The University of Pennsylvania Law Review will hold a symposium on Trafficking in Sex and Labor: Domestic and International Responses on Nov. 13 and 14. Human trafficking – already a major international concern – is expected to increase as the global economic crisis boosts demand for cheap labor and growing poverty makes people more vulnerable. At the same time, limited funding frustrates efforts at prevention, prosecution and remediation. Trafficking has been under active debate in Congress and is likely to receive renewed focus under the Obama administration. The Penn Law Review symposium will provide a forum for scholars and practitioners to share and debate a range of viewpoints on how best to combat human trafficking. “Everyone agrees that trafficking is a major human rights problem,” observed Meena Sharma, the Law Review’s managing editor. “The question of what we can do about it is more complicated and controversial.” The Law Review intends the symposium as an academic and practical event. “Due to the nature of the issue, our audience is especially broad,” said Sharma. “It includes law students, practitioners, and scholars, as well as grassroots organizations that work in trafficking and think tanks that debate the issue.” Feminist and anti-trafficking activist Gloria Steinem will kick off the symposium with opening remarks and participation in a panel discussion. Renowned legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon, who specializes in gender equality issues under international and constitutional law, will deliver the keynote address. Penn Law Professor Tobias Barrington Wolff proposed the topic of human trafficking to the Law Review articles editors, whose responsibilities include spearheading the symposium. The topic resonated with the Law Review. “The problem of human trafficking is so timely, and it touches on a broad array of legal issues and academic disciplines – everything from sociology and anthropology to economics,” said Sharma. “Plus, trafficking is an issue where academic theory and on-the-ground practice really intersect.” The Penn Law Review traditionally sponsors one symposium each academic year and publishes articles from that symposium in the corresponding volume’s final issue. Recent topics have included intellectual property reform (2008-2009), the Class Action Fairness Act (2007-2008), and global warming (2006-2007). This year, in addition to hosting the on-campus symposium Trafficking in Sex and Labor: Domestic and International Responses, the Law Review will sponsor and publish articles from an off-site spring symposium examining financial regulations in the wake of the global financial crisis.
Andrew Bingham L’10 dabbled in music for years until, midway through his first year at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, something clicked. “It wasn’t until law school that I was driven to make music as a creative outlet,” he says. Music soon became Bingham’s antidote to the pressures of law school. After intense days of class and legal writing, Bingham “would go home with a craving to play guitar and write music.” He often felt most creative when the pressures of law school were most severe. “Several of the songs I’m most pleased with came during finals week,” he observes. “That was kind of scary.” Now in his third year at Penn Law, Bingham has just released his debut album, A Hoarder Wants to Give – produced by a Grammy-Award winner and featuring 13 original songs that range from rock to blues to alternative country. He held his CD release party at the Tin Angel in Philadelphia in September – with several Penn Law classmates in the audience – and is scheduled to play three other Philadelphia venues on Nov. 14, 18 and 19. As a guitarist in high school and college, Bingham had played in a few jazz and rock bands, but says he didn’t take his music very seriously. He also wrote songs, but lacked an outlet for them because he didn’t think he had the right singing voice. Eventually – with a little inspiration from Bob Dylan – Bingham decided to take a chance at singing the songs he wrote. “Dylan doesn’t have a conventionally good voice, but you want to listen to him,” Bingham explains. “It’s pretty amazing, really. I realized that if you have a good story and can intrigue people with your songs, people will listen to you.” Sitting in a meeting during his 1L summer internship at New York Legal Assistance Group, listening to a colleague discuss resources available for indigent clients who need help beyond traditional legal assistance – such as those with hoarding disorder – a line entered Bingham’s head: “It’s so hard to keep this place clean with my stacks of magazines.” That lyric would inspire the song that would become the title track of Bingham’s debut album. During his 2L year, Bingham completed the “Hoarder” song and wrote the 12 others on the album. He began recording the songs himself, but quickly realized that building a high-quality home studio would be cost-prohibitive. So Bingham researched recording studios in California’s Bay Area, where he planned to spend the summer. Around this time, Bingham was shopping for an Afro-Peruvian drum, and mentioned his album aspirations to a drum dealer in Boston. As luck would have it, the dealer knew of a Grammy-Award winning producer in the Philadelphia area who he thought would match Bingham’s recording style. At the dealer’s suggestion, Bingham contacted the producer, Phil Nicolo. “It was serendipitous,” says Bingham, noting that Nicolo had recently recorded a song for Bingham’s unknowing mentor, Bob Dylan. At the end of Bingham’s 2L year, Nicolo recorded a demo of Bingham singing and playing acoustic guitar. Nicolo liked Bingham’s sound and, having a soft side for the local Philadelphia music scene, agreed to produce Bingham for a fraction of his usual rate. Nicolo connected Bingham with a team of professional musicians to back his tracks and Bingham soon recorded his first album. He describes the experience as “the most fun I’ve ever had.” Less than three weeks after recording the album, Bingham was in Palo Alto, Calif., working as a summer associate at Jones Day. While there, he received an assignment that would ease the transition from recording studio to law firm – helping a music producer develop a business plan related to her digital marketing efforts. “It was a great opportunity for me to see the crossroads of law and business and music,” he says. Currently a member of Penn Law’s Entrepreneurship Clinic, Bingham has another opportunity to work at this interdisciplinary crossroads – this time guiding a sole-proprietor in the music business through contract issues. Bingham hopes to build a career around his passion for music, perhaps in the “gray area” where music meets business and law. “Recording the album helped me realize that following my passion for music is more important than the security of going to a big firm and having my career path laid out,” he explains. Bingham says he is “100 percent realistic” about the challenges of pursuing a non-traditional legal career. Nevertheless, he finds it “liberating” to embrace a degree of uncertainty. “Coming from the law, we tend to be inherently risk-averse. It was eye-opening to realize that the people I worked with on the album were extremely successful, but only because they had been willing to take risks to pursue their passion.”
