Clinical Law Prof Blog

Anita Sinha Receives 2021 M. Shanara Gilbert Award

Via Profs. Fatma Marouf and Liz Keyes: 

On behalf of the AALS Clinical Section Executive Committee, we are delighted to announce that the recipient of the 2021 M. Shanara Gilbert Award is Professor Anita Sinha who directs the International Human Rights Clinic at American University. We will celebrate Anita on Wednesday, April 28 at 1:30 pm (EST), during the upcoming Clinical Conference, alongside the recently-announced Ellman Award winners. 

Designed to honor an "emerging clinician," this award honors a clinical professor with ten or fewer years of experience who has (1) a commitment to teaching and achieving social justice, particularly in the areas of race and the criminal justice system; (2) a passion for providing legal services and access to justice to individuals and groups most in need; (3) service to the cause of clinical legal education or to the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education; (4) an interest in international clinical legal education; and (5) an interest in the beauty of nature (which is desirable, but not required). We are so grateful to the Awards Committee members for thoughtfully reviewing all the inspiring nominations that came in this year: Donna Lee (CUNY, Chair), Kinda Abdus-Saboor (Georgia State), Brittany Glidden (UC-Hastings), and Laura Rovner (Denver). 

A few highlights from Anita’s nomination: 

• “As Director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic (IHRLC), Anita has prioritized cases and projects that focus on the rights of noncitizens, racial minorities, LGBT communities, and other disadvantaged groups.” Her clinical work includes litigation of Federal Tort Claims Act suits on behalf of Central American families that were separated at the U.S.-Mexico border, and documenting human rights abuses facing LGBT Afrodescendants in South America. 
• Her students describe how her teaching “incorporates the importance 
• of applying an intersectional lens to the law into her teaching curriculum for the seminar classes of IHRLC and leads supervision with her students with this in mind. She provides the space and environment for student attorneys to grow as advocates and ensures we incorporate the importance of racial, immigrant, and gender justice in our legal representation.”  
• Her scholarship has focused on “civil and human rights implications of policies affecting noncitizens, including the use of immigrant detainee labor and the practice of immigration detention generally” with pieces connecting immigrant rights and race placed in the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Columbia Human Rights Law Review.  

And as Professor Bill Quigley concluded, “Brilliant, passionate, dedicated to people and communities on the ground, what more can any of us ask for in a partner?” 

Please join us in congratulating Professor Sinha on this wonderful recognition! 

CLEA 2021 Awards for Outstanding Advocate for Clinical Teachers and Excellence in a Public Interest Case or Project

From the CLEA Awards Committee, announcing the 2021 CLEA Awards for Outstanding Advocate for Clinical Teachers and for Excellence in a Public Interest Case or Project, plus those receiving honorable mention:

The CLEA Awards Committee is thrilled to announce that Bob Kuehn, Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Clinical Education at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, is the recipient of the 2021 CLEA Award for Outstanding Advocate for Clinical Teachers. CLEA is equally thrilled to announce that the Irwin County Detention Center Project (a collaboration of six schools’ clinics) is the recipient of the 2021 CLEA Award for Excellence in a Public Interest Case or Project. 

Outstanding Advocate for Clinical Teachers: 

Bob Kuehn’s many contributions to clinical legal education and his tireless advocacy for and on behalf of clinical teachers makes him more than deserving of this award. Organizationally, Bob has been on the Board of CLEA, serving as its president in 2011; he is the co-founder and vice president of the Center for the Study of Applied Legal Education (CSALE); and he has served on several AALS committees advancing clinical education and the status of clinical faculty. Bob is also very well known for advocating for the protection of the academic freedom rights of clinical faculty through his work on the AALS Clinical Section’s Political Interference Group and many journal articles and essays. In addition, Bob has authored articles debunking myths about clinical legal education including empirical evidence that: taking clinical courses does not negatively affect bar exam outcomes; universal clinical legal education is feasible and affordable; and clinical education is not responsible for high law school tuition. Bob has also been an active participant in planning conferences and speaking at national and regional conferences, especially about CSALE data.  

For over thirty years, Bob has been dedicated to the field of clinical legal education through his teaching and service. Bob started teaching in the clinical legal education program at Tulane University School of Law in 1989, where he taught in and directed the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic until 1999. After visiting at the law schools of Washington University, University of Michigan, and University of Utah, Bob joined the faculty of the University of Alabama School of Law in 2001, where he was the Associate Dean for Skills Programs and taught both in-house clinical and externship courses. Bob then joined the faculty at Washington University School of Law in 2009, where he has taught in-house clinical and externship courses and has been the Associate Dean for Clinical Education.  

Through his work, Bob has made invaluable contributions advancing clinical pedagogy, teaching, and the implementation of effective clinic and externship courses. On almost every issue affecting clinical legal education, Bob has been a spokesperson through his organizational work, scholarship, and speaking. 

