Clinical Law Prof Blog

UDC Law Launches Conversations with Clinicians

UDC Law is launching our Conversations with Clinicians speaker series. Each conversation in our series will feature a UDC Law clinician hosting a special guest or two to discuss a topic of interest to the clinical community.

UDC Law has a dual mission: to provide legal services to indigent district residents and to empower students from marginalized and unrepresented communities to join the legal profession. A pioneer in clinical legal education, UDC Law remains deeply committed to the advancement of clinical education. The Conversations with Clinicians series will engage leading clinicians across the country to explore various topics of interest to our community. Here are details on the three conversations scheduled this semester:

On Friday March 11 from 12:30-1:30pm EST UDC Law Dean Renee Hutchins will be in conversation with the University of Maryland’s Michael Pinard. Dean Hutchins and Prof. Pinard will explore career trajectories for clinicians. To register for this first conversation, please visit https://bit.ly/UDCLawConvos

 

On Friday March 25, UDC Law Associate Dean for Clinical and Experiential Programs, Lindsay M. Harris, will engage with Prof. & Associate Provost Laila Hlass of Tulane and Assistant Dean for Experiential Education Allison Korn of UCLA to discuss trends in experiential legal education discussed in their 2020 Villanova Law Review article, Assessing the Experiential Revolution. Save the date!

Last but certainly not least, on Friday April 22, UDC Law General Practice Co-Director, Tianna Gibbs, will engage with Prof. Norrinda Hayat, Director of the Civil Justice Clinic at Rutgers Law, to discuss Prof. Hayat’s critically important 2021 Clinical Law Review piece, Freedom Pedagogy: Towards Teaching Antiracist Clinics. Save the date!

All are welcome to join in 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, ([email protected]) with any questions, and we hope to see you in November.

Call for Submissions and Updates for the next CLP Scholarship Round Up (!)

The Clinical Law Prof Blog is once again putting together a scholarship round-up so we can share and amplify the amazing work of our community. Please take a moment to complete the form below. Multiple submissions are welcome!

https://forms.gle/5SYq1khYMQSqKRsK6

Call for Papers: The Disparity Law Journal

Via Alisha Hennen:

 

Please find below a call for submissions for a new journal, The Disparity Law Journal,  which is being published as an imprint of the Journal of Law.

 

The theme for our inaugural issue is Disparity in Legal Citation. We seek to present both commentary and empirical work on the patterns we see in legal citation practice, which we understand to generally favor authors who are White men at the most highly-ranked institutions.  We are also interested in commentary on how the use of citation metrics to judge law schools may institutionalize and reify bias and discrimination. HeinOnline's ScholarRank and its work towards incorporating citation metrics into law school rankings would be just one example of the phenomenon we seek to explore in this issue.

 

Dates for submission:

Submit a proposal by 7/15/2020

Notification of Acceptance by 8/1/2020

Final draft due on 10/1/2020

 

Journal Description:

This journal, an imprint of the Journal of Law, is a periodic attempt to highlight, challenge, and address inequality and inequity in law through the publication of readable and practical articles. We welcome both scholarly and unconventional submissions on this topic. Our vision is that we will produce a place for discussions about systemic unfairness in law and law schools. Our approach to dismantling traditions of disparity provides space for all at the table.

 

Mission Statement: 
Disparity means the condition of being unequal. This journal is an attempt to challenge and shape the conversation about this condition in law and justice through innovative approaches to legal research, scholarship, and theory. 

 

Audience: 
Lawyers, judges, law professors, law school staff, law librarians, law students. Specifically, those who have been or continue to be disenfranchised in the law or by the American legal academy and have innovative ideas to reform, grow, change and shape the future of legal education and the legal profession.

 

Length of articles:

No more than 18k. Preference for shorter, readable works.

 

Type of author:

We accept articles from anyone interested in furthering scholarship on disenfranchisement and disparity in legal academia and the US legal system.

 

Original works or reprints:

We welcome original works and reprints.

 

Editorial Board:

Ana Isabel Delgado Valentin, Suffolk University Law School

Nicole P. Dyszlewski, Roger Williams University School of Law

Alisha Hennen, Mitchell Hamline School of Law

Rebecca Sherman, United States Courts for the 9^th Circuit

Genevieve B. Tung, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

 

Submissions and questions can be sent to Alisha Hennen at [email protected]

PUBLICATION OPPORTUNITY - Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Criminal Law Opinions

Call for Authors

 

Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Criminal Law Opinions

 

The U.S. Feminist Judgments Project seeks contributors of rewritten judicial opinions and commentary on those opinions for an edited collection entitled Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Criminal Law Opinions. This edited volume is part of a collaborative project among law professors and others to rewrite, from a feminist perspective, key judicial decisions. The initial volume, Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court, edited by Kathryn M. Stanchi, Linda L. Berger, and Bridget J. Crawford, was published in 2016 by Cambridge University Press. Subsequent volumes in the series have focused on different courts and different subjects. This call is for contributions to a volume of criminal law decisions rewritten from a feminist perspective.

Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Criminal Law Opinion editors Sarah Deer, Corey Rayburn Yung, and Bennett Capers seek prospective authors to rewrite criminal law opinions covering a range of topics. With the help of an Advisory Committee, the editors have chosen a list of cases to be rewritten (as noted below). Potential authors are welcome to suggest other cases, though certain constraints (including a preference for avoiding cases that have already been or soon will be rewritten for other volumes in this series) may preclude their addition to the volume. We also seek authors to provide brief commentary on the original and rewritten cases.

Rewritten opinions may be reimagined majority opinions, dissents, or concurrences, as appropriate to the court. Feminist judgment writers will be bound by law and precedent in effect at the time of the original decision (with a 10,000-word maximum for the rewritten judgment). Commentators will explain the original court decision, how the feminist judgment differs from the original judgment, and what difference the feminist judgment might have made going forward (4,000-word maximum for the commentary). The volume editors conceive of feminism broadly and invite applications that seek to advance, complicate, or critique feminist ideas and advocacy. We are “big tent” and welcome all types of feminism, from liberal feminism to abolitionist feminism. We certainly welcome an intersectional analysis of cases where sex or gender played a role alongside racism, ableism, classism, and other concerns.