Michael O’Connor, a 2009 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, is the winner of the Alliance Defense Fund’s William Pew Religious Freedom Scholarship Competition for 2008-2009. O’Connor will receive a $2,500 award for his entry, Legitimate Defense of Civil Rights or Raw Congressional Power Grab? The Constitutionality of the Freedom of Choice Act. O’Connor argues in his paper that the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) – legislation that proponents say would codify Roe v. Wade but which O’Connor believes would reach further – is a questionable exercise of Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause and an improper exercise of Congress’ power under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment. “Issues surrounding FOCA spoke to my interests in states’ rights and the Constitution,” O’Connor explains. “Plus, I could really sink my teeth into the issues because they are so undecided.” O’Connor became interested in FOCA as a result of taking Professor Kermit Roosevelt’s Constitutional Law course – which he describes as “one of the most enlightening classes I’ve ever had” – and serving as articles editor for the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law. O’Connor also credits Professor Stephen Burbank, for whom he served as a research assistant throughout his time at Penn Law, for inspiring his “curiosity about complicated issues and cases with lots of moving parts.” As a student, O’Connor served as vice president of Penn Law’s Federalist Society chapter and helped prepare Penn Law’s successful bid to host the Federalist Society’s National Student Symposium for 2010. O’Connor points out that Penn Law also hosted a national symposium for the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS) in the previous year. “The Federalist Society and ACS are opposing groups on issues related to Constitutional law. The fact that Penn Law hosted their symposia in consecutive years really demonstrates the school’s openness to dialogue across the ideological spectrum,” he says. Since graduating in May, O’Connor has taken (and passed) the Pennsylvania bar exam and volunteered for Penn Law’s Supreme Court Clinic. He starts at White & Case in Washington D.C. this month, where he plans to practice international litigation.
Penn Law Professor Christopher Yoo, co-director of the Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition, is speaking at two events in Washington, DC, on technology policy.
On Wednesday, Oct. 28, he is speaking at a briefing for Capitol Hill staff on “Net Neutrality: Understanding the FCC's Proposed Rule Making,” sponsored by the Congressional Internet Caucus. See: http://www.netcaucus.org/.
The University of Pennsylvania Law School has awarded its Cohen Public Interest Fellowship for 2009-2010 to Victoria Messina L’05. The fellowship will support Messina’s work at Penn’s Toll Public Interest Center, where she will develop and supervise student-run pro bono projects. “As our Cohen Fellow, Tory will help ensure that students don’t just do pro bono work, but also step back to reflect on their experiences,” explains Arlene Rivera Finkelstein, assistant dean and executive director of public interest at Penn Law. “We want to make sure that students embrace the educational value of their pro bono experience.” Penn Law requires students to complete at least 70 hours of pro bono work to graduate as one way of instilling an ethic of professional responsibility and providing students with hands-on opportunities for professional development. Finkelstein compares leading a pro bono project to running a “mini non-profit,” because students must learn to budget, plan strategically and train and supervise staff – all while focusing on what’s best for their clients. “Being a student leader imparts a valuable skill-set, no matter what the individual’s career trajectory,” she says. Most pro bono hours are spent working in placements arranged by the Law School. But a proliferation of student-led pro bono projects – there are now 16 – resulted in the need for a practicing attorney to mentor the student-leaders and guide the projects. The projects range from environmental law to international human rights, and from broad-based policy development to direct representation of indigent clients. “I’m excited to help students have meaningful pro bono experiences,” says Messina. “This is one of the best ways to foster a lifelong commitment to public service work." Messina’s background demonstrates that students can integrate public service into whatever career paths they choose. After graduating from Penn Law, Messina worked as an associate at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, where she augmented her private practice with significant pro bono asylum and anti-death penalty advocacy. She subsequently shifted to full-time public interest work as a program coordinator at Pro Bono Net, a non-profit organization that applies technology to increase access to justice for underserved populations. “Tory’s fluency in the languages and cultures of both private-practice pro bono and public interest law is vital to her role as a Cohen Fellow,” says Finkelstein, noting that Messina will mentor students who plan public interest careers as well as those interested in private practice or non-traditional legal careers. “Tory’s approach to working with students – to offer guidance through expertise, rather than a heavy hand – creates the delicate balance of support and autonomy that our students need to grow professionally.” Messina says she was hooked on public service during her first year at Penn, when she worked in the school’s Immigration Clinic (now the Immigrant Rights Project), representing an Iraqi refugee who had been placed in deportation proceedings based on an alleged criminal act. “My client had escaped Saddam Hussein’s regime, only to be imprisoned in the U.S.,” explains Messina. “When we took his case, he literally had nowhere else to turn. Our client was eventually freed and back on the road to citizenship. The experience was both humbling and inspiring.” Messina also knew from her work before law school – teaching English as a Second Language to adults in the U.S. and teaching in the French public schools – that she found it highly rewarding to develop personal connections and help empower other people. “There’s no greater feeling than helping people achieve their goals,” she says. As a Cohen Fellow, Messina will have the opportunity to empower a new set of clients – law students. She says she’s been impressed so far by the students, who she describes as “active, thoughtful, and deeply reflective on their pro bono experience.” The Cohen Public Interest Fellowship is made possible by a gift from David and Rhonda Cohen, who attended Penn Law together in the late 1970s. David is Executive Vice President of Comcast Corporation. Rhonda was formerly a partner at Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll.