Excellence in a Public Interest Case or Project: 

The Irwin County Detention Center Project addresses the welfare and legal rights of women detained by U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement at the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) in Ocilla, Georgia. These women were subjected to non-consensual, medically unindicated, or invasive gynecological procedures at ICDC, many of which amounted to sexual assaults. They suffered severe retaliation when they tried to speak out about these procedures, including actual or attempted accelerated deportation.  

A group of six law school clinicians and clinics formed to help these women: Professors Sabi Ardalan (Harvard Law School); Jason Cade (University of Georgia School of Law); Fatma Marouf (Texas A&M School of Law); Elora Mukherjee (Columbia Law School); Clare Norins (University of Georgia School of Law); and Sarah Sherman-Stokes (Boston University School of Law). Aware of the magnitude of the challenge, they elicited collaborators that included non-profits, private firms, legislative advocates, and community organizers.  

The Project’s advocacy includes a federal class action on behalf of 14 of the women and others similarly situated, immigration proceedings, administrative complaints, and legislative advocacy. The clinics have won stays of deportation for most of the plaintiffs. The Project’s efforts have resulted in the release of nearly all 80 women in ICDC, as well as over 200 men. The work has generated national media coverage and elicited a crucial intervention from 100 members of Congress. Overcoming barriers of geography, access, and the pandemic, the clinics’ work exemplifies the use of multi-faceted strategy and collaborative practice to address a shocking injustice. 

Honorable Mentions: 

The CLEA Awards Committee received numerous outstanding nominations and determined that the following nominations merited an honorable mention. 

University of Alabama Domestic Violence Clinic 

Between 2017 and 2020, the University of Alabama School of Law Domestic Violence (DV) Clinic, under the supervision of Professor Courtney Cross, represented Geneva Cooley, an elderly survivor of domestic violence, who had been sentenced to life without parole for drug trafficking in 2002. As a result of the DV Clinic’s advocacy, Ms. Cooley was resentenced from life without parole to life with the possibility of parole in 2019. The case was the first of its kind and paved the way for several other prisoners to be released. Following resentencing, the DV Clinic successfully represented Ms. Cooley at her parole hearing, and she was released to a transitional home in Alabama. Though Ms. Cooley lived in Alabama, her entire family lived in New York. Through a collaboration with St. John Law School’s Consumer Justice for the Elderly Clinic, Ms. Cooley was able to regain ownership of a family property in New York City and finally returned home to New York in Fall 2020. 

University of Detroit Mercy Federal Pro Se Legal Assistance Clinic  

The University of Detroit Mercy Federal Pro Se Legal Assistance Clinic provides limited scope representation to low-income non-prisoner pro se litigants who have civil cases pending or to be filed in the United States District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division. The Clinic operates under Administrative Order of the Court, and prior to its opening on January 18, 2018, low-income pro se litigants were without free legal assistance options. The Clinic has assisted over 500 individuals and provided more than 10,000 hours of free legal services to date. The Clinic is housed at the Eastern District’s courthouse in downtown Detroit but has operated remotely since March 2020, due to the Court’s pandemic restrictions.  

Duke Law School’s Wrongful Convictions Clinic 

Duke Law School’s Wrongful Convictions Clinic helped secure the release of Ronnie Long, who had spent 44 years in North Carolina prisons for a rape he did not commit. The State convicted Mr. Long by suppressing favorable evidence, including results of tests on evidence from the crime scene that did not implicate him, evidence that ultimately exonerated him. Numerous students worked with clinic faculty on the case over the course of five years, culminating in a hearing before the entire Fourth Circuit that was argued virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The case attracted significant national and regional media attention and helped to further highlight the many persistent injustices of our system of criminal law, particularly those suffered by Black men. Mr. Long was the ninth client exonerated through the work of the Wrongful Convictions Clinic since it was founded in 2008. 

Florida State University College of Law Forced Child Labor Project

In response to the UN declaring 2021 the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labor, Florida State University College of Law created the Forced Child Labor Project, which advocates against forced child labor in international supply chains. The goal of the Project is two-fold: 1) to educate the legal community of the pervasive practice of forced child labor in goods we consume; and 2) to enforce Section 307 of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 which prohibits the importation into the United States of forced child labor goods. Please view: Cocoa and Valentine’s Day Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC0BtL6BwYE&t=3s. 

University of Nebraska College of Law Tenant Assistance Project 

The Tenants Assistance Project (TAP) was developed to change and improve the representation paradigm that exists in landlord-tenant cases. Since the Project began a year ago, more than 60 Lincoln-area attorneys and several dozen senior-certified law students from the University of Nebraska College of Law have ensured that every tenant that appears for an eviction hearing and seeks assistance is provided legal representation. Law students Alan Dugger, Tessa Lengeling, Sarah O’Neill, and Amy Sonnenfeld have all made significant contributions to the Project, and in doing so have helped many low-income families in the Lincoln community. 