Those who are interested in rewriting an opinion or providing the commentary on one of the rewritten criminal law cases should email the volume editors ([email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]) and put “Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Criminal Law Opinions” in the subject line. In the body of the email, please indicate whether you are interested in writing an opinion or providing a commentary, and specify one or more of the cases from the list below that you would like to rewrite or comment on. You are also free to suggest a case not listed.

Please note that the editors are committed to diversity in all of its forms, and committed to including a diverse group of authors in this volume. If you feel an aspect of your personal identity is important to your participation in this volume, please feel free to include that in your expression of interest.

Applications are due by June 1, 2020. The editors expect to notify accepted authors and commentators no later than July 1, 2020. First drafts of rewritten opinions will be due on October 1, 2020. First drafts of commentaries will be due on November 1, 2020.

List of cases:

1.     Oliphant v. Suquamish, 435 U.S. 191 (1978) (tribal criminal jurisdiction)

2.     Winnebago v. BigFire, 25 Indian L. Rptr 6229 (1998) (strict scrutiny for gender cases)

3.     Elonis v. United States, 575 U.S. 723 (2015) (threatening communications case)

4.     U.S. v. Nwoye, 824 F.3d 1129 (2016) (domestic violence/duress)

5.     Keeler v. Superior Ct of Amador Cnty, 470 P.2d 617 (Cal. 1970) (killing of fetus)

6.     Whitner v. State, 492 S.E.2d 777 (1977) (criminalizing prenatal activity)

7.     Coker v. Georgia, 433 US. 584 (1977) (death penalty and rape)

8.     McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 (1987) (death penalty and race)

9.     People v. Berry, 556 P.2d 777 (1976) (provocation)

10.  Girouard v. State, 583 A.2d 718 (Md. 1991) (provocation)

11.  People v. Helen Wu, 286 Cal. Rptr. 868 (1991) (cultural defense)

12.  State v. Norman, 324 N.C. 253 (1989) (self-defense)

13.  State v. Rusk, 424 A.2d 720 (1981) (acquaintance rape)

14.  Massachusetts v. Blache, 880 N.E.2d 736 (Mass. 2008) (rape/intoxication)

15.  McQuirter v. State, 36 Ala. 707 (1953) (rape/race)

16.  State re M.T.S., 609 A.2d 1266 (N.J. 1992) (juveniles/rape)

Zero-Tolerance: The Trump Administration's Human Rights Violations Against Migrants on the Southern Border

My friend and co-author, Allyson McKinney Timm, observes that when Americans invoke the language of "human rights" the picture often shifts to some faraway land, somewhere else less concerned with law and liberty. But the principles of inherent human dignity, justice, and morality at the foundation of modern human rights laws are also at the foundation of American independence and constitutional rights. Human rights are and must be an integral part of our politics, law, and government in the United States.

In our article forthcoming in the Drexel Law Review, Zero-Tolerance: The Trump Administration's Human Rights Violations Against Migrants on the Southern Border, we analyze the Trump Administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policies through lenses of humans rights laws and principles. It’s available for download at SSRN here.

The article arises out of long connections and relationships in the clinical community. Ally and I met at least a decade ago at an AALS Conference on Clinical Legal Education in a session on religion, faith, and clinical practice and pedagogy. Ally was a fellow in Yale’s Human Rights Clinic. She completed seminary at Yale Divinity School after her season in the clinic, and she has developed critical, compelling work at the intersection of faith, religious communities, and human rights – centering the inherent dignity of individuals (the imago dei in our Christian traditions) in law and policy.

In recent years, Ally founded Justice Revival. It became a client and stalwart partner for the Community Justice Clinic that I direct at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law. Justice Revival is committed to advancing human rights education and advocacy in the United States, especially within communities of faith. 

In this spirit, Justice Revival and the Community Justice Clinic embarked on a multi-year project to analyze the Trump Administration’s immigration policies through lenses of human rights and international human rights laws. Clinic students worked closely with Ally through structured, progressive research to consider whether zero-tolerance enforcement, family separations, child detentions, and other features of Trump’s immigration policies complied with international human rights.

We found that they do not. The Trump Administration’s policies and actions amount to profound, gross violations of human rights under treaties the United States has ratified, conventions it has signed but not yet ratified, and under customary international law. These policies led the United States to violate even deeper, more fundamental, moral principles that are the foundation of human rights law.

Our article merely builds on the mighty advocacy of many more heroic, dedicated, brilliant lawyers, clinicians, and journalists who work tirelessly to illuminate these policies and their effects on people migrating across the southern border and seeking asylum. We are witnesses, helping amplify their voices to create an analytical record of these catastrophic, immoral, illegal actions under the Trump Administration.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there may seem to be only one story, and this may seem like old news to some. But the story of the Trump Administration’s callous cruelty to migrants and asylum-seekers continues to this day. It shows us much of this President’s values and the lengths to which his administration will go to impose its fearful, impulsive will.

The zero-tolerance story reveals the utter necessity of a government that prioritizes the inherent dignity of all people as its greatest end. Cruelty cannot be our national policy; we are only great when we lead with faith, hope, and love. The United States simply cannot survive by building cowardly, brittle walls against the world. We will only ever flourish when we embrace all our neighbors and ourselves with dignity and justice. 

Scholarship Round-up!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the call for recent scholarship. Members of our community have produced a number of truly interesting articles. They are divided into broad categories below for easy perusal. Congrats to all the authors!

 

ASYLUM & IMMIGRATION

Kathryn Banks, The Trickle Up Effect: Incorporating an Understanding of Immigration Law and Polices into Best Interest Analysis in State Child Welfare Proceedings, 17Wash. U. Glob. Stud. L. Rev. 627 (2018).

Jon Bauer, with Katherine McKenzie and P. Preston Reynolds, Asylum Seekers in a Time of Record Forced Global Displacement: The Role of Physicians, 34 Journal of General Internal Medicine 137 (2019), This article discusses the role of medical evaluations in asylum cases and best practices for collaboration between physicians and legal advocates for asylum-seekers.

Julie Dahlstrom, The Elasticity of Human Trafficking, 108 Calif. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2020). This Article examines the historical and continuing expansion of trafficking definitions in the United States with a particular focus on sex trafficking. It posits that further broadening must be approached with careful consideration of the proposed benefits and the potential dangers of overreaching.