 Eight students and their professor were at the Supreme Court Oct. 13, seeing their work in action in a case before the nation’s highest court. As part of Penn Law School’s new Supreme Court Clinic, the students and Professor Stephanos Bibas helped shape the arguments for a case that tests the limits of the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of effective assistance of counsel for non-citizen criminal defendants. The Supreme Court Clinic integrates clinic work with an academic seminar on how the Court works. “It is extremely rare to have this opportunity so early in a career,” said student Matt Cushing. The case, Padilla v. Kentucky, involves Jose Padilla, a legal permanent U.S. resident who lived in the U.S. for 40 years. His attorney told him that although he wasn’t a citizen, he would not be deported if he pleaded guilty to a drug charge. The attorney was wrong. The students, working with the Supreme Court practice at a Washington law firm, Paul Hastings, researched state laws to see whether there are different laws concerning the ethical obligations of attorneys advising clients on the consequences of a guilty plea on their immigration status. “They have to take a mass of trial transcripts and exhibits and synthesize it into a compelling statement of facts,” Bibas said. “I'm learning from teaching them, and they're learning by strategizing, researching, writing and rewriting.” “It is quite exciting to know our work in Padilla, and other cases for the clinic, will play a role in shaping the law in this country,” student Rachel Fendell said. The students arrived at the Supreme Court at 7 a.m. and waited in line for three hours to get in, but say it was worth the wait to see the magnificence of the courtroom and to see and hear the justices interact with attorney Stephen Kinnaird, a Penn Law lecturer from Paul Hastings, the firm representing Padilla. “The hardest part was identifying whose voice it was when they were speaking, since I'd never heard the justices’ voices before,” said student Priya Narasimhan. “It's been a godsend to have Penn Law students assisting in the case. They're engaged and committed and bring intellectual horse power to bear," Kinnaird said. The opportunity to work on the case and to attend the oral arguments is an invaluable experience. “It gives a different view and weight to what we're doing academically,” said student Dane Reinstedt. Added Bibas: “They can see how lawyers do things and hear justices thinking out loud. They see some very good lawyers, some not so good lawyers, and that's how they learn.” Bibas, seated at the counsel’s table with Kinnaird, was back at the Supreme Court for the first time since he clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy. “I never thought I'd be sitting at the table and seeing my old boss in a different perspective and trying to persuade him,” Bibas said.
Christopher Howland, a third-year student at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, was among five gay men awarded a $4,000 scholarship during a reception sponsored by Bread & Roses Community Fund on Oct. 1. Bread & Roses’ Jonathan Lax Scholarship Fund was established in 1994 by the late entrepreneur, Jonathan Lax. The purpose of the fund is to encourage gay men—especially community leaders—to obtain higher education. Howland received his B.A. in English from Hendrix College and a master of arts in English from the University of Arkansas. During his second year at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, he served as co-chair of Lambda Law, an LGBT organization. During Howland's tenure, Lambda was a highly visible presence at the University, including holding a forum on the issue of gay marriage. He also actively serves on the board of directors of Gay and Lesbian Lawyers of Philadelphia as a student representative. Over the past 15 years, the Jonathan Lax Scholarship Fund has distributed over $600,000 to help make it possible for 129 scholars to attend college or a post-secondary program.
