Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

Trauma-Informed (As A Matter Of) Course, Natalie Netzel

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

Law students are impacted by trauma and law professors are in a position to help by adopting a trauma-informed approach as a matter of universal precaution. The 2021 Survey of Law Student Well-Being (“SLSWB”) revealed that over twenty percent of responding law students meet criteria that indicate they should be evaluated for post-traumatic stress disorder (“PTSD”). The study also revealed that almost fifty percent of responding students reported an important motivation for attending law school was experiencing a trauma or injustice. Put differently, law schools are full of law students who have experienced trauma, many of whom are actively struggling …

Unsettling Human Rights Clinical Pedagogy And Practice In Settler Colonial Contexts, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum, Caroline Bishop Laporte

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

In settler colonial contexts, law and educational institutions operate as structures of oppression, extraction, erasure, disempowerment, and continuing violence against colonized peoples. Consequently, clinical legal advocacy often can reinforce coloniality—the logic that perpetuates structural violence against individuals and groups resisting colonization and struggling for survival as peoples. Critical legal theory, including Third World Approaches to International Law (“TWAIL”), has long exposed colonial laws and practices that entrench discriminatory, racialized power structures and prevent transformative international human rights advocacy. Understanding and responding to these critiques can assist in decolonizing international human rights clinical law teaching and practice but is insufficient in …

Fifty Years Of Clinical Legal Education At American University Washington College Of Law: The Evolution Of A Movement In Theory, Practice, And People, Robert D. Dinerstein, Elliott S. Milstein, Ann C. Shalleck

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

Clinical legal education has evolved substantially in the fifty years since Elliott Milstein initiated the clinical model at American University Washington College of Law (“WCL”) that, notwithstanding numerous changes in program and personnel since that time, remains essentially in effect today. In this Article, we explore the theoretical, pedagogical, structural, programmatic, and personnel developments that have occurred during this period. We link these developments to broader developments within the national and international clinical legal education spheres. WCL’s Clinical Program, and its clinical faculty, have been leaders in shaping these developments, but, in the best clinical tradition, we have not done …

I Didn't Know Pdfs Could Do That, Darla Jackson

Other Faculty Publications

Oklahoma Bar Association Solo & Small Firm Conference 2023 presentation on PDF files and software.

Unsettling Human Rights Clinical Pedagogy And Practice In Settler Colonial Contexts, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum, Caroline Bishop Laporte

Articles

In settler colonial contexts, law and educational institutions operate as structures of oppression, extraction, erasure, disempowerment, and continuing violence against colonized peoples. Consequently, clinical legal advocacy often can reinforce coloniality--the logic that perpetuates structural violence against individuals and groups resisting colonization and struggling for survival as peoples. Critical legal theory, including Third World Approaches to International Law (“TWAIL”), has long exposed colonial laws and practices that entrench discriminatory, racialized power structures and prevent transformative international human rights advocacy. Understanding and responding to these critiques can assist in decolonizing international human rights clinical law teaching and practice but is insufficient in …

Human Rights And Lawyer’S Oaths, Lauren E. Bartlett

All Faculty Scholarship

Each lawyer in the United States must take an oath to be licensed to practice law. The first time a lawyer takes this oath is usually a momentous occasion in their career, marked by ceremony and celebration. Yet, many lawyer’s oaths today are unremarkable and irrelevant to modern law practice at best, and at worst, inappropriate, discriminatory, and obsolete. Drawing on a fifty-state survey of lawyer’s oaths in the United States, this article argues that it is past time to update lawyer’s oaths in the United States and suggests drawing on human rights to make lawyer’s oaths more accessible and …

How Do Prosecutors "Send A Message"?, Steven Arrigg Koh

Faculty Scholarship

The recent indictments of former President Trump are stirring national debate about their effects on American society. Commentators speculate on the cases’ impact outside of the courtroom — on the 2024 election, on political polarization, and on the future of American democracy. Such cases originated in the prosecutor’s office, begging the question of if, when, and how prosecutors should consider the societal effects of the cases they bring.

Indeed, prosecutors often publicly claim that they “send a message” when they indict a defendant. What, exactly, does this mean? Often, their assumption is that such messaging goes in one direction: indictment …

Un-Erasing Race In A Medical-Legal Partnership: Antiracist Health Justice Advocacy By Design, Danielle Pelfrey Duryea, Peggy Maisel, Kelley Saia

Faculty Scholarship

This Article covers a potential response to a Massachusetts state law which has been interpreted to require health care providers and birthing hospitals to report to state authorities any infant born to a person taking medication of opioid use disorder. While the statute mandates reports where a professional has "reasonable cause to believe that a child is suffering physical or emotional injury" as a result of substance dependence at birth, the Article highlights that many institutions report all infants born to persons with substance abuse disorders, regardless of risk of harm, for fear of penalty for failure to report. As …

Ethics For Real Estate Lawyers Today, John G. Cameron Jr., Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

This essay discusses various ethics issues that real estate lawyers experience: everything from new ABA Model Rule 8.4(g) (avoiding discrimination) to rules that apply when a lawyer works from home to technological competence and social media to the attorney-client privilege and to advance conflicts waivers. There is also a social science overlay that discusses why smart people do dumb things.

