Law Commons^™

Am I My Client? Revisited: The Role Of Race In Intra-Race Legal Representation, Julie D. Lawton

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article examines the challenges of intra-race legal representation for lawyers of color, law students of color, and those teaching law students of color by analyzing how the dynamics of the lawyer’s and client’s racial sameness impact legal representation. This Article brings together three strands of lawyering theory – the role of race in lawyering, critical race theory, and the role of the lawyer in intra-race legal representation. In doing so, this Article explores a number of provocative questions: Does being the same race as their clients make lawyers better legal representatives? Should lawyers of color embrace or resist race’s …

American Bar Association Resolution 112: Championing Public Access To The Law., Nina A. Mendelson

Articles

In August 2016, the American Bar Association House of Delegates reaffirmed the fundamental democratic principle of public access to the law. ABA Resolution 112 calls on Congress to enact legislation ensuring a basic level of public access, without charge, to all regulatory law. Such legislation would address serious current obstacles to the public’s ability to see the law.

Distinguished Alumni Award Ceremony, University Of Michigan Law School

Event Materials

Program for the Distinguished Alumni Award Ceremony honoring Mary Frances Berry.

In Praise Of Law Books And Law Reviews (And Jargon-Filled Academic Writing), Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

Many people, including many lawyers and judges, disparage law reviews and the books that sometimes result from them on the ground that they often deal with abstruse topics, of little interest to the bar, and are sometimes full of jargon, including excessively academic and impenetrable writing. Some of the objections are warranted, but at their best, law books and law reviews show a high level of rigor, discipline, and care; they have a kind of internal morality. What might seem to be jargon is often a product of specialization, similar to what is observed in other fields (such as economics, …

It’S A Sin To Kill A Mockingbird: The Need For Idealism In The Legal Profession, Jonathan A. Rapping

Michigan Law Review

“[T]he first thing I lost in law school was the reason that I came.” This prescient quote by an unnamed law student defines, in a single sentence, our growing problem in training lawyers. From the moment he or she steps foot in a law school classroom, the future lawyer feels a strong pull to pursue a career that has nothing to do with justice. The law school experience will discourage the future lawyer from pursuing a career advocating for those in society who most need a voice. Once graduated, the young lawyer will enter a world where he or she …

Student Funded Fellowship 30th Annual Auction For Public Interest, University Of Michigan Law School

Event Materials

Program for the Student Funded Fellowship 30th Annual Auction for Public Interest.

How Cosmopolitan Are International Law Professors?, Ryan Scoville, Milan Markovic

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article offers an empirical answer to a question of interest among scholars of comparative international law: why do American views about international law appear at times to differ from those of other countries? We contend that part of the answer lies in legal education. Conducting a survey of the educational and professional backgrounds of nearly 150 legal academics, we reveal evidence that professors of international law in the United States often lack significant foreign legal experience, particularly outside of the West. Sociological research suggests that this tendency leads professors to teach international law from predominantly nationalistic and Western perspectives, …

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly: Reflections Of A Counterclerk, Gil Seinfeld

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Everyone has strong feelings about Justice Scalia. Lionized by the political right and demonized by the left, he has been among the most polarizing figures in American public life over the course of the last halfcentury. It is hardly surprising, then, that in the weeks since Justice Scalia’s death, the public discourse surrounding his legacy has exhibited something of a split personality. There have, of course, been plenty of appropriately respectful—even admiring—tributes from some of the Justice’s ideological adversaries; and here and there one of the Justice’s champions has acknowledged, with a hint of lament, the acerbic quality of some …

Child Welfare Appellate Advocacy, Vivek Sankaran

Book Chapters

The appellate system serves important functions in child welfare cases. It ensures that the relationship between a child and his or her parent is not unjustly terminated. It forces juvenile courts and child welfare agencies to strictly follow statutes, court rules, and agency policies. And it preserves public faith in the system by serving as an independent check to correct mistakes that occur.

But the appellate system is only as good as the advocates who appear before it. This chapter is intended to be a resource for those advocates, both those who have practiced child welfare law for many years …

Representing Parents In Child Welfare Cases, Vivek Sankaran

Book Chapters

A parent's constitutional right to raise his or her child is one of the most venerated liberty interests safeguarded by the Constitution. The law presumes parents to be fit, and it establishes that they do not need to be model parents to retain custody of their children. If the state seeks to interfere with the parent-child relationship, the Constitution mandates: (I) that the state prove parental unfitness, a standard defined by state laws, and (2) that the state follow certain procedures protecting the due process rights of parents. The constitutional framework for child welfare cases is premised upon the belief …

Representing Children And Youth, Donald N. Duquette, Ann M. Haralambie

Book Chapters

The role of the child's attorney is unique in American jurisprudence and not yet clearly defined by law or tradition. There is an emerging consensus, however, that children in dependency cases should have lawyers and those lawyers should be as active and as involved in their cases as are lawyers for any other party in any other litigation. Although state law and policy makers differ as to what voice the child should have in determining the direction and goals of the litigation, that is, whether the child's lawyer should represent the best interests of the child as determined by the …

Culture As A Structural Problem In Indigent Defense, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

In Part I, I will describe the ways in which today's right-to-counsel challenges are similar to and different from those that faced the writers of the 1961 symposium. I will also explain in more detail why the structural conditions of criminal defense work to create (and, to some extent, always have created) a cultural problem in indigent defense delivery systems across the country. In Part II, I will discuss why I believe that we are, once again, facing a moment for potential reform, albeit reform that is different in scope and kind from that which was possible in the 1960s. …