The seventh annual International Right to Know Day will be commemorated worldwide and celebrated with an awards ceremony in Bulgaria on Sept. 28. The annual promotion of open, transparent government and individuals’ right of access to information grew out of a meeting of freedom of information advocates who gathered in Sofia, Bulgaria, on Sept. 28, 2002. Three members of the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania Law School have focused much of their recent scholarship on this issue: In a just-published paper in the journal Governance and in a recent op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Cary Coglianeseargues that President Obama’s rhetoric on transparency has raised unrealistic expectations. “As the chairman of an independent presidential transition task force that issued more than 25 recommendations to improve governmental transparency last summer, I share Americans' ideals of open government,” he writes. “But too much fishbowl-style transparency can dampen internal deliberations and official self-criticism…. Good government actually requires certain limits on transparency.” Coglianese, a political scientist, is a deputy dean for academic affairs and the Edward B. Shils Professor at Penn Law, and he is director of Penn’s Program on Regulation In papers published by the law reviews at the University of Pennsylvania and Lewis and Clark, Seth Kreimerpoints out that “the body of the Constitution provides no right to public information. What the Constitutional text omits, the last generation has embedded as a part of modern constitutional practice in the Freedom of Information Act.” Kreimer analyzes and applauds FOIA’s effectiveness at checking the functions of other institutions, even when “the tripartite constitutional structure which is said to guard against executive usurpation remained largely quiescent.” Kreimer is the Kenneth W. Gemmill Professor at Penn Law and is chair of the Legal Committee in the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. In an Election Law Journal review of the book Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency, Michael A. Fitts points to the important role that transparency – or its absence – plays in the failure of regulatory systems to avoid crises such as the current economic recession. “Blunt instruments such as the Freedom of Information Act allow private actors to force certain types of disclosure, but do not pretend to prioritize the types of information or organize its dissemination,” Fitts writes. “Mere availability of information does not mean consumers will use it effectively.” Fitts is dean and the Bernard G. Segal Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
While more states move to legalize same-sex marriage, California has instead eliminated this right with the passage of Proposition 8. Penn Law Professor Tobias Barrington Wolff and civil rights attorney Eva Jefferson Paterson discuss the uncertain future of marriage equality in California during a program at UCLA's Hammer Museum. (Watch video. Run time 1:49.) Wolff served as co-chair of President Obama's LGBT advisory committee during the 2008 presidential campaign. He writes and teaches civil procedure and constitutional law. Paterson is the president and founder of the Equal Justice Society and former executive director at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights.
Penn Law staff members (from left, below) Silvana Burgese (back to camera), Nathan Hicks and Nancy Porcellini – co-winners of a contest to name the Law School’s new café -- cut the ribbon to open The Sidebar as proprietor Cassandra Somerville applauds (at right). Dean Michael A. Fitts (in bottom photo) makes the first purchase at The Sidebar: a coffee with lots of cream and sugar.
Now more than ever, prospective employers want to know that our students are engaged, energetic, enthusiastic and efficient – and have the professional skills necessary to hit the ground running. This fall, we are launching new programming through our Center on Professionalism that will help students develop their skills in five key areas: communication; lawyering skills; organization and management dynamics; self-development; and strategic planning and problem solving. As part of this effort, all first-year students will work in their cohorts to learn the skills of legal research and writing and to understand more deeply and develop professional skills. Each cohort works with faculty and staff liaisons with whom they will meet as a group, and we are launching a special intranet site that will allow students to track their own professional-skills development throughout their Law School careers. On Monday, Sept. 21, we held a Professionalism Day for 1Ls that included an alumni networking lunch, meetings with the cohorts and their liaisons and a discussion of how students can embrace their legal education in ways that build upon their professional skills.
Six University of Pennsylvania Law School graduates – including a justice on the Delaware Supreme Court, one of the country’s preeminent trial attorneys and a leading investor – are being honored for their career achievements, pro bono work, service to the legal profession and service to the Law School.
They are:
- Robert S. Blank L’65, a senior partner with the investment partnership Whitcom Partners.
- Randy J. Holland L’72, a justice on the Delaware Supreme Court.
- David Richman L’69, a partner with Pepper Hamilton.
- Richard Sprague L’53, a dominant presence in Philadelphia courts for decades.
- Leba Tolpin L’06, an attorney representing at-risk youth in Delaware.
- Stella Ming Tsai L’88, a partner with Archer & Greiner.
“These honorees have made – and continue to make – enduring contributions to the law, to the welfare of their clients and to the future of the law school that was a springboard to their success,” said Penn Law Dean Michael A. Fitts. “Each of them epitomizes the importance of being dedicated to something larger than one’s self, to helping create opportunities for others.”
The awards will be presented during an Oct. 7 ceremony and reception celebration at Penn Law.
The James Wilson Award, honoring service to the legal profession and named for the signer of the Declaration of Independence who was the first lecturer in law at Penn, will be awarded to Delaware Supreme Court Justice Randy J. Holland. Holland was the youngest person to serve on the Delaware Supreme Court when he was named to the bench in 1986. Prior to joining the court, where he is now serving a second 12-year term, Holland was a partner at Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell.