West Virginia University College of Law Immigration Clinic 

The West Virginia University College of Law Immigration Clinic is fighting to represent and empower a long-underserved immigrant population. There is only one other full-time immigration practitioner for a statewide community of 30,000 foreign-born residents and their families, so the Immigration Clinic is bridging the gap through a uniquely holistic legal practice, community education and resources, and systemic advocacy. The clinic is also working to build a local immigration bar from the group up, by facilitating attorney mentorship, developing a CLE certificate program, and recruiting law students who will commit to local immigration practice. 

The 2021 CLEA Awards will be presented at the AALS Conference on Clinical Legal Education on Friday, April 30, 12:00-1:00 Eastern. We look forward to celebrating our clinical community! 

The CLEA Awards Committee

Anju Gupta (Rutgers-Newark) 

D’lorah Hughes (Irvine) 

Praveen Kosuri (Pennsylvania)
Perry Moriearty (Minnesota)
Kele Stewart, Co-Chair (Miami)
Jane Stoever, Co-Chair (Irvine) 

Promotion of Brittany Stringfellow Otey to full Clinical Professor of Law

We’re grateful and excited to announce that Brittany Stringfellow Otey has received her promotion to full Clinical Professor Law. She has directed the Pepperdine Caruso Legal Aid Clinic at the Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row in Downtown Los Angeles for eighteen years, essentially the entire history of our clinical program. Like most law schools, ours has been in a long evolution and growth in its recognition of clinicians’ roles, places, and value. Brittany began as a law student volunteer in the earliest version of our first volunteer clinics, and she has built, led, persevered, dreamed, worked, and thrived through nearly every iteration of clinical rank and status, from pro bono volunteer to full clinical professor.

 
She is a brilliant teacher and lawyer, and she has made truly important contributions to scholarship, learning, and manifesting resilience, wellness, and sustainable strength in the service of justice. She remains a wise, vibrant, empathetic, and effective lawyer after nearly two decades in one of the most demanding practices in the nation, and she imparts that spirit to our students, clients, colleagues, and communities.

 
We are grateful for her as a colleague, and I am grateful for my friend and law partner. This promotion and honor are fitting at long last.

 

Congratulations, Professor Otey!

AALS William Pincus Award to Profs. Nancy Maurer and Susan Bennett

Via Prof. Wendy Bach and the AALS Clinical Section:

The Clinical Section is proud to announce that Professors Nancy Maurer of Albany Law School and Susan Bennett of American University Washington College of Law are this years’ recipients of the William Pincus Award.  As many of you know, the Pincus Award honors individuals, groups or institutions for effecting an outstanding contribution to the cause of clinical legal education.  Attached and below you will find more information about our amazing awardees.

Nancy and Susan will be appropriately feted at the Section’s Award Ceremony on January 5th from 12:15 to 1:15.  The Section is planning an exciting virtual celebration.  Although we won’t all be together, zoom means, at least, that more can take part, and we hope you all attend.

Please join me in extending a hearty congratulations to our amazing Pincus Award recipients!

 

Susan Bennett, American University Washington College of Law

Professor Bennett has made substantial and enduring contributions to clinical legal education and the advancement of justice. She founded and directs the American University Washington College of Law Community and Economic Development Law Clinic, through which students provide transactional representation to non–profit organizations, small businesses, and affordable housing cooperatives in under-served neighborhoods in the D.C. metro area.

Professor Bennett has helped people around the region organize, galvanize and advocate for their communities, and prosper.  Many of her clients are now bedrock institutions in their communities, providing opportunity to those who have historically been denied such access.  In sharing this work with her students, she has helped launch a great number of public interest careers and brought WCL students and the diverse communities of the DC area together.

Among Professor Bennett’s clients over the years are community organizations, entrepreneurs and small businesses, and worker and housing cooperatives.  In representing limited equity housing cooperatives, Professor Bennett has worked to preserve this important source of permanently affordable housing for low-income DC residents.  Both her teaching and work have had a particular focus on the legacy of residential housing segregation in and around DC.  In addition to representing limited equity housing cooperatives and affordable housing developments and advocacy organizations, Professor Bennett works with individual homeowners to remove racially restrictive housing covenants from their deeds.  Professor Bennett is keenly aware of the history of the communities in which she practices and the connection between her work and racial justice permeates her client representation, her teaching, and her scholarship.

Over the course of her career, Professor Bennett has produced a substantial and highly influential a body of work relating to public interest lawyering.  These writings appear in a variety of prominent journals, including the Clinical Law Review, Fordham Urban Law Journal, Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Wisconsin Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal.  In these pieces, Professor Bennett has addressed topics including the role of poverty lawyers, attorney-client relations in the context of community lawyering, the practice of “long-haul lawyering,” public housing communities, and welfare reform.   Her scholarship elevates the stories of her clients and the communities from which they hail. For the clinical community (and others), she also co-authored Community Economic Development Law: A Text for Engaged Learning, published in 2012 by Carolina Press.