Lindsay Harris, Withholding Protection, Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. Vol. 50.3 (forthcoming Spring 2019). This article explores the interplay of two forms of "speedy deportations" -- the expedited removal system and the practice of reinstatement of removal. Together, they can prevent an asylum seeker from meaningfully gaining protection in the United States. The article proposes one solution to this problem in the form of body worn cameras for Customs and Border Protection officers at the border.

Lindsay Harris, Contemporary Family Detention and Legal Advocacy, 21 Harvard Latino Law Rev. 135 (2018). This piece paints a picture of the practice of detaining immigrant families under the Obama and Trump Administration and the attendant legal advocacy. The piece advocates for robust attorney engagement in representing asylum seeking families detained in Texas and Pennsylvania.

Danielle Jefferis, Constitutionally Unaccountable: Privatized Immigration Detention, 95 Indiana L.J. ___ (2019). This Article is the first to expose and examine the absence of a constitutional tort remedy for the people behind the walls of for-profit immigration prisons.

Danielle Jefferis, It’s Just Like Prison: Is a Civil (Nonpunitive) System of Immigration Detention Theoretically Possible? (with René Lima Marín),  96 Denv. L. Rev. ___ (2019). This Article questions a fundamental premise on which the U.S. immigration detention system is built: Is a civil—that is, nonpunitive—system of immigration detention even possible?

Natalie Nanasi, Are Domestic Abusers Terrorists? Rhetoric, Reality, and Asylum Law, 91 Temple Law Review 215 (2019). This article critically examines the impact of reconceptualizing intimate partner abuse as “terrorism in the home,” with a focus on asylum law. It argues that even though reframing may accurately describe the political and societal implications of domestic abuse (as well as the state’s complicity in perpetuating it) and has the potential to expand access to asylum for survivors, the terrorist label should be applied with caution due the racial and religious disparities in the application of the term and the significant criminal and immigration consequences for those who are branded terrorists as well as those who harbor or materially support them (potentially including survivors themselves).

Anita Sinha, Defining Detention: The Intervention of the European Court of Human Rights in the Detention of Involuntary Migrants, 50 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. (forthcoming May 2019). This Article examines the consequences of a crisis moniker to frame the recent rise in involuntary migration into Europe. The Article addresses first how a migration “crisis” has normalized carceral migration control in the region, and then analyzes the European Court of Human Rights’ post-“crisis” judgments on migrant detention.

CLINICAL EDUCATION & LEGAL EDUCATION

Deborah Archer, Political Lawyering for the 21st Century, forthcoming in the Denver Law Review. This article contends that clinical education needs to embrace and reimagine political lawyering for the 21^st century in order to prepare aspiring lawyers to tackle both new and chronic issues of injustice through a broad array of advocacy strategies.

Jodi S. Balsam and Margaret Reuter, Externship Assessment Project: An empirical study of supervisor evaluations of extern work performance, 25 Clinical L. Rev. 1 (Fall 2018). Qualitative data analysis of field supervisors’ evaluations of student externs to reveal how educational opportunities vary among different field placement settings and practice areas, and the extent to which student characteristics and demographics correspond to the student practice experience.

Elizabeth Cooper, 100 YEARS OF WOMEN AT FORDHAM: A FOREWORD AND REFLECTION, 87 Fordham L. Rev. Online 39 (2019).  Elizabeth Cooper reviews the checkered history of women at Fordham Law. She was the 22nd woman to be hired at Fordham Law.  Among Fordham’s most famous alumna was Geraldine Ferraro

Jill C. Engle, There Isn’t Any Dumpster, American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy and the Law, Volume 27 (2019). Through the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project while I was in law school, I taught at a Washington, D.C. high school and wrote a reflection essay at the end of my experience about how the principal, and the school’s unsung hero, helped me recognize the systematic flaws that disadvantage low-income, students of color in schools today. The article discusses what those students taught me: that the law should reflect their humanity, it should diminish their marginalization, and it should speak about that work in their voice.

Lindsay Harris, Learning in Baby Jail:  Lessons from Law Student Engagement in Family Detention Centers, 25 Clinical Law Review155 (2018). This article examines the phenomenon of law student engagement in family detention centers and shares the results of a national survey of professors leading trips to engage in detention centers in Texas and Pennsylvania. The article proposes a best practices framework for law school engagement in crisis lawyering in this context and beyond -- for example in adult detention centers and at the border.

Peter Joy, The Uneasy History of Experiential Education in U.S. Law Schools, 122 Dick. L.  Rev. 551 (2018)

Robert Kuehn, A Study of the Relationship Between Law School Coursework and Bar Exam Outcomes, 68 J. Legal Educ. (forthcoming 2019) (co-author)

Lynnise Pantin, The Legacy of Civil Rights and the Opportunity for Transactional Law Clinics, Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice, Vol 7, No.2, 2019. This Article describes how not much has changed with respect to economic justice since the 50 years since the end of the Civil Rights Movement and describes the potential opportunities for Transactional Law Clinics

Victoria Phillips, Intellectual Property Gets Experienced,  59 IDEA 249 (2018). In this recent essay, I reflect on developments in the decade since publication of that piece and explore the growth and maturing of the new community of law school intellectual property law clinics. I find that in most respects these new clinics stand comfortably on shoulders of the pioneers of the clinical legal education movement.

Victoria Phillips & Cynthia L. Dahl, Innovation and Tradition: A Survey of Intellectual Property and Technology Legal Clinics, 25 Clinical L. Rev. 95 (Fall 2018). This article distills the results of a comprehensive survey of 72 directors of IP and Technology Clinics into themes that analyze the focus and aspirations of this new clinical community.

Jeff Selbin, Colleen Shanahan, Anna Carpenter & Alyx Mark, Measuring Law School Clinics, 92 Tulane L. Rev. 547 (2018). This article presents findings that shed some empirical light on the teaching-service mission of law school clinics. Analyzing thousands of unemployment insurance cases involving different types of representation, we found that: (1) clinical law students perform similarly to practicing attorneys in their use of legal procedures, and (2) clinical law students' clients experience similar case outcomes to clients of practicing attorneys, suggesting that clinics are delivering on their promise both to train new lawyers and to serve underrepresented clients.