Holland, former national president of the American Inns of Court Foundation, has been an active leader in the areas of ethics and professional responsibility. He chaired a national advisory committee to the American Judicature Society’s Center for Judicial Ethics and the American Bar Association’s National Joint Committee on Lawyer Regulation. He has served on the ABA Presidential Commission on Fair and Impartial Courts, the Appellate Judges Conference’s Executive Committee, the Standing Committee on Client Protection and the Judicial Division’s Ethics and Professionalism Committee. U.S. Chief Justices Rehnquist and Roberts appointed Holland as the State Judge Member of the Federal Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules. Holland is author or editor of several books: Middle Temple Lawyers and the American Revolution; The Delaware Constitution: A Reference Guide; Delaware Supreme Court: Golden Anniversary; The Delaware Constitution of 1897 – The First One Hundred Years; and Appellate Practice and Procedure.
The Distinguished Service Award honoring service to Penn Law will be awarded to Robert S. Blank, senior partner of Whitcom Partners and co-chair and co-CEO of its affiliate, Whitney Communications Co. The firms make investments in public and non-public companies and have operated large-market FM radio stations and network-affiliated television stations, cable television systems, trade magazines, newspapers and other publications. Blank began his law career as an assistant U.S. attorney in Washington, DC, and later worked in mergers and acquisitions at Goldman, Sachs. He joined Whitcom in 1971. Blank is a director of Toll Brothers Inc., a member of Penn’s Board of Trustees, a member of the Penn Medicine Board, an overseer of both The Wharton School and Penn Law, and he serves on the board of managers of The Wistar Institute.
The Alumni Award of Merit, recognizing professional achievement and service to the Law School, will be presented to Richard A. Spragueand Stella Ming Tsai.
Sprague is principal with the firm of Sprague & Sprague, where he has represented a variety of high-profile figures, including basketball star Allen Iverson and radio personality Howard Eskin. In 2000, Sprague was listed in Philadelphia magazine’s Power 100 as the 25th most powerful person in Philadelphia. He has served as special prosecutor for the Allegheny County District Attorney since 1999 and as special prosecutor for the Philadelphia County District Attorney since 2000. Sprague was chief counsel and director of the House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations, investigating the murders of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Sprague’s 50-year career has also included leading roles in a test of the insanity defense and in prosecuting United Mine Workers president Tony Boyle for the murder of Joseph “Jock” Yablonski.
Tsai, a partner with Archer & Greiner, focuses her practice on corporate governance and governmental affairs, and she has extensive commercial litigation experience, including trial work. She has served as one of the city of Philadelphia’s top lawyers, managing the 45 attorneys of the Health and Human Services Unit. She also supervised attorneys who represented the city in civil rights and labor relations matters in state and federal courts and before local, state and federal labor boards and commissions. During her tenure at the Law Department, Ms. Tsai made substantial contributions to the system-wide implementation of court reforms designed to achieve the safety, permanency and well-being of at-risk children and youth in Philadelphia. She subsequently served as an inaugural member of Philadelphia’s Board of Ethics and helped rewrite the city’s complex and outdated zoning code to help facilitate sustainable growth. She is a former president of Penn’s Law Alumni Society.
The Young Alumni Award, honoring professional achievement of a student who graduated within the past 10 years, will be presented to Leba Tolpin. Since September 2006, Tolpin has served as a staff attorney and the Steven J. Rothschild Skadden Fellow at the Disabilities Law Program at Community Legal Aid Society Inc. in Wilmington, Delaware, where she represents at-risk youth. She also advocates within the juvenile justice facilities and the juvenile delinquency system and has represented children in Social Security and Medicaid appeals and in school disciplinary removal hearings. She recently accompanied her husband, a doctor, on a service trip to the Himalayan Mountains, establishing medical clinics in remote villages.
The inaugural Howard Lesnick Pro Bono Award, named for a longtime Penn Law professor and awarded to a graduate who has shown a sustained commitment to public service as part of a private-sector career, will be awarded to David Richman. A partner with Pepper Hamilton and a trial and appellate lawyer, Richman previously served 18 years as a court-appointed counsel to the inmates of the Philadelphia Prison System in a federal class action. He has worked as an Assistant DA for Philadelphia, following service as counsel to an ad hoc committee of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives investigating corruption in the state government. He co-founded the PA Innocence Project in 2008 and is the organization's president.
The University of Pennsylvania Law School is welcoming 255 students as part of its Class of 2012, one of the most academically accomplished, talented and diverse group of students in the Law School’s history. More than 6,230 students applied for admission. Of the 255 who are enrolled, 48 percent are women, 36 percent are students of color and they range in age from 20 to 35. They come to Penn Law from 37 states, the District of Columbia and 101 colleges and universities. Beyond the statistics, the Class of 2012 is filled with incredibly accomplished, talented and dedicated students. For example: - The new students are already committed to the integration of knowledge across disciplines: they hold advanced degrees in education, environmental science, literature and divinity (among others), and they plan to pursue joint degrees in law and bioethics, business administration, international studies, social work and many more fields.