A Critical Jeffersonian Mind For A Community Reinvestment Bind, Chaz Brooks

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 ("CRA") primarily sought to remedy decades of government sanctioned disinvestment in so-called “redlined communities.” Through the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and later the Federal Housing Administration, the United States of America created from whole cloth a structure that encouraged and subsidized the explosion of homeownership in white American households. Following decades of racialized wealth generation, the United States had a change of heart. Congress determined that financiers needed a gentle push to invest fairly. Additionally, Congress wanted one thing clear in the drafting of this remedy—it must not allocate credit.

This essay considers how …

Law License Reciprocity’S Discriminatory Exclusion Of Working Mothers, Sarah W. Keller

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Jewish Ethics, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

Essays on Jewish Ethics in:

Chapter 2 Introduction to Ethical Approaches in Data Science

Chapter 4 Machine Models in Court

Reaching Out Through The Universal: The Powerful And Positive Role Of A Jesuit Catholic Law School On The Secular Line, Judith A. Mcmorrow

Touro Law Review

There are multiple ways in which Catholic law schools can provide an education that supports and reflects a Catholic vision. Some schools align more closely to an orthodox view in which text and doctrine are the starting lens. Catholic law schools closer to the secular end of the spectrum play a powerful role by actively building bridges with the secular world. These schools, either implicitly or explicitly, start with values framed in more universal terms -- a moral or ethical worldview that can implement the common good in the secular world. A Catholic law school that emphasizes the universal generally …

The Conference Of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools Foreword, Samuel J. Levine

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Can A Christian Be A Lawyer Or Can Both God And Jackson Browne Be Right, Randy Lee

Touro Law Review

Jesus’s final command at His final meal before His death was to “love one another.” No less than Jackson Browne insisted that the ultimate absurdity in an absurd world is a “lawyer in love.” Thus, Jesus has commanded that even lawyers must love, but Jackson Browne has emphatically stressed that lawyers are incapable of love. Given the apparent conflict for lawyers between these two observations of Jesus and Jackson Browne, one might wonder whether one can be a Christian and a lawyer both. Can both God and Jackson Browne be right? Of course, the government could seemingly make the answer …

Reflections On The Creation Of The Jewish Law Institute At Touro, Randy Lee

Touro Law Review

Having interpreted the topic of our panel liberally, what I want to talk about today is why Sam Levine, director of Touro’s Jewish Law Institute, is here at the conference, or, to put it differently—why does Touro Law School have a Jewish law institute?”

A Mixed Bag: Critical Reflections On The Revised Ethical Principles For Judges, Richard Devlin, Jula Hughes, Pooja Parmar, Stephen Ga Pitel, Amy Salyzyn

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In 2021 the Canadian Judicial Council completed a multi-year review and update of Ethical Principles for Judges (EPJ), the ethical and professional guidance for all federally-appointed judges in Canada. The revisions address issues such as case management and settlement conferences, technological competence and the use of social media, interactions with self-represented litigants, professional development for judges, confidentiality, and the return of former judges to the practice of law. In this article, five directors of the Canadian Association for Legal Ethics/Association canadienne pour l’éthique juridique analyze the revised EPJ and offer their observations.

The article covers five important topics. On impartiality, …

Anti-Human Trafficking Training For Law Enforcement: An Assessment Of Practice In A Southern State, Patricia Ann Southerland

Dissertations

Human trafficking, a crime hidden in plain sight, does not answer to civility or the inherent human rights established within societal norms. While several factors influence this heinous crime, the absence of training and the incorporation of best practices among law enforcement personnel impairs the proper identification of victims, as well as the arrest and prosecution of facilitators, traffickers, and buyers (Clawson, Dutch, & Cummings, 2006; Dandurand, 2017; Darwinkel, Powell, & Tidmarsh, 2013; Davy, 2016; Efrat, 2015; Farrell, 2014; Farrell, McDevitt, Fahy, 2010; Farrell, McDevitt, Pfeffer, Fahy, Owens, Dank, & Adams, 2012; Farrell & Pfeffer, 2014, Grubb & Bennet, 2012; …

Ethical Implications Of Law Practice Technology, Eliza Boles

Scholarly Works

The following CLE materials were prepared by Eliza Boles for presentation on December 6, 2022. Materials were approved by the Tennessee Commission on Continuing Legal Education for two hours of mandated ethics credit.

Let It Burn: A Case Study On The Risk Management Practices Of Burning Man Project, Ethan S. De La Torre

Experience Industry Management

Risk management can be defined as a decision-making process of planning, identifying, analyzing, developing a response for, and controlling potential risks with the goal of minimizing the negative impacts of those risks. Risk management is an essential practice for all events, especially large-scale, live entertainment events. The purpose of this study was to examine the risk management practices for Burning Man. The instrument utilized in this study was a best practices guide developed by the researcher. Data were collected prior to, during, and following Burning Man 2022: Waking Dreams. Sources of data include printed material and online sources published by …