offered in developing an international legal framework for children’s rights and responsibilities, the consequences of colonial occupation has led to a perception that children’s rights have not been recognized in many areas, ranging from gender discrimination to education to economic security and more. This call for papers is intended to advance the dialogue related to both the creation and fulfillment of children’s rights and responsibilities, especially as they relate to children in Africa.      

Thus, the Section on Africa invites any full-time faculty member of an AALS member school who has authored a published or unpublished paper, is writing a paper, or is interested in writing a paper on this topic to submit a 1- or 2-page proposal to the Chair of the Section by August 31, 2017. The Executive Committee will review all submissions and select proposals for presentation as part of our AALS 2018 Program.

Please  share this call for papers widely and direct all submissions and questions to the Chair of the AALS Section on Africa:

Professor Warren Binford

Willamette University College of Law

wbinford@willamette.edu 

503-370-6758                

 

Community Out of Chaos

This week, I attended the 2017 501(c)onference, presented by the Center for Nonprofit Management in Los Angeles. Creating Community Out Of Chaos was the theme, and it was timely.

I registered for the conference as a bit of continuing education. In the Pepperdine Community Justice Clinic, our students and I counsel nonprofits and NGOs in corporate and policy matters, so I seized an opportunity to learn more about the nonprofit ecosystem, the market, and its trends. The 501(c)onference is a gathering of world-class nonprofits and nonprofit leaders in Southern California, to exchange ideas, network, and improve collaborations. Like most lawyers and most academics I spend most of my time with other lawyers and academics, so it was nice to break away and see the work from the clients’ point of view. (This had the double benefit of new insight for the great boards on which I get to serve: Counsel to Secure Justice, Medicine for Humanity, The Abundant Table, and the Clinical Legal Education Association.)    

The time away from the ivory silo was refreshing and useful, and that was my first professional lesson for the week. All we lawyers should spend time with our clients in their markets, especially when they do not need us. We learn more about them so can serve them better. All we academics should spend time in the fields we study and teach to ground our scholarship and classes in lived experience.

At this brief conference, a rising energy and resilient optimism pervaded the conversations. Everyone acknowledged the conflict and tension of our present political and social anxieties. People presented bleak, striking data about the economy, communities, and policies. Speakers identified troubling trends rooted in systems and cycles, but there was little despair in the room.  Instead, there was a calm, fierce, determined air to stay at work in new and better ways. Plenty of people spoke of resistance, but it is a resistance against division, inequity, and deceit.

That spirit infused righteous talk of alliance. We talk a lot about collaboration, but this deeper discussion of alliance meant more than projects in common. It meant more than MOUs. Alliance calls for mutuality, humility, and shared burdens in a righteous cause. Even as these organizations may vie for the same grants and funders, they were all speaking to the need to join forces in defense of our social contracts and the community ligaments than bind us together.

Those conversations invited talk of innovation and new ideas to fund and sustain organizations and their work. Some brilliant panelists discussed the emerging trends of social-impact investing, B-Corps, pay-for-performance, and other market-driven social enterprises. This is an important new trend that we must explore and improve. No one does this work for the money, but money is necessary for the work. Angel investors, equities, bonds, and other start-up financing mechanisms promise new means of big money for socially responsible enterprises who can find the right mix of markets and economic development. Some of us, however, had good counterpoint discussions about the temptations of profit and the reality of issues that defy markets. Sometimes folks can get rich while doing great good in the world. Very often, social needs and solutions will not respond to market fixes and will require the generosity of donors and the tenacity of scrappy activists whose work is not measured in profit.  

These conversations stood in stark contrast to a meeting of Black Lives Matter that my family and I attended earlier in the week. BLM intentionally and explicitly is not part of the traditional nonprofit system or economy. As it fights for empowerment and reform, it takes a radically different, disciplined strategy. The nonprofit conference was in gleaming, corporate quarters in spaces built for teaching and learning. BLM met in a well-worn, hard-working community center covered in local art, a place with sharp edges made warm, hospitable, and loving by a fierce commitment to inclusion and dignity. BLM opts for deep, patient community organizing and development built on relationships, teaching, dialog, and amplified voices. It is not profitable and does not seek to be.   

And this contrast informs another great lesson for me this week. I believe in All-of-the-Above, each of these extraordinary people and organizations seeking the light in their respective worlds and calling others to join their alliances. From the veteran community organizers in Inglewood to the rich foundations Santa Monica, from the scrappy new nonprofit laboring without an office to the global NGOs who can call on millions, their work all bends toward the dignity of every person. To seek the dignity of the oppressed and to empower the poor is to love everyone, including ourselves. We need them all.   

To empower the vulnerable people on the margins of our society and economy is to strengthen all the bonds on which we all rely. This morning, we saw again the great and awful cost when we allow those bonds to fray and snap. While we gathered in conference, a man took intentional, deadly aim at our representatives, our Congress. He chose a moment when they were actually engaged in friendly, healthy, democratic, bipartisan, American government, even in an era of harsh polarization and distrust. Just hours later, another person unleashed death on co-workers in another workplace shooting that we can only ever seem to call senseless.   

This violence is a failure of many things, and we must own them together if we going to resist the breach of our social contract, our commitments and reliance on each other. If we cannot trust each other, then the center will not hold.  

So I end this reflection returning to work as a teaching lawyer (or a practicing professor). Our communities and commerce depend on the rule of law. The rule of law depends on our social contract, these deep commitments to each other. These commitments depend on trust, and trust depends on dignity. Everyone's dignity depends on the dignity of everyone else, and that mutuality is under assault.

Fundamentally, this must be the work of lawyers. We must guard and defend the conditions necessary to thrive in liberty and peace.

So we must teach our students accordingly. Violence is a failure of our morality and care. Rampant deceit is a failure of our discipline to hold ourselves accountable. Injustice thrives when our alliances degrade. The Republic will fall when we abandon our mutuality. This is the jurisprudence we need to teach and study. This is how community emerges from chaos.