- They have worked for change globally and within local communities as teachers, Peace Corps volunteers and health educators.
- The Class of 2012 includes artistic, clever and uncompromising voices: professional performers, college newspaper editors and a senior writer for President Obama’s transition team.
- They are professional, poised and devoted to shared sacrifice and responsibility: several are commissioned officers in the Army, Navy and Marine Corp.
- And they have followed unpredictable, amusing and inspiring journeys as a former NFL player, a champion baton twirler, and a member of the U.S. National Rowing Team.
  
New students at the University of Pennsylvania Law School spent part of their orientation participating in a neighborhood cleanup around 46th and Market streets in University City. Penn Law's innovative public interest program requires students to integrate pro bono service into their lives as law students. To graduate, students must provide at least 70 hours of public service support to the community, which also provides opportunities for students to challenge themselves in new areas of practice and research.    
Michael Smerconish, a 1987 graduate of Penn Law School and a talk-show radio host, describes his one-on-one interview with President Obama in his Philadelphia Inquirer column. "The president soon arrived for his first live radio interview from the White House, five or six minutes ahead of schedule," Smerconish writes. "Suddenly, I faced the task of shooting the breeze with the most powerful man in the world." 
Students at the University of Pennsylvania Law School will have even more opportunities to advocate for human rights and asylum protection, thanks to a gift from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and its partners. The gift honors Robert C. Sheehan, a 1969 graduate of the Law School who recently ended his 15-year tenure as executive partner of the law firm and assumed a new role as the firm’s pro bono partner. Penn Law is using the $1 million gift to create the Sheehan Asylum/Human Rights Project. The school will recruit a full-time professor to guide students as they work on asylum cases in partnership with local providers of legal services to immigrants. The Sheehan Project will be part of Penn Law’s three-year-old Transnational Legal Clinic, where students work with clients across cultures, languages, borders and legal systems on human rights litigation and advocacy. It is one of nine clinics in Penn Law’s Gittis Center for Clinical Legal Education, which offers sophisticated instruction and legal experience in civil practice, child advocacy, mediation and criminal defense through its clinics and professional externships. “Bob Sheehan is not only one of the world’s most respected law firm leaders, he is a longtime and influential advocate for human rights,” said Penn Law Dean Michael A. Fitts. “He has developed an exemplary pro bono program at Skadden that is respected worldwide for its work on criminal appeals, political asylum cases, post-conviction death penalty appeals and other matters. We are honored to receive this gift, which will benefit our students and the clients they represent tremendously.” Sheehan, who was executive partner from 1994 to April 2009 and previously founded Skadden's Financial Institutions Mergers & Acquisitions Group, oversaw the firm’s global expansion and spearheaded community service initiatives, including pro bono work. From 2001 to 2008, the average number of pro bono hours for Skadden attorneys nearly doubled, and the percentage of lawyers who contribute at least 20 hours a week increased from 38 percent to 65 percent. The firm also launched, and continues to support, the Skadden Fellowship Foundation, which provides two-year fellowships to at least 25 very talented young lawyers every year so they may pursue careers in public interest law. With the 2009 class announced earlier this year, the foundation has supported 564 fellows over the past 21 years, and more than 90 percent of them have pursued careers in public interest career after their fellowship tenures. In 2008, Skadden, Arps and The City College of New York created the Skadden, Arps Honors Program to increase diversity in law schools and the legal profession. “People from many parts of the world suffer in unimaginable ways simply because of their political and religious affiliations,” said Sheehan. “Guiding them through the U.S. legal system so they can escape persecution is one of the most valuable services we as lawyers can provide. I am grateful to Skadden and Penn Law for establishing the asylum/human rights project to help future generations of lawyers pursue opportunities in this area of public interest law.” Earlier this year, Sheehan received the Pro Bono Institute’s Laurie D. Zelon Award from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in recognition of his exemplary pro bono service. In 2008, he was the recipient of the St. Thomas More Award from the Lawyers Committee of the Inner-City Scholarship Fund in New York City for his leadership and service to the legal profession. In addition, Sheehan received the Legal Aid Society’s 2005 Servant of Justice Award for his many significant contributions to pro bono causes.