Beyond her service to the clinical community as an editor (since 2016) of the Clinical Law Review, Professor Bennett has held many leadership positions within the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Poverty Law, including serving as Chair and Executive Committee member. She also bridged the worlds of academia and practice in her leadership of the Legal Educators Division of the ABA Forum on Affordable Housing and Community Development Law. And from 2007-2010 she served on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Homelessness and Poverty.

At WCL, Professor Bennett is an unwavering supporter of public interest law students, and has designed and supported programs to support them, like helping found the Public Interest Alumni Advisory Board, mentoring Public Interest/Service Scholars (PIPS), and serving as a faculty advisor for the law school’s Office of Public Interest, which is responsible for oversight of the schools Pro Bono Honors Pledge Program. Most recently, she laid the groundwork for the creation of a new Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) law student bono project in collaboration with DC’s Housing Counseling Services.

Nancy Maurer, Albany Law School

Professor Maurer’s contributions to the field of clinical legal education over her nearly 40 years of teaching are tremendous, multi-faceted and far-reaching. From the beginning, Professor Maurer actively participated in the activities of the national clinical legal education community, eventually assuming leadership roles.

With the 1983 creation of Albany Law School’s Disability Law Clinic, Professor Maurer founded Albany Law School’s nationally-recognized and renowned clinical legal education program. The Disability Law Clinic was one of the first law school clinics in the country to teach law students through the direct representation of individuals with disabilities. It evolved into a broader Civil Rights and Disabilities Law Clinic during the 1990s, and Professor Maurer has played important roles in other expansions of the clinical program at Albany Law School. She also developed and co-taught Albany Law School’s first Introduction to Lawyering course, part of our cutting-edge Lawyering Program. The Lawyering Program has all the hallmarks of clinical legal education: students, in small firms, “represent” parties in a year-long simulated legal dispute. In this way, students are introduced to the legal system, legal ethics, and the skills and values of the profession.

Professor Maurer’s contributions to the world of externships are exceptional. At Albany, she grew and redesigned what is known as the Field Placement Clinic, designing and implementing the Learning from Practice seminar. She served as co-chair of the AALS Clinical Section’s Externship Committee. And her contributions to LEARNING FROM PRACTICE: A TEXT FOR EXPERIENTIAL LEGAL EDUCATION, have influenced the hundreds of students in field placements who read her work. Her work shaped how several generations of law students participated in and approached law school studies through clinic-based, experiential programs both at Albany and nationally. Moreover, proceeds from the sale of LEARNING FROM PRACTICE further clinical legal education programs, with the co-authors donating over $16,000 in royalties to the Clinical Legal Education Association per diem project following its first year of sales, and over $8,000 in its second year.

Her scholarship in the field of clinical education and disability rights alike have also had tremendous impact. The DISABILITY LAW AND PRACTICE SERIES, which she co-authored, was the 2017 recipient of the Association for Continuing Legal Education’s “Award of Professional Excellence” in publication. In January 2018, the New York State Bar Association honored her for her service as Co-Editor of the DISABILITY LAW AND PRACTICE Series.

Outside the academy, and practice, Professor Maurer helped found and now chairs the board of directors of Disability Rights New York, Inc., a prominent legal services and advocacy nonprofit organization in New York State. She has been very involved in women’s issues serving on the board of the Capital District Women’s Bar Association and Albany Law School’s Kate Stoneman Committee, honoring the first women admitted to the bar in New York State. Most recently, she joined the board of Legal Advocacy Equity Firm, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving individuals who cannot qualify for free legal services, but need civil legal services at reduced rates.

Finally, she continues to innovate and respond to the needs of her students, clinical legal education, and the community at large. Most recently, she has focused on racial justice, finding new placements and designing anti-racism training for field placement supervisors.

In short, Professor Maurer’ work in program development and implementation, scholarship, service, and in the advancement of justice are far-reaching and long-lasting.

Great News for Alex Scherr and UGA

Dean Rutledge at UGA this week shared this good news about our friend and co-blogger here, Prof. Alex Scherr, newly appointed as Associate Dean for Clinical Programs and Experiential Learning.  Sometimes I feel like I have never been to a clinical conference or been part of a project in this community that Alex did not lead or serve.  Congratulations, Alex!

 

I am pleased to share with you that Professor Alex Scherr has agreed to serve as Associate Dean for Clinical Programs and Experiential Learning. Alex is a longstanding leader in the clinical legal education community. He is the co-editor of the nationally and internationally distributed Learning From Practice: A Text for Experiential Legal Education, 3d ed. (West Academic, 2016) in which he authored several chapters, and he served as chair of the planning committee for the 2015 AALS Clinical Conference that had more than 725 participants and over 200 presenters. He also played a large role in the successful launch of our Atlanta Semester in Practice Program. I know he will build on the good work that Erica has  undertaken in the last year and a half in this role.

Please join me in congratulating Alex on undertaking this important service as part of the law school's commitment to provide first-rate legal training.