Hina Shah, Radical Reconstruction: (Re)Embracing Affirmative Action in Private Employment, 48 U. of Baltimore L. Rev. 203 (2019).

 

COMMUNITY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT & TRANSACTIONAL LAW

Priya Baskaran, The Economic Justice Imperative for Lawyers in "Trump Country", Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice, Vol 7, No.2, 2019. This article is a call to action for rural law schools to meaningfully incorporate economic justice into transactional legal education, and in doing so, train much needed rural advocates, legal experts, and local leaders.

Ted DeBarbieri, Lawmakers As Jobs Buyers, 88 Fordham Law Review ___ (forthcoming 2019). Following high-profile state and city tax breaks for companies like Amazon and others, this Article argues for a two-step proposal to limit subnational government actions to incentivize business location decisions.

Ted DeBarbieri, Urban Anticipatory Governance, 46 Florida State University Law Review 1 (2019). This Article offers a framework for how local government can promote resident participation in influencing how land use and economic development projects are carried out. It borrows from existing forward-looking, flexible, and inclusive public engagement examples such as New York City’s response to global climate change.

Ted DeBarbieri, Thematic Overview: Race, Place, and Pedagogy in Achieving Access to Justice Through Community Economic Development,  27 Journal of Affordable Housing and Community Development Law 467 (2019). In recent years, scholars and practitioners have advanced the conversation about CED methods and efficacy. This piece is a brief thematic overview of the discussion that occurred in January 2018, and a synopsis of the abstracts that follow.

Annie Eisenberg, Distributive Justice and Rural America, __ B.C. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2020). This article argues that rural communities did not just "die" as many suggest, but that decades of intentional policy decisions undermining rural livelihoods contributed to the ruralization of economic distress. These decisions ultimately effectuated a "sacrifice" of rural welfare in the name of the greater good, the justice of which warrants examination.

Annie Eisenberg, Just Transitions, 92 S. Cal. L. Rev. 2 (2019). This article discusses why and how environmental decisionmaking should contemplate economic displacement, with a focus on the challenges facing coalfield communities as policymakers increasingly embrace decarbonization goals.

Jay A. Mitchell, Whiteboard and Black-Letter:  Visual Communication in Commercial Contracts, 20 U. Pa. Bus. L. J. 815 (2018). The paper discusses why visual methods are useful in transactional work and why visuals are not often observed in contracts; assesses existing scholarship regarding visual methods and contracts; explores treatment of visuals under U.S. contract interpretation and evidentiary principles; identifies characteristics of transactional situations where visual executions may be especially helpful; and proposes actions intended to build the case for such use.

Lynnise Pantin, The Wealth Gap and the Racial Disparities in the Startup Ecosystem, St. Louis University Law Journal, Vol. 62, No. 2, 2018. This Article explains how the United States’ history of bolstering wealth creation for some, while inhibiting wealth creation for people of color, matters for understanding the startup ecosystem today. The Article describes how access to traditional and innovative sources of capital raising perpetuates the racial wealth gap, and this Article makes concrete proposals for addressing these shortcomings.

 

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Priya Baskaran, Respect the Hustle: Returning Citizens, Necessity Entrepreneurship, & Social Enterprise Strategies, 78 Md. L. Rev. (2019 Forthcoming). This Article addresses a pervasive and growing problem for returning citizens – high rates of economic insecurity – and as a novel solution, proposes the creation of Economic Justice Incubators a new municipally led social enterprise strategy. 

Josh Gupta-Kagan, The Intersection Between Young Adult Sentencing and Mass Incarceration, 2018 Wisc. L. Rev. 669 (2018).

Danielle Jefferis, Delegating Care, Evading Review: The Federal Tort Claims Act, the Discretionary Function Exception, and Private Prisons, 80 La. L. Rev. ___ (2019). This Article highlights and focuses on a discrete—but critical—way in which the federal government evades judicial review of its conduct: through its reliance on the Federal Tort Claims Act’s discretionary-function exception when faced with prisoners’ claims of inadequate medical care in private prisons.

Peter Joy, Attempted Ethics Violations, 33 Crim. Justice 55 (Winter 2019)

Peter Joy, Police Misconduct and Release Dismissal Agreements, 33 Crim. Justice 31 (Fall 2018)

Peter Joy, Prosecutors and Use of Subpoenas, 33 Crim. Justice 44 (Spring 2018)

Peter Joy, Sentencing Reform: Fixing Root Problems, 87 UMKC L. Rev. 97 (2018)

Peter Joy, Postconviction Prosecutorial Duties, 32 Crim. Just. 53 (Winter 2018) (co-author)

Zina Makar, Displacing Due Process, DePaul Law Review, (Spring 2018). This piece identifies pretrial detention as a contributor to mass incarceration and attributes this problem to a theory I coined called prospective procedural displacement.  I argue that procedural displacement occurs often in the criminal justice system, but that prospective displacement on the front end is illegitimate because it wrongly relies on the assumption that trial procedures will correct and prejudices that occurred in the pretrial stage.

Tiffany Murphy, Prosecuting the Executive, San Diego Law Review Vol. 56:105 (2019). This Article considers when criminal acts by those in the Executive Branch rise to the level warranting the appointment of a special prosecutor.  By examining prior uses of the special counsel, it becomes clear why special counsel are suited to investigate criminality within senior members of the executive branch.

Jenny Robert, The Innocence Movement and Misdemeanors, 98 B.U. L. Rev. 101 (2018). This Article analyzes the eighty-five documented misdemeanor exonerations on the National Registry of Exonerations. It then discusses how the Innocence Movement’s nascent interest in misdemeanors, in addition to exonerating a small number of wrongfully-convicted individuals, will highlight systemic causes of such errors in reform efforts that will ultimately benefit others facing misdemeanor charges. The Article also cautions how an innocentric focus on misdemeanors could overtake a developing narrative of the disproportionate and unfair direct and collateral consequences of misdemeanor convictions.

DISABILITY & HEALTH LAW

Natalie M. Chin, Group Homes as Sex Police and the Role of the Olmstead Integration Mandate (August 1, 2018). N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change, Vol. 42, 2018. 