The University of Pennsylvania Law School is awarding its first Philadelphia Fellowship to 2009 graduate Daniel Urevick-Ackelsberg, who will work with Community Legal Services of Philadelphia to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. The Philadelphia Fellowship is awarded annually to a Penn Law alumnus who will divide his or her time working at a Philadelphia-based public interest organization and in the Law School’s Toll Public Interest Center, counseling students regarding pro bono opportunities and working to cultivate new opportunities for students. A second post-graduate public interest fellowship will be awarded annually beginning in fall 2010 to an alumnus who partners with a national or international public interest organization. The Fellowships are a new addition to Penn Law’s innovative Toll Public Interest Center, which teaches all students to integrate public service into whatever career paths they choose. Penn Law students must perform at least 70 hours of pro bono service in order to graduate. “Dan has been absolutely steadfast in his commitment to public interest law both before and during law school,” said Arlene Rivera Finkelstein, assistant dean and executive director of public interest at Penn Law. “It is a privilege to help launch what will undoubtedly be a long and impactful public interest career.” Among his accomplishments in law school, as a student in the Civil Practice Clinic, Dan successfully represented a tenant in a complex eviction case that involved depositions, countless motions and defenses based on fair-housing and racial-discrimination laws. The clinical faculty at Penn Law awarded Ackelsberg its 2009 Outstanding Student Award. “I grew up in a Germantown home, where working for your community was understood as a requirement of a privileged, comfortable, middle-class existence,” explains Ackelsberg, whose mother organized the community to improve a neighborhood park and whose father, Irv Ackelsberg, was a long-time CLS attorney and is a leading advocate for consumers’ rights. “Beginning as a child, I understood that whatever it was my dad was doing, he was one of the ‘good guys.’” As part of his Fellowship assignment with Community Legal Services, Ackelsberg will help lead a new effort to protect desperate homeowners from scam artists who buy homes while promising to negotiate more favorable terms with the mortgage company, but then evict the homeowner and steal any equity in the home. “We are extremely impressed with Dan, and we are excited about sponsoring him for a project that combines his passions and skills with our work to stem the growing tide of home foreclosures,” says Catherine C. Carr, executive director of CLS Philadelphia. “We are particularly thrilled at being the first ‘home’ for this new Penn Law program.” As part of his Fellowship year, Ackelsberg also will use his relationships with the public interest community to help identify new service opportunities for students. “When I started at the Law School, I didn’t need to be introduced to public interest lawyers or to the public interest life; I grew up in it.” Ackelsberg said. “For some students, though, I think public interest lawyering is something of a mystery. I can help change that.” Before beginning his studies at Penn Law, Ackelsberg was a policy analyst at The Reinvestment Fund, where he contributed to research on housing policies. As a law student, he worked on employment issues at CLS. He also is the creator of YoungPhillyPolitics.com, a website dedicated to involving young Philadelphia area residents in progressive politics, and is national champion rower and two-time member of U.S. National Rowing Team who is hoping to compete in the 2012 Olympics. Penn Law was among the first law schools to require all students to perform public service in order to graduate when it adopted that requirement 20 years ago. Penn Law’s commitment to public service also includes the Toll Loan Repayment Assistance Program, which helps repay student loans for graduates who pursue public interest careers. Among the program’s recent enhancements: graduates who make $45,000 or less working in public interest positions are not required to contribute toward their loan repayment and the maximum loan forgiveness amount has increased to $14,000 per year, or a total possible forgiveness of $140,000 if an alumnus participates in the program for a full 10 years.
University of Pennsylvania Law School Dean Michael A. Fitts has named Professor Anita Allen as deputy dean for academic affairs and Professor Eric Feldman as deputy dean for international affairs. Allen, the Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy, is “a preeminent scholar and expert on privacy and contemporary ethics.” Fitts said. “The author of six books and countless articles, she epitomizes the interdisciplinary focus for which Penn Law is known. Among the areas on which I have asked her to concentrate is our curriculum, which is undergoing substantial review in the coming year.” An August 2007 external evaluation praised Penn Law for its distinctive emphasis on integrating knowledge with other disciplines through collaborations with other professional and graduate schools at Penn. Allen succeeds Professor Charles W. Mooney, and she will be joined as deputy dean by Professor Cary Coglianese, who is serving the second year of his two-year term. Feldman is assuming the newly created role of deputy dean for international affairs and will oversee refinement and expansion of Penn Law’s international programs. “Eric is a leading scholar of comparative law, with special expertise on Japan and the impact of its culture on legal rules,” Fitts said. “He has also been deeply involved in the successful development of our joint efforts with Japan’s Waseda Law School, and he will explore ways for further expanding our international presence.” Penn Law currently offers six formal study abroad programs (China, France, Germany, Israel, Japan and Spain), dozens of courses in international and comparative law and a three-year joint JD-master’s degree program with The Wharton School’s Lauder Institute.
The University of Pennsylvania has launched the Penn Center for Neuroscience and Society, a cross-disciplinary endeavor to increase understanding of the impact of neuroscience on society through research and teaching and to encourage the responsible use of neuroscience for the benefit of humanity. Penn Law Professor Stephen Morse has been named associate director of the Center. Morse, the Ferdinand Wakeman Hubbell Professor of Law and professor of psychology and law in psychiatry, is a renowned expert in criminal and mental health law. His work emphasizes individual responsibility in criminal and civil law. Morse is currently working on a book, Desert and Disease: Responsibility and Social Control, and he has served as a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Mental Health and Law.