Recipients of the 2016 CLEA Award for Excellence in a Public Interest Case or Project

Via Prof. Anju Gupta:

 

The CLEA Board of Directors is thrilled to announce that the Law Reform Advocacy Clinic at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University and the University of Denver Sturm College of Law Civil Rights Clinic are the recipients of the 2016 CLEA Award for Excellence in a Public Interest Case or Project. Descriptions of their projects follow.

University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Civil Rights Clinic, Decoteau v. Raemisch

This class action lawsuit, litigated by student attorneys and professors with the University of Denver Sturm College of Law Civil Rights Clinic, as well as attorneys at the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center (CREEC), resulted in the provision of outdoor exercise for prisoners at Colorado State Penitentiary. For over twenty years, the close custody prisoners who occupy CSP – the vast majority of whom were held in conditions of solitary confinement – were only permitted to exercise in a cell similar to their living cell, with a narrow slit of a window that opened directly to the outdoors. As a result, these prisoners went months, years, or even decades without feeling the rain or sun. As a result of this case, which arose from an earlier individual lawsuit also litigated by the Civil Rights Clinic and CREEC (Anderson v. Colorado), the Colorado Department of Corrections will construct three outdoor exercise yards at CSP. The outcome in Decoteau has meaningfully contributed to the advancement of civil rights, because a group of students, their clinic professors, and a small civil rights nonprofit – along with the incarcerated men who served as named plaintiffs and constituted members of the class - took on the Colorado Department of Corrections, ultimately obtaining for some 500 prisoners the ability to exercise outdoors.

Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, Law Reform Advocacy Clinic

The Law Reform Advocacy Clinic at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, under the leadership of Professor Stefan Krieger, has just completed a ground-breaking, multi-plaintiff housing discrimination litigation that lasted for over 10 years. In 2004, the clinic began work on behalf of a number of tenants on a particularly complex and disturbing discrimination matter. Over the years, the landlord of a 54-unit building near the center of Farmingdale Village neglected maintenance of the building to force out tenants, and the Village prepared a redevelopment plan for the area that displaced any remaining tenants, most of them low-income Latino laborers. The Clinic filed a Fair Housing Act case (the “Rivera” case) on behalf of nine former tenants in federal court alleging that the Village’s redevelopment plans for the building intentionally targeted Latinos and that the developer and owner acted in concert with the Village in its discriminatory plans.  The case set a number of significant precedents. Among other things, for the first time in a written opinion in a housing discrimination case, a federal court recognized that plaintiffs displaced from their community because of discrimination can be awarded damages for “loss of enjoyment of life.” The case settled prior to trial with a consent decree that was an extraordinary victory for the clients. In addition to a substantial monetary award, each plaintiff was guaranteed housing in new developments, the Village agreed to set aside housing for low- and moderate-income residents, the Village agreed that its officials will be trained in fair housing law and procedures, and the Village agreed to ongoing compliance monitoring to ensure the consent decree is being implemented. The case has significant ramifications on Long Island, where racial and ethnic tensions still run high, and where more and more local governments are enacting laws aimed at reducing the places for poor immigrants to live.

Both awards, along with the CLEA Award for Outstanding Advocate for Clinical Teachers (being awarded posthumously to Gary Palm) will be presented at the AALS luncheon at the Clinical Conference on Monday, May 2nd. The Committee received an unusually large number of outstanding nominations in the case/project category this year, and we congratulate all of the nominees on their extraordinary accomplishments.

The CLEA Board acknowledges with gratitude the efforts of the CLEA Awards Committee:

Geneva Brown (Valparaiso)
Anju Gupta, Co-Chair (Rutgers-Newark)
Perry Moriearty, Co-Chair (Minnesota)
Kele Stewart (Miami)
Jane Stoever (Irvine)

2016 Shanara Gilbert Award to Prof. Perry Moriearty

Announcement via Prof. Christine Cimini:

 

We are pleased to announce that Perry Moriearty, Vaughan G. Papke Clinical Professor in Law at the University of Minnesota School of Law, has been selected as this year’s recipient of the clinical section’s Shanara Gilbert Award.  The award will be presented to Perry during a luncheon at the Clinical Legal Education Conference in Baltimore on Sunday, May 1, 2016. 

 

Designed to honor an "emerging clinician," the award is presented to a clinical professor with ten or fewer years of experience who has (1) a commitment to teaching and achieving social justice, particularly in the areas of race and the criminal justice system; (2) a passion for providing legal services and access to justice to individuals and groups most in need; (3) service to the cause of clinical legal education or to the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education; (4) an interest in international clinical legal education; and (5) an interest in the beauty of nature (desirable, but not required).

 

The nomination materials detailing Perry’s many accomplishments note that Perry’s work on race and criminal and juvenile justice issues is an archetype for how a clinician can combine teaching, scholarship, and law reform advocacy. As the co-director of the University of Minnesota Child Advocacy and Juvenile Justice Clinic Perry led her students into work on cutting edge projects related to the United States Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in the case Miller v. Alabama. This work has had a national impact on issues of race and justice in criminal and juvenile arenas.