David R. Katner, Up In Smoke: Removing Marijuana from Schedule I, 27 Boston University Public Interest Law Journal 167 (Winter 2018). This tracks the history of the Marijuana Tax Act and the racist factors that help pass the initial federal regulation of marijuana, then it focuses on the difficulties for investigators and researchers to access marijuana for medical research. It identifies state legislation that acknowledges the medical applications of marijuana, a condition which precludes the Schedule I classification, and it cites internet footage of infants with seizures being treated with non-THC infused medications distilled from marijuana.

Medha D. Makhlouf, Health Justice for Immigrants, 4 U. Pa. J.L. & Pub. Aff. 235 (2019). The Affordable Care Act was supposed to expand access to affordable health insurance and promote greater health care equity, but it largely left out the 23 million noncitizens living in the United States. This Article makes the case for a more inclusive health law and policy that addresses disparities in immigrants’ access to affordable health care.

Medha D. Makhlouf, The Public Charge Rule as Public Health Policy, 16 Ind. Health L. Rev. __ (2019). On October 10, 2018, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would transform more than a century of public charge policy, which relates to the admission of noncitizens based on the likelihood that they will not become dependent on the U.S. government for support. This article identifies concern for public health as a factor in the development of public charge policy and demonstrates how the proposed rule abandons this rationale

Claire Raj, Disability Law as an Agent of School Reform, 94 Wash. L. Rev. ___  (forthcoming December 2019)

Claire Raj, Coerced Choice: School Vouchers and Students with Disabilities, Emory L.J.  ____ (Forthcoming May 2019).

Blake Reid, Internet Architecture and Disability, Indiana Law Journal (forthcoming). This article uses the Internet law literature on internal and external perspectives to analyze new areas for pursuing Internet accessibility for people with disabilities.

 

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Natalie Nanasi, Disarming Domestic Abusers, Harvard Law and Policy Review (forthcoming 2020). This article addresses legal and procedural gaps that inhibit the enforcement of federal and state laws prohibiting the possession of firearms by perpetrators of intimate partner violence. It proposes strategies – including legislation, implementation and litigation – that can stem the tide of intimate partner homicide.

 

EDUCATION & SCHOOLS

Leah A. Hill, DISTURBING DISPARITIES: BLACK GIRLS AND THE SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE, 87 Fordham L. Rev. Online 58 (2019). The most recent data from the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights reveals that one of the harshest forms of discipline—out of school suspension—is imposed on black girls at seven times the rate of their white peers.

Josh Gupta-Kagan, Reevaluating School Searches Following School-to-Prison Pipeline Reforms, 87 Fordham L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2019).

Emily Suski, The Title IX Paradox, 108 California L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2020)

Emily Suski, The School Civil Rights Vacuum, 66 UCLA L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2019)

 

FAMILY LAW

Leah A. Hill, Loving Lessons: White Supremacy, Loving v. Virginia, and Disproportionality in the Child Welfare System, Fordham Law Review, Vol. 86, 2018. It is widely accepted that anti-miscegenation laws worked to preserve white supremacy—particularly, the superiority of white people to blacks—but these laws also worked to forestall the creation of interracial families. … By focusing on the harm—or “damage”—of being biracial, these laws foreshadowed the pervasive disproportionality in the child welfare system today. 

Lisa Martin, No Right to Counsel, No Access Without: The Poor Child’s Unconstitutional Catch-22, __ Florida Law Review __ (forthcoming). This article evaluates a federal court rule that requires parents who bring civil cases on behalf of their minor children pro se to retain private counsel or face dismissal of the case.  As such courts are not required to appoint counsel for indigent parents and children and rarely do so, the article critiques the rule as a deprivation of fundamental constitutional rights and a denial of access to justice for children.

Shanta Trivedi, The Harm of Child Removal, N.Y.U. Journal of Law & Social Change, (forthcoming Spring 2019). This article is the first to comprehensively examine why the harm of removal should be a featured part of every child welfare decision and how to incorporate this information into existing legal frameworks to achieve the stated purpose of the child welfare system and truly protect our children.

 

HOUSING

Anthony Alfieri, Black, Poor, and Gone: Civil Rights Law’s Inner-City Crisis, 54 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. (2019) Today, in the post–civil rights era, new socio-legal research on the inner city casts a specially instructive light on the past, present, and future work of community-based advocacy groups, anti-poverty and civil rights organizations, and law school clinical programs. To understand the crisis of civil rights law in failing to alleviate poverty and ameliorate segregation in the nation’s urban and suburban areas, this Article maps the current landscape of poverty, displacement, and segregation in American metropolitan areas, examines fair housing litigation theories of disparate impact and segregative effect liability, and evaluates the promise of fair housing law reform campaigns in combating concentrated poverty and residential segregation.

Deborah Archer, The New Housing Segregation:  The Jim Crow Effects of Crime-Free Housing Ordinances, forthcoming in the Michigan Law Review. This Article contends that crime-free housing ordinances enable racial segregation by importing the racial biases, racial logics, and racial disparities of the criminal legal system into private housing markets. In addition to foregrounding how crime-free housing ordinances reinforce and perpetuate racially segregated communities, this Article proposes an intervention: a “segregative effects” claim, an underutilized cause of action under the Fair Housing Act of 1968, to challenge this segregative impact.

Nicole Summers, Setting the Standard for Proximate Cause in the Wake of Bank of America Corp. v. City of Miami, 97 N.C. L. Rev. 529 (2019). This Article addresses the open question of how courts should determine the meaning of proximate cause in statutory claims. It argues that courts should apply the scope of liability framework, as set forth in the Restatement (Third) of Torts, to set the standard for proximate cause in statutory claims. It then applies this framework to arrive at the proper standard for proximate cause under the Fair Housing Act.

Nicole Summers, The Limits of Good Law: A Study of Housing Court Outcomes, U. Chi. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2020) This Article presents results from an empirical study of the effectiveness of the warranty of habitability in New York City. In the context of nonpayment of rent eviction cases, it finds that the overwhelming majority of tenants with meritorious warranty of habitability claims do not benefit from the law at all.

Brandon Weiss, Locating Affordable Housing: The Legal System's Misallocation of Subsidized Housing Incentives, Hastings Law Journal, 2018, Volume 70:1, This 50-state survey analyzes why low-income housing tax credit units are over-represented in areas that already have a surplus of similarly-priced housing. It argues that states should revise their tax credit allocation rules to ensure that subsidized units offer a rent advantage.