University of Pennsylvania Law School Dean Michael A. Fitts has announced the appointment of five faculty to endowed professorships. “Appointment to a chaired professorship is a significant academic honor and a recognition of the recipient’s long-term commitment to the profession,” Fitts said. “I want to congratulate each of these professors and our alumni, as well, ” he added. “We now have 31 endowed professorships at Penn Law, a remarkable accomplishment that attests to the quality of our faculty and to the extraordinary financial support of our alumni and friends.” The new professorships are: Tom Baker, the William Maul Measey Professor of Law and Health Sciences. Baker is a preeminent scholar in insurance law who explores insurance, risk, and responsibility using methods and perspectives drawn from economics, sociology and history. His book, The Medical Malpractice Myth, is receiving significant attention as the health care reform debate gathers steam. Claire Oakes Finkelstein, the Algernon Biddle Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy. Finkelstein is a leading scholar at the intersection of philosophy and law. One of her distinctive contributions is bringing philosophical rational choice theory to bear on legal theory. Jill E. Fisch, the Perry Golkin Professor of Law. Fisch’s extensive and insightful work focuses on the intersection of business and law, including the role of regulation and litigation in addressing limitations in the disciplinary power of the capital markets. Douglas N. Frenkel, the Morris Shuster Practice Professor of Law. Frenkel is the architect of Penn Law’s nationally renowned clinical program. His multi-media book on mediation skills and ethics, The Practice of Mediation: A Video-Integrated Text (with James Stark), is the first work of its kind to integrate text and video. The Shuster Practice Professorship is the first Chair at Penn Law which is specifically identified for a clinical faculty member. Chris W. Sanchirico, the Samuel A. Blank Professor of Law and Professor of Business and Public Policy. Sanchirico’s extensive corpus spans several fields of legal scholarship, including evidence, civil procedure, and tax. In each case, his work is known for its unique creativity and technical rigor.
More than 90 international students from 44 different countries have arrived at the University of Pennsylvania Law School this month to begin year-long studies toward a graduate degree as they study American and international law. The students all have legal degrees and work in their home countries as politicians, prosecutors, professors, corporate counsel, law clerks, corporate lawyers, judges and in other roles. More than 1,200 applicants sought admission to the class of only 92 students. Roughly one-third of the enrolled students come from East Asia, Europe, and the rest of the world, respectively. Countries represented for the first time in this year’s graduate class at Penn Law include Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Liberia, Peru and Uzbekistan. The most represented nation is China (13 students), followed by Japan (nine); France, India, Italy and South Korea (four each); Argentina , Germany , Greece and Israel (three); Brazil, Chile, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Taiwan and Turkey (two); and one student each from Australia, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Liberia, Mexico, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Venezuela. “Our international students take classes with our American J.D. students and are active in all parts of life at Penn Law,” said Matthew Parker, assistant dean for Graduate Programs. “While many of our faculty and students travel around the world as part of their research and study, all of us benefit by having such a wide representation from the rest of the world come to study with us at 34th and Chestnut streets.” Since the late 19th century, Penn Law has welcomed foreign lawyers, prosecutors, judges and others seeking to further their understanding of United States and international law. Alumni of the graduate program for international students include a senior judge of the European Court of Human Rights; a sitting justice of South Africa's Constitutional Court; and a recent presidential candidate in the Philippines. JAPANESE DINNER PARTY FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS On Aug. 25, members of the LLM class teamed up with visiting scholars to host a Japanese dinner party for the entire class. The homemade meal included sushi, sashimi, tempura and other Japanese food, along with sake and various types of Japanese beer. Said one participant: “What was truly great about it -- besides the food -- was the level of interaction between students and scholars from all over the world." 
Many proposals to reform the U.S. patent system are on the table, but for Penn Law professors Polk Wagner and Gideon Parchomovsky most of them do not achieve a balance between improving patent quality and promoting innovation.
Since the mid-1980s, the number of patent applications has soared, creating a huge backlog and resulting in the approval of inventions that don’t meet the basic criteria of being useful, novel or non-obvious to a person skilled in the relevant field.
The increase in patent applications can be linked to a growing corporate tendency to use patents strategically, instead of using them to protect inventions. Some companies began procuring patents to avoid future litigation, while for others patents are like lottery tickets, said Wagner. Most patents have no commercial value whatsoever, but a small percentage do yield immense profits. Recognizing this needle in the haystack potential of patents, companies began creating large patent portfolios on the chance that one of them will yield some profit, he said.
Since only perhaps 6 percent of patents are commercialized, Wagner and Parchomovsky are proposing a fourth requirement for patentability — commercialization — to reduce the number of enforceable patents to lessen patent congestion. Their proposal “piggybacks on the existing system of renewals,” in that owners would have to file an affidavit of commercialization at renewal time, said Wagner. (While patents have a 20-year term, owners have to pay fees to renew them at 3.5, 7.5 and 11.5 years.) Wagner and Parchomovosky hope that this can cut the survival rate of patents in half, greatly reducing enforceable patents without significantly impacting the incentives to innovate.
That black Americans lag behind whites on important measures of social and economic well-being is indisputable. Black men are disproportionately uneducated, unmarried, unemployed and incarcