Law Commons^™

The Silver Lining Of The Covid-19 Pandemic: Building Effective - And Enduring - International Legal Education Opportunities, Diane Penneys Edelman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Getting Comfortable With Discomfort, Diversity & Repair, Luz E. Herrera

Faculty Scholarship

The topic of this year's conference, diversity, pluralism, and repair, gives us so much to talk about, that for me, it was hard to know where we were to begin. Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig focused on judicial appointments and the importance of a diverse bench for the legal profession, and in our society. She also discussed becoming comfortable with discomfort and I wanted to pick up on that thread. When I think about discomfort, I think about my own journey in the legal profession.

Reflections On Legal Education In The Aftermath Of A Pandemic, Timothy Casey

Faculty Scholarship

This essay considers two significant changes to legal education in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, on-line programs will expand, based on the largely successful experiment in delivering legal education on-line during the pandemic. But this expansion must be thoughtful and deliberate. The legal education curriculum could include more on-line courses, but only if the learning outcomes and the pedagogy are aligned with on-line education. Experiential courses may not be the best fit for on-line given the specific learning outcomes and the benefits of in-person instruction in those courses. Second, student well-being will receive more attention in legal education. …

The Intersectional Race And Gender Effects Of The Pandemic In Legal Academia, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

Just as the COVID-19 pandemic helped to expose the inequities that already existed between students at every level of education based on race and socioeconomic class status, it has exposed existing inequities among faculty based on gender and the intersection of gender and race. The legal academy has been no exception to this reality. The widespread loss of childcare and the closing of both public and private primary and secondary schools have disproportionately harmed women law faculty, who are more likely than their male peers to work a “second shift” in terms of childcare and household responsibilities. Similarly, women law …

Sweet Are The Uses Of Adversity, Nicholas Allard

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Lenses, Methods, And Approaches In Intellectual Property Research, Irene Calboli, Maria Lillà Montagnani

Faculty Scholarship

The relevance of Intellectual Property (IP) Law in our society has increased dramatically over the last several years. Globalization, digitization, and the rise of post-industrial information-based industries have all contributed to a new prominence of IP Law as one of the most important factors in driving innovation and economic development. At the same time, the significant expansion of IP rules has impacted many areas of public policy such as public health, the environment, biodiversity, agriculture, and information, in an unprecedented manner. No longer relegated to a cohort of few specialized experts, IP Law is now at the front and centre …

Understanding The Nuances: Diversity Among Asian American Pacific Islanders, Vinay Harpalani

Faculty Scholarship

Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month recognizes the collective contributions of all AAPIs, but it is also an opportunity to move beyond the collective and highlight the nuanced differences between various AAPI groups. Lumping together all of these groups, without appreciation for their unique histories, experiences, and challenges, can obscure important differences, which in turn reinforces stereotypes. For example, although the “model minority” stereotype depicts AAPIs as high academic achievers from relatively privileged socioeconomic backgrounds, this is only accurate for a subset of the AAPI population. Higher education institutions in particular should highlight the vast diversity among AAPIs, as …

Diverse Magazine Interviews Sonia Gipson-Rankin: Law Schools Respond To The Movement For Social Justice, Sonia Gipson Rankin, Pearl Stewart

Faculty Scholarship

At the University of New Mexico Law School, Professor Sonia Gipson Rankin describes three activities organized in spring 2020 to address the national protest movement – a virtual teach-in; a social justice book club; and a startup student organization, Law Students for Equity & Inclusion. The teach-in included a panel of professors and students who discussed police killings of African Americans, the U.S. history of racial violence, protest and related topics.

Rankin notes that relevant courses such as “Race and the Law,” “Indian Law” and “Refugee Law” were regularly being offered at the UNM School of Law for decades and …

Loving It To Pieces: Eu Law In Us Legal Academia, Revisited, Daniela Caruso

Faculty Scholarship

The Editors of the Special Issue have kindly invited me to update earlier reflections on the state of EU law in US legal academia. For a variety of reasons, it is important to me not to mislead the reader with the false promise of some kind of summa. What follows is my own perception of a complicated landscape, which I shall sketch lightly here in the hop of prompting other scholars of EU Law to report on their own US experience.

School Finance Reform And Professor Stephen D. Sugarman’S Lasting Legacy, Rachel F. Moran

Faculty Scholarship

Once, over lunch, I recall a law professor reflecting on scholarly work’s ephemeral nature. Legal academics, he thought, should consider themselves lucky if their articles sparked a discussion that lasted for even a few years. By that standard, Professor Stephen Sugarman’s seminal work on school finance reform, done in collaboration with John Coons and William Clune, must count as a Methuselah of academic concepts. Decades later, this research continues to prompt scholarly debate, legal advocacy, and legislative reform. In this essay, I first describe the origins of the theory of school finance reform. I then turn to the ongoing influence …

The Unified Legal Skills Program: How One Law School Adapted To Meet The Needs Of Students Online, And How Those Adaptations May Inform Post-Pandemic Teaching, David Austin, Allison D. Cato, Amy E. Day, Liam Vavasour

Faculty Scholarship

When CWSL was forced to switch to online learning for the COVID-19 pandemic, we worked hard to follow best practices for online learning by attending online conferences and voraciously reading everything we could find to make the learning experience the best we could for our students. CWSL's Legal Skills program earned high praise in student evaluations for adapting so quickly given the difficult circumstances.

During the summer of 2020, we met as a Legal Skills team to discuss how to approach the regular school term. Specifically, we faced a larger-than-anticipated first-year class and contemplated how to remedy the sense of …

Some Special Words For Robert Burdick, Mary Connaughton

Faculty Scholarship

Many words can be used to describe Bob Burdick, my supervisor, colleague, and friend at the Boston University Civil Litigation Program since the fall of 1993. BU has recognized him as a “Quiet Legal Giant”; as his colleagues, we have commented on his compassion, low-key humility, creativity and innovation, strength as a mentor, and expertise in negotiation. We share common images and experiences as well: the open door to his office and the light already burning at 6:30 on dark mornings as we arrived early to go to court. His insight and understanding after a disturbing experience with an opposing …

Tribute To Bob Burdick, Naomi M. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

In losing Bob, we have truly lost a legal giant. He was a visionary in poverty law. He led significant litigation that improved the lives of countless individuals in the Commonwealth. It is because of him, a team of legal aid attorneys, and his students that individuals who are considered mentally incapacitated are entitled to Rogers hearings before being administered medication. It is also under his leadership that student attorneys throughout the Commonwealth can get attorney’s fees for their legal services organizations. Through his guidance and teaching, generations of law students have learned how to infuse their work (wherever they …

A Tribute To Robert (“Bob”) G. Burdick: A Man Of Vision And Light, Constance A. Browne

Faculty Scholarship

One of Bob’s former students said it best: “Bob was the lawyer I wanted to be. He was the person I wanted to be.”1 Bob was also the mentor, teacher, and innovator I aspired to be. For many marginalized clients, Bob brought the change they needed; the change justice required. He embodied hope—he saw the light and strove to enable others to share in its glow.

Extrapolating Lessons From A Master Mentor: What Bob Burdick Taught Me, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

Bob Burdick began his career in clinical practice as a student in the clinic at Boston University School of Law in 1970, shortly after the civil clinic had been established as the Legal Aid Program in Hyde Park in 1969. Right out of law school, Bob worked at Greater Boston Legal Services (“GBLS”), he then was hired at BU as a clinical instructor and later promoted to director of what became the Civil Litigation Program in 1979. During the forty years Bob led the civil clinic (now renamed the Civil Litigation and Justice Program), he was the creative and innovative …

Foreword, Jennifer Taub

Faculty Scholarship

This Foreword highlights the central points of the Articles in Volume 43, Issue 1 of Western New England Law Review. The Article topics include emotional support animals, distribution rights for small beer brewers, fairness in accident insurance coverage, alternative legal education materials, and custody challenges for parents with abusive partners. Each share the identification of a perceived problem with the legal status quo and presents proposed solutions.

Mitchell Hamline School Of Law Summer 2020 Covid-19 Legal Response Clinic, Natalie Netzel, Ana Pottratz Acosta, Joanna Woolman, Kate Kruse, Jon Geffen

Faculty Scholarship

This essay is a reflection on lawyering in a time of crisis. It details the Mitchell Hamline School of Law Clinical Faculty’s response to the community needs resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic by creating the COVID-19 Legal Response Clinic. It also recounts the impact of the murder of George Floyd and the long overdue national reckoning with systemic racism, sparked in our city. Additionally, against this backdrop, it examines the trauma-informed approach taken in clinical work and the classroom to help students process their own trauma and apply this approach in their work with clients.

Amid these concurrent crises in …

Precedent As Rational Persuasion, Brian N. Larson

Faculty Scholarship

The ways that judges and lawyers make and justify their arguments and decisions have profound impacts on our lives. Understanding those practices in light of theories of reasoning and argumentation is thus critical for understanding law and the society it shapes. An inquiry that explores the very foundations of all legal reasoning leads to a broad, important question: How do lawyers and judges use cited cases in their legal arguments? It turns out there is practically no empirical research to suggest the answer. As the first step in a comprehensive empirical effort to answer this question, this article performs a …

Clinicians Reflect On Covid-19: Lessons Learned And Looking Beyond, The Association Of American Law Schools (Aals) Policy Committee, Deborah Archer, Caitlin Barry, Lisa Bliss, Gautam Hans, Vida Johnson, Carolyn Haas, Lynnise E. Pantin, Kele Stewart, Erica Wilson, The Clinical Legal Education Association (Clea) Committee For Faculty Equity And Inclusion, Priya Baskaran, Jennifer Fernandez, Crystal Grant, Anjum Gupta, Julia Hernandez, Alexis Karteron, Shobha Mahadev

Faculty Scholarship

As a result of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, clinical faculty had to abruptly adapt their clinical teaching and case supervision practices to adjust to the myriad restrictions brought on by the pandemic. This brought specialized challenges for clinicians who uniquely serve as both legal practitioners and law teachers in the law school setting. With little support and guidance, clinicians tackled never before seen difficulties in the uncharted waters of running a clinical law practice during a pandemic.

In this report, we review the responses of 220 clinicians to survey questions relating to how law clinics and clinicians were treated by …

Practicing The Be Practice Ready: Making Competent Legal Researchers Using The New Process And Practice Method, Jason Murray

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Tomorrow's Law Libraries: Academic Law Librarians Forging The Way To The Future In The New World Of Legal Education, Jessie Wallace Burchfield

Faculty Scholarship

This article briefly discusses the historical development of academic law libraries and reviews observations, analyses, and predictions of leading law librarians, examining recent changes and continuing trends. It examines academic law libraries in light of two of the drivers of change identified by Susskind: the “more-for-less” challenge and information technology. It briefly discusses one academic law library's experience with these drivers of change and gives a few examples of academic law librarians who are technology leaders. It notes the initial effects of an ongoing global pandemic that changed the face of public school, undergraduate, and postgraduate education–including legal education–in a …

The Racial Architecture Of Criminal Justice, I. Bennett Capers

Faculty Scholarship

One of the pleasures of contributing to symposia—especially symposia where each contribution is brief—is the ability to engage in new explorations, test new ideas, and offer new provocations. I do that now in this essay about race, architecture, and criminal justice. I begin by discussing how race is imbricated in the architecture of courthouses, the quintessential place of supposed justice. I then take race and architecture a step further. If we think of architecture expansively—Lawrence Lessig’s definition of architecture as “the physical world as we find it” comes to mind—then it becomes clear that race is also imbricated in the …

On Being First, On Being Only, On Being Seen, On Charting A Way Forward, Veronica Root Martinez

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay reflects upon my professional experiences as a Black woman both at Notre Dame and beyond. It argues that it is important for students to have demographically diverse professors within their educational environments. It calls for the Notre Dame Law School community to continue to create a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture.

Dumping: On Law Reviews, James Boyle

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Clinicians Reflect On Covid-19: Lessons Learned And Looking Beyond, Deborah Archer, Caitlin Barry, Priya Baskaran, Lisa Bliss, Jennifer Fernandez, Crystal Grant, Anju Gupta, Gautam Hans, Julia Hernandez, Vida Johnson, Carolyn Kaas, Alexis Karteron, Shobha Mahadev, Lynnise Pantin, Kele Stewart, Erika Wilson

Faculty Scholarship

As a result of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, clinical faculty had to abruptly adapt their clinical teaching and case supervision practices to adjust to the myriad restrictions brought on by the pandemic. This brought specialized challenges for clinicians who uniquely serve as both legal practitioners and law teachers in the law school setting. With little support and guidance, clinicians tackled never before seen difficulties in the uncharted waters of running a clinical law practice during a pandemic.

In this report, we review the responses of 220 clinicians to survey questions relating to how law clinics and clinicians were treated by …

Inside The Master's Gates: Resources And Tools To Dismantle Racism And Sexism In Higher Education, Susan Ayres

Faculty Scholarship

The spring of 2020 saw waves of protest as police killed people of color. After George Floyd’s death, protests erupted in over 140 cities. The systemic racism exhibited by these killings has been uncontrollable, hopeless, and endless. Our country is facing a national crisis. In response to the police killings, businesses, schools, and communities held diversity workshops across the nation, and businesses and organizations posted antiracism statements. Legislators and City Councils introduced bills and orders to defund police and to limit qualified immunity. As schools prepared for the fall semester, teachers considered ways to incorporate antiracism materials into the curriculum. …