 

INTERNATIONAL LAW

Susan Akram, The Search for Protection for Stateless Refugees in the Middle East: Palestinians and Kurds in Lebanon and Jordan, International Journal of Refugee Law, Volume 30, Issue 3, October 2018, This article examines two main protracted refugee cases, the Palestinians and the Syrian Kurds, to illustrate the problem and possibilities of the double jeopardy in which stateless refugee populations in the Middle East find themselves: neither recognized as stateless nor as refugees, with durable solutions and national status remaining out of reach for generation after generations.

Susan Akram, Assessing the Impact of the Global Compacts on Refugees and Migration in the Middle East, International Journal of Refugee Law, The overwhelming burden of the global refugee and migrant crisis is borne by the Middle East region, where most states have not adopted the international treaties that provide guarantees for refugees and stateless persons. This article examines the possibilities for addressing these vulnerabilities by building on the promise of the Global Compacts

Melissa Joy Deehring, The Emerging Legal Profession in Qatar: Diversity Realities and Challenges (forthcoming). During the past quarter century the number of women studying law in Qatar has significantly increased, yet the number of women practicing law as prosecutors, judges and lawyers has not directly correlated. This article will use Qatar as a case study to analyze how culture and modern development affect the feminization of the country’s bar and bench.

 

LABOR & EMPLOYMENT

Elizabeth Cooper, The Appearance of Professionalism 70 Florida L. Rev. ___ (forthcoming 2019). Appearance conformity raises profound issues of autonomy and core identification that go well beyond style preferences. They can also have deep and lasting employment consequences.

Jennifer J. Lee, Regulating Wage Theft, Washington Law Review 94 (forthcoming 2019). This Article provides the first comprehensive analysis of state and local anti-wage theft laws. Our evaluation of these laws shows that they are unlikely to meaningfully reduce wage theft. It concludes by recognizing promising regulatory innovations, identifying new collaborative approaches to enhance agency enforcement, and looking beyond regulation to nongovernmental strategies.

Faith Mullen, Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt:  Mitigating the Deleterious Effect of Wage Garnishments on Appalachia’s Low-Wage Workers, West Virginia Law Review, Spring 2018, 120 W. Va. L. Rev. 973. This article examines the consequence of wage garnishment coupled with high post-judgment interest rates on low-wage workers in Appalachia.  It argues that states are not striking the right balance between the collection of just debt and driving low-wage workers out of the job market and into poverty.

Faith Mullen, Fifty Years After the Consumer Credit Protection Act:  the High Price of Wage Garnishments, Mitchell Hamline Law Review, (Spring 2019). This article argues that states should be informed by 50-years’ experience with the federal wage garnishment act and that the time is right to amend state laws.  The article examines the uniform wage garnishment act proposed by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and concludes that many of its provisions would benefit employers and creditors.  The article argues in favor of reforms that would benefit consumers.

 

MEDIATION

Jacqueline M. Nolan-Haley, Mediation, Self-Represented Parties, and Access to Justice: Getting There from Here, 87 Fordham Law Review Online (2019). Professor Nolan-Haley offers a proposal that develops a set of best practices specifically directed towards self-represented parties and where the stakeholders would then work towards establishing an Index that would rate the performance of court mediation programs serving unrepresented parties.

 

POLITICS

David R. Katner, Endorsing Pedophiles for Elected Office? 97 Nebraska Law Review 469 (Winter, 2018); This article examines the current literature concerning pedophiles following the endorsement of Roy Moore by the President of the United States for a position in the U.S. Senate.

 

PROPERTY, IP, & PRIVACY

Annie Eisenberg, Rural Blight, 13 Harv. L. & Pol'y Rev. 187 (2019). This article discusses rural local governments' unique law and policy needs in tackling the widespread proliferation of vacant, abandoned, and dilapidated properties in light of rural population loss.

Dustin Marlan, Unmasking the Right of Publicity, 71 Hastings Law Journal (forthcoming). This Article examines the potential influence of Judge Jerome Frank’s psychoanalytic jurisprudence on the creation and development of publicity as a right distinct from privacy.

Rachel Moran, Police Privacy, 10 UC Irvine Law Review ___ (forthcoming 2019). This article examines the question of whether to permit public access to police misconduct records through the lens of privacy law and theory. The article scrutinizes whether and to what extent privacy law supports the non-disclosure of police misconduct records.

 

TAX & NONPROFITS

Jaclyn Cherry, Nonprofit Governance: Who Should be Watching? A Look at State, Federal and Dual Regulation, 12 Ohio St. Bus. L.J. 1 (2018) (forthcoming)

Jaclyn Cherry, Commercial Activity and the Operational Test, 29 Tax’n Exempts 9 (2018)

Michael Haber, The New Activist Non-Profits: Four Models Breaking from the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, U. Miami Law Review, Volume 73. Inspired by recent social movements and the solidarity economy and commons movements, and sensitive to criticisms of the non-profit industrial complex and movement capture, a new generation of activists has developed organizational structures that radically depart from the 50-year trend toward non-profit centralization and professionalization. This article describes four activist approaches to re-thinking non-profit corporate structures--sociocratic non-profits, worker self-directed non-profits, hub-and-spoke counter-institutions, and swarm organizations--and describes some best practices for navigating concerns over directors' fiduciary duties.

 

WOMEN & THE LAW:

Margaret Johnson, Menstrual Justice, U.C. Davis L. Rev. (forthcoming 2019).

Margaret Johnson, The Ground on Which We All Stand: A Conversation About Menstrual Equity Law and Activism, Mich. J. Gender & L. (2019) (forthcoming) (with Bridget J. Crawford, Marcy L. Karin, Laura Stausfeld, and Emily Gold Waldman).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

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 [email protected].

 -- The Board of Editors of the Clinical Law Review

U.S. Senate Unveils Health Care Bill Designed to Dismantle the ACA

If you are closely tracking the ongoing federal legislative efforts to repeal and replace the Accountable Care Act (ACA), you might find interesting my recent piece, U.S. Senate Unveils Health Care Bill Designed to Dismantle the ACA.   A huge thanks to the Oxford Human Rights Hub for publishing my take on the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017 and the formidable procedural and substantive obstacles the bill faces in the United States Senate.  The Hub also published my post, How an ACA Repeal Would Devastate Appalachia, as part of a three-part series on American health care reform this Spring.  I intend to continue to watch--and write about--federal legislative attempts to dismantle the ACA over the summer and will provide links to new posts as they as they go live on this blog site.

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

 

 

 

 

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

[email protected] 

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.        

Chasing Liberty: The Detention of Central American Families in the United States

On Friday February 3, 2017, UDC’s David A. Clarke School of Law will host a day-long conference on the detention of Central American Families in the United States.

The conference will bring together advocates, law students, and academics throughout the nation who have been fighting to end the detention of immigrant families. In June 2014, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reinstituted an abandoned policy of detaining children and their parents seeking asylum in the United States. Families were first held in Artesia, New Mexico, which was accurately described as a “deportation mill,” and now in Dilley and Karnes City, Texas, along with a smaller detention center in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Thousands of children and their mothers have now been held in confinement while their cases are processed, with a small portion of the families held for more than a year.

We will start the day with opening remarks from Professor emeritus, Barbara Hines, followed by a panel tracing the history of family detention and painting a picture of the current detention system. This will be followed by a panel examining the legal and advocacy challenges to the practice of detaining mothers and children, from the Flores case to hunger strikes by the mothers themselves. During lunch, students who have volunteered inside the detention centers from UDC and Lewis & Clark will share their perspectives. After lunch, scholars and advocates will examine the international human rights ramifications of detaining families and of asylum free zones in the United States.  Finally, we will pivot to examine the post-release crisis. How do we ensure adequate representation for asylum-seeking families released from detention? How do we win claims for protection in difficult jurisdictions? We will also examine the lessons learned from the massive national movement built to advocate for detained families and try to replicate our successes in representation in detained and non-detained settings nationwide.

Confirmed speakers include:

• Cecilia Anguiano, Law Student at Lewis & Clark Colle Law School, Portland, Oregon
• Blaine Bookey, Co-Legal Director, Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, San Francisco, CA
• Bridget Cambria, Partner with Cambria & Kline; Founder, ALDEA People’s Center, Reading, Pennsylvania

• Kristina Campbell, Professor of Law and Jack and Lovell Olender Director, Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, UDC David A. Clarke School of Law

• Dree Collopy, Partner, Benach Collopy LLP, Washington DC

• Tessa Copeland, Law Student at Lewis & Clark College Law School, Portland, Oregon

• Melissa Crow, Legal Director at the American Immigration Council

• Conchita Cruz, Co-Director Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project

• Andrew Free, Law Office of R. Andrew Free, Nashville, Tennessee

• Lindsay M. Harris, Assistant Professor of Law, Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, UDC David A. Clarke School of Law 

• Barbara Hines, Emerson Fellow and Clinical Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas – Austin

• Karen Lucas, Associate Director of Advocacy, American Immigration Lawyers Association
·
• Michelle Mendez, Staff Attorney, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc

• Andrea Meza, Equal Justice Works Fellow & Staff Attorney, RAICES, San Antonio, Texas


• Lindsay Nash, Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor of Law, Cardozo Law

• Sarah Paoletti, Practice Professor of Law, Director of Transnational Legal Clinic, Penn Law

• Swapna Reddy, Co-Director, Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project

• Katie Shepherd, former Managing Attorney of the CARA Project and current Legal Fellow at the American Immigration Council

• Anita Sinha, Assistant Professor of Law, Director of International Human Rights Clinic, American University Washington College of Law.
• Maureen Sweeney, Associate Professor, Director of Immigration Clinic, University of Maryland Law School

• Shana Tabak¸ Visiting Assistant Professor, Georgia State University, College of Law and Global Studies Institute

Registration: Please register for the conference here.

All questions should be directed to Assistant Professor of Law, Lindsay M. Harris at [email protected]

Book Review of Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World

This year, I am serving on my law school’s curriculum committee, outcomes assessment task force and our self-study committee for an upcoming ABA site visit. These posts involve many of the most pressing questions of the day in legal education, and they intersect often with clinical and experiential learning.

For these reasons, I was very happy and a bit intimidated to receive an invitation from the Journal of Legal Education to review Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World, edited by Deborah Maranville. Lisa Radtke Bliss, Carolyn Wilkes Kass, and Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, and written by many others.  I have the privilege of friendship and collaboration with many of these authors and editors, and they are doing innovative, wise work on the hardest issues of our enterprise.  Their work and insight hit home. 

Please read and use the book; it will make our law schools better.  It will make us better teachers and scholars and will promote better outcomes for the students who trust us. It takes its place within the canon of legal education theory and practice, from McCrate to Carnegie to the original Best Practices. It is not the destination of our work, but it is a useful, important stop along the way. 

Here is an excerpt from my review, available on SSRN here and at 65 J. Legal Educ. 988 (2016).

Building on Best Practices charts the path for institutional and curricular reform within the prevailing structure of outcomes assessment. Like the refined demands of new ABA accreditation standards, Building on Best Practices draws from the trend toward objective measurement of identifiable goals. Institutional assessment follows a constructive, progressive cycle: identifying outcomes and goals, developing means to measure progress toward those goals, measuring performance in light of the desired outcomes, evaluating results, and developing and implementing changes, before starting again.

Thus, rather than evaluating a school based on its inputs, like the metrics of an incoming class, the library budget, or faculty research assistance, a school should measure its success based on how well it achieves the goals it sets for itself. Building on Best Practices proposes this process as the means to strengthen and improve the enterprise of legal education. Each law school must reckon what it wants to be in a topsy-turvy environment, then mark out a course to achieve it well within its own contexts and markets. It is not enough for schools to add or remove programs, to build a space, or to invest in a class with higher entrance metrics. Instead, schools must be able to articulate why they should do those things, to have a clear purpose for making the moves they make, and to use good tools to determine whether they work.

Upcoming Deadline for NYU Writers' Workshop

"This is a reminder that the registration deadline for the Clinical Law Review’s Clinical Writers’ Workshop is June 30, 2016.

The Workshop will take place at NYU Law School on Saturday, September 24, 2016, at NYU Law School.  It 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, all applicants will need to 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, 2016.

As in the previous Clinical Law Review Workshops, participants will not have to pay an admission or registration fee but participants 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 conference without scholarship support. Applicants for scholarships will be asked to submit, with their 3-5 page prospectus, 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 timely submission of drafts, and will be capped at a maximum of $750 per person.

Information about the Workshop – including the Registration form, scholarship application form, and information for reserving hotel rooms – is available on-line at:

http://www.law.nyu.edu/journals/clinicallawreview/clinical-writers-workshop

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 [email protected].

-- The Board of Editors of the Clinical Law Review"

2016 Clinical Law Review Workshop Details Announced

The Clinical Law Review will hold its next Clinical Writers’ Workshop on Saturday, September 24, 2016, at NYU Law School.  The registration deadline is June 30, 2016.

The Workshop will provide 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, all applicants will need to 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, 2016.

As in the previous Clinical Law Review Workshops, participants will not have to pay an admission or registration fee but participants 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 conference without scholarship support. Applicants for scholarships will be asked to submit, with their 3-5 page prospectus, 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 timely submission of drafts, and will be capped at a maximum of $750 per person.

Information about the Workshop – including the Registration form, scholarship application form, and information for reserving hotel rooms – is available on-line at:

http://www.law.nyu.edu/journals/clinicallawreview/clinical-writers-workshop

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 [email protected].

-- The Board of Editors of the Clinical Law Review

NYU Law Review Seeking Submissions on Dollar General Corporation v. Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians

NYU Law Review is seeking submissions for its online publication on the Dollar General Corporation v. Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. You can find the original message posted on the Michigan State Indigenous Law and Policy Center Blog, Turtle Talk, and also linked here.

They are looking for pieces that discuss the case itself, its legal background and importance, and its implications for Indian and non-Indian country alike—particularly Indigenous women’s issues and its insights into women’s issues in general. If your clinical practice intersects women's issues, enterprise issues, or tribal issues I encourage you to research the case. It may infuriate you, but a minimum you will have a better understanding of the legal obstacles Indian tribes face in federal courts, most especially our Supreme Court.

Call for Contributions - Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions (Corrected Feb. 25, 2016)

Corrected Feb. 25, 2016 - JRB

Via Prof. Kathryn M. Stanchi of Temple:

Call for Contributions - Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions

 

Volume Editors

Bridget J. Crawford

Anthony C. Infanti

The U.S. Feminist Judgments Project seeks contributors of rewritten judicial opinions and commentary on those opinions for an edited collection entitled Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions. This edited volume, to be published by Cambridge University Press, is part of a collaborative project among law professors and others to rewrite, from a feminist perspective, key judicial decisions. The initial volume, Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court, edited by Kathryn M. Stanchi, Linda L. Berger, and Bridget J. Crawford, will be published in 2016 by Cambridge University Press. (That book’s Introduction and Table of Contents are available here.) Subsequent volumes in the series will focus on different courts or different subject matters. This call is for contributions to a volume of tax decisions rewritten from a feminist perspective.

Tax volume editors Bridget Crawford and Anthony Infanti seek prospective authors for 8 to 10 rewritten tax-related opinions covering a range of topics. Authors are welcome to suggest cases of their own choosing or to consult the editors or others for ideas. All tax-related cases are appropriate for rewriting. Possible cases from U.S. courts are listed here, but that is not an exhaustive list. Cases may come from any jurisdiction and any court, including non-U.S. jurisdictions. The volume editors conceive of feminism as a broad movement concerned with justice and equality, and welcome proposals to rewrite cases in a way that bring into focus issues such as gender, race, class, disability, sexual orientation, national origin, and immigration status.

As the core of the Feminist Judgments Project is judicial opinions, proposals must be either to (1) rewrite a case (not administrative guidance, regulations, etc.) or (2) comment on a rewritten case. Rewritten opinions may be re-imagined majority opinions, dissents, or concurrences, as appropriate to the court. Feminist judgment writers will be bound by law and precedent in effect at the time of the original decision (with a 10,000 word maximum for the rewritten judgment). Commentators will explain the original court decision, how the feminist judgment differs from the original judgment, and what difference the feminist judgment might have made (4,000 word maximum for the commentary). Commentators and opinions writers who wish to work together are welcome to indicate that in the application.

In suggesting possible cases for rewriting, the volume editors have had the input and advice of an Advisory Panel of distinguished U.S. scholars including Alice Abreu (Temple), Patricia Cain (Santa Clara), Joseph Dodge (Florida State), Mary Louise Fellows (Minnesota), Wendy Gerzog (Baltimore), Steve Johnson (Florida State), Marjorie Kornhauser (Tulane), Ajay Mehrotra (American Bar Foundation, Northwestern), Beverly Moran (Vanderbilt), Richard Schmalbeck (Duke), Nancy Shurtz (Oregon), Nancy Staudt (Washington University), and Lawrence Zelenak (Duke).

The U.S. Feminist Judgments Project approaches revised judicial opinion writing as a form of critical socio-legal scholarship. There are several world-wide projects engaged in similar efforts, including the U.K.-based Feminist Judgments: From Theory to Practice (2010); Australian Feminist Judgments: Righting and Rewriting Law (2014); the Women’s Court of Canada; ongoing projects in Ireland, New Zealand, and a pan-European project; and other U.S.-based projects currently under way.

Those who are interested in rewriting an opinion or providing the commentary on one of the rewritten tax cases should fill out an application here.

Applications are due by February 29, 2016 at 5:00 p.m. eastern. Editors expect to notify accepted authors and commentators by April 15, 2016. First drafts of rewritten opinions will be due on August 15, 2016. First drafts of commentary will be due on September 15, 2016.

Mark Your Calendars for Next Clinical Writers' Workshop at NYU

This was just announced:

"The Clinical Law Review will hold its next Clinical Writers’ Workshop on Saturday, September 24, 2016, 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, all applicants will need to 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, 2016.

As in the previous Clinical Law Review Workshops, participants will not have to pay an admission or registration fee but participants 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 conference without scholarship support. Applicants for scholarships will be asked to submit, with their 3-5 page prospectus, 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 timely submission of drafts, 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 [email protected].

-- The Board of Editors of the Clinical Law Review"