 

Perry’s work on the Miller retroactivity issue has garnered substantial attention among academics, advocates and the media. Her 2015 article, Miller v. Alabama and the Retroactivity of Proportionality Rules, 17 J. CONST. L. 929, 981 (2015), has been featured in both local and national commentary, and was the subject of SCOTUSblog’s September 29, 2015 Academic Highlight. In January 2016, in Montgomery v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court held that Miller is retroactive, and Perry’s article was quoted and cited extensively in amicus briefs.  Perry’s work on the issue of juvenile life without parole has also led to her to act as an advisor on related matters outside of Minnesota. She has worked with national litigators, including Bryan Stevenson of Alabama’s Equal Justice Initiative and Marsha Levick of Philadelphia’s Juvenile Law Center, on coordinated litigation strategies at the Eighth Circuit and Supreme Court levels.

 

In addition, Perry is rapidly becoming an important voice in the scholarly community. She published a series of articles based on her research on race and juvenile and criminal justice issues that have made an impact not only on scholarship in this field, but also on public policy. Her work has been cited in some of the leading law reviews, but it also has provided support for litigation by racial justice advocates and has been used in legislative debates.

 

Perry routinely extends her work into the public service arena.  In addition to her clinical teaching and scholarship, she has played a critical role in legislation, policy and public advocacy on race and criminal and juvenile justice matters.  Over the last four years, at the request of the McArthur Foundation in 2012, she has been coordinating a state-level effort to draft and enact a multi-pronged progressive juvenile justice bill.

 

Perry served on the CLEA Board for four and a half years and has also presented workshops and led working groups at a number of the AALS conferences over the last several years.

 

Last year, Perry and her students worked with Carolina Rojas Flores, a human rights attorney and clinical professor at the Universidad Catolica de Oriente in Colombia who specializes in penitentiary law, on the development of her clinical program.  This work was part of the University of Minnesota’s USAID/Higher Education for Development (HED) human rights partnership with four law schools in Antioquia, Colombia.

 

Finally, Perry is an avid hiker, camper, kayaker and runner, spending as much of her free time as possible in undeveloped wilderness. Perry has kayaked portions of the Sea of Cortez and backpacked through areas of Maine and Colorado.  She and her husband have also climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro.

 

Please join me in recognizing Perry for her many accomplishments and contributions.  We look forward to celebrating her work together at the conference in Baltimore. 

Nominations Open for the 2016 Shanara Gilbert Award from the AALS Clinical Section

From Prof. Margaret Barry on the LawClinic and Lextern listservs:

The Awards Committee of the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education is now accepting nominations for the Shanara Gilbert Award, which will be given out during the AALS’s Conference on Clinical Legal Education in Baltimore, Maryland, April 30 – May 3, 2016.  

Designed to honor an "emerging clinician," the award is for a recent entrant (10 years or fewer) into clinical legal education who has demonstrated some or all of the following qualities:

            1) a commitment to teaching and achieving social justice, particularly in the areas of race and the criminal             justice system;

            2) a passion for providing legal services and access to justice to individuals and groups most in need;

            3) service to the cause of clinical legal education or to the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education;

            4) an interest in international clinical legal education; and

            5) an interest in the beauty of nature (desirable, but not required).

Please nominate a colleague who meets these criteria.  Nominations for the Gilbert Award must be received no later than March 15, 2016.

 

Past recipients include:

2001 Adele Bernhard (Pace University)

2002 Grady Jessup (North Carolina Central University)

2003 Beth Lyon (Villanova University)

2004 Esther Canty-Barnes (Rutgers School of Law — Newark)

2005 Melissa Breger (Albany)

2006 Michael Pinard (University of Maryland)

2007 Pam Metzger (Tulane)

2008 Kris Henning (Georgetown)

2009 Ron Whitener (University of Washington)

2010 Charles Auffant (Rutgers School of Law – Newark)

2011 Nekima Levy-Pounds (University of St. Thomas School of Law)

2012 Kimberly Ambrose (University of Washington)

2013 Sarah Gerwig-Moore (Mercer)

2014 Lisa Radtke Bliss (Georgia State)

2015 JoNel Newman (University of Miami)

NOMINATIONS GUIDELINES: To ensure that the Awards Committee has uniformity in what it is considering in support of each candidate, the Committee requests that nominations adhere to the following guidelines:

1)  To nominate someone, send the name of the nominee and a nominating statement setting forth why the Section should honor the individual, specifically referencing the award criteria outlined above where relevant.  The Committee strongly encourages nominators to obtain some supporting letters for the candidate, given that its deliberations are assisted immensely by a variety of voices speaking about a particular nominee.  Please note that there is a limit on the amount of supporting material that will be considered. Supporting materials for  nominations include: nominating statement of no more than five pages in length (required); a copy of the nominee's resume (required); a list of any scholarship, but not copies of the scholarship (required, but do not duplicate this if it is in the nominee's resume); no more than five letters or e-mails in support (no letter or e-mail should be more than four single-spaced pages long, exclusive of signatures, which may be multiple); and no more than five pages of any other materials. The nomination and documentary support must be submitted via e-mail either in Word or pdf files. Any nominators who want to submit supporting materials that they have in hard copy are responsible for converting them into portable document format or scanning them and cleaning and submitting them via pdf files attached to e-mail. 

2)  Members of the clinical community who have nominated a person previously are encouraged to re-nominate that person for this year’s award, provided that the person is still a recent entrant (10 years or fewer) into clinical legal education. The selection of one nominee over another should not be viewed as a statement against those not selected. The Committee can select only one person and someone not selected one year might be selected the next.

3) The Committee’s deliberations are assisted immensely by a variety of voices speaking about a particular nominee. Nominators are strongly encouraged to seek letters in support of the nominee from colleagues. Such letters may also include letters of support from students whom the candidate has supervised in a clinical setting.

Please send your nominations by e-mail no later than March 15, 2016 to:

Margaret Martin Barry

AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education

[email protected]

 Awards Committee Members: 

Sameer Ashar (Irvine)

Margaret Martin Barry, Chair (Vermont) 

Dionne Gonder (North Carolina Central)

Lisa Martin (Catholic)

2015 CLEA Award for Outstanding Advocate for Clinical Teachers and Award for for Excellence in a Public Interest Case or Project

Via Prof. Anju Gupta (emphasis added):

The CLEA Board of Directors is thrilled to announce that Claudia Angelos, Clinical Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, is the recipient of the 2015 CLEA Award for Outstanding Advocate for Clinical Teachers. The CLEA Board is equally thrilled to announce that the Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics are the recipients of the 2015 CLEA Award for Excellence in a Public Interest Case or Project for their work on civil rights and criminal justice abuses highlighted by the death of Michael Brown.

Outstanding Advocate for Clinical Teachers:

    Claudia Angelos joined the faculty of New York University School of Law in 1980. She teaches lawyering and litigation and directs the Civil Rights Clinic, the Racial Justice Clinic, and the New York Civil Liberties Clinic at NYU Law. She is a national expert on prisoners’ rights and during her thirty-five years at NYU, she and her students have litigated more than 100 civil rights cases in the New York federal courts. Claudia has also been a long-time advocate for clinic education and has served in leadership positions on the boards of both CLEA and the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT). She has been “the guiding force in countless board meetings, committee meetings, conference calls and email loops” in both CLEA and SALT, her nominators noted in their letter of support, and “[d]ozens of comments, letters, briefs and notices have been drafted and issued with her participation and guidance.” They highlight in particular Claudia’s work on behalf of the clinical community in the American Bar Association (ABA) accreditation standards revision process. Claudia has, in the words of her nominators, be an “unflagging, zealous and skilled” advocate for clinicians, helping “lead the successful battle to reaffirm clinical status, to increase the minimum required skills credits, and to identify practical skills as a critical part of the learning outcomes to be expected of all students.” Over the last six years, Claudia has attended virtually every meeting of the ABA Standards Review Committee and many meetings of the Council on Legal Education, developing working relationships with members of the Committee and Council to inform and influence the deliberations. “While many challenges remain and we have not solved all our problems,” Claudia’s nominators conclude, "clinical education has come out of the comprehensive review in a much stronger position than we imagined at the beginning of the process. Claudia was the keystone and well deserves our recognition.”

Excellence in a Public Interest Case or Project:

    Located in the heart of downtown St. Louis, the Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics are dedicated to advocating for the disadvantaged and the betterment of the community at large while providing unique and challenging experiential learning opportunities for students interested in public interest law. The Legal Clinics have provided pro bono legal services to the community for more than 41 years and currently provide legal services in six clinical programs (Civil Advocacy, Criminal Defense, Entrepreneurship and Community Development, Externships, Judicial Process Externship and Mediation) that house 10 practice areas.
 

   In the aftermath of Michael Brown’s death, a few things were abundantly clear: their community would forever be changed, deep-seated issues of mistrust and injustice continue to roadblock regional growth and, if there was any community poised to effect change, it was the St. Louis legal community.

    Guided by the University’s social justice mission, the attorneys of the SLU LAW Legal Clinics wasted no time involving their clinical practice areas in the search for solutions. In fact, they have been involved in many of the issues Ferguson brought attention to long before they came under such a bright national spotlight. With a small staff of seven attorneys (Professors Amany Hacking, Brendan Roediger, Dana Malkus, John Ammann, Patricia Harrison, Patricia Lee, Susan McGraugh), one social worker (Lauren Choate), Professor of Practice (Steve Hanlon), two staff (Greta Henderson and LeAnn Upton) and many dedicated clinic students, the Legal Clinics found a variety of ways to engage students, faculty and the community during the 2014-2015 academic year.

    The related legal work and advocacy involved multiple responses on a variety of legal matters including: community outreach and education; national, state and local media awareness of civil rights and criminal law abuses; lawsuits in state and federal courts on municipal warrant and tear gassing abuses; testimony before the governor-appointed Ferguson Commission; municipal, legislative and executive testimony; and leading meetings and panel discussions at the law school and in the community in an effort to seek solutions. Together, these professors, as representatives of the Legal Clinics, continue to bring attention to vital issues, fight for those who seek justice but do not have the means to fight themselves and work towards real solutions for a just future, all while teaching and mentoring their students to do the same.


Both awards will be presented at the AALS luncheon at the Clinical Conference on Wednesday, May 6th. The Committee received an unusually large number of outstanding nominations this year. At Wednesday's luncheon, we will give honorable mention to some schools that had particularly impressive projects.


The CLEA Board acknowledges with gratitude the efforts of the CLEA Awards Committee:

Geneva Brown (Valparaiso)
Anju Gupta, Co-Chair (Rutgers-Newark)
Perry Moriearty, Co-Chair (Minnesota)
Kele Stewart (Miami)
Jane Stoever (Irvine)

2015 M. Shanara Gilbert Award to Prof. JoNel Newman of Miami

Read this great news from Prof. Jayesh Rathod:

The Executive Committee of the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education is pleased to announce that Professor JoNel Newman, Professor of Clinical Education and Director of the Health Rights Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law, has been selected as the 2015 recipient of the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education's M. Shanara Gilbert Award.  We will honor JoNel and present the award at a luncheon on Tuesday, May 5, at the Conference on Clinical Legal Education in Rancho Mirage, CA.

As you know, the M. Shanara Gilbert Award honors an "emerging clinician," with ten or fewer years of experience who has (1) a commitment to teaching and achieving social justice, particularly in the areas of race and the criminal justice system; (2) a passion for providing legal services and access to justice to individuals and groups most in need; (3) service to the cause of clinical legal education or to the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education; (4) an interest in international clinical legal education; and (5) an interest in the beauty of nature (desirable, but not required).

JoNel’s colleagues and students at the University of Miami submitted a compelling nomination packet, describing her long-standing commitment to social justice, creative pedagogical approaches, and commitment to serving marginalized communities in the Miami area and beyond.  One nominator wrote of the significant contributions of the Health Rights Clinic that JoNel directs, noting that her students “have served over two thousand vulnerable health-impaired clients …. and have secured over two million dollars in entitlements and public benefits for their clients.”  Her nominators wrote of a myriad of innovative and impactful community-based projects that JoNel has spearheaded, including initiatives relating to the Haitian diaspora, veterans’ rights, pediatric care, and more.  JoNel’s students wrote that she “embodies the qualities sought in the recipient of the Shanara Gilbert Award” and her colleagues at Miami herald her “extraordinary efforts and contributions to clinical legal education, service, and justice.”

Please join us in congratulating JoNel on this important recognition!

The Executive Committee also gratefully acknowledges the hard work of the Awards Committee: Professor Sameer Ashar, UC-Irvine School of Law; Professor Margaret M. Barry, Vermont Law School (co-chair); Professor Dionne Gonder-Stanley, North Carolina Central School of Law; Professor Mary Lynch, Albany Law School (co-chair); and Professor Lisa Martin, Columbus School of Law, Catholic University of America.

 

Noble

In May, the movie Noble will open; it is a biography of Christina Noble, Irish children's rights activist.  In advance of the debut, the producers solicited stories from women doing courageous work.  

Prof. Brittany Stringfellow-Otey received a nomination.   Here is her profile. 

These are my favorite quotes from my colleague and friend:

“My goal is for poverty to bother you for the rest of your life . . . I don’t want you to be able to walk the block to your office and not be completely troubled by those asking for money or suffering from addiction. I want you to do something about it, with your time and resources.”

“I want to be an old lady working on skid row. I will always be here.”

Professor Sarah Deer Is a MacArthur Fellow!

I admit that the one email I dread every September is the announcement of the MacArthur Fellows --nothing like feeling totally inadequate three weeks into the new school year by reading about the exceptional accomplishments of this extraordinarily creative and hardworking group of individuals.  I personally much prefer the announcement of the Darwin Awards. 

But this year when I saw the dreaded email from the MacArthur Foundation, I quickly noted that the clinical community’s own Sarah Deer has been selected!  Professor Deer is on the faculty of William Mitchell College of Law and is co-director of their Indian Law Clinic.  She is a tireless advocate who has been instrumental in developing legal protections for Native American victims of domestic violence.  A description of Professor Deer’s work can be found here.  A full list of this year’s MacArthur Fellows can be found here.  Congratulations, Professor Deer, on a truly extraordinary and well-earned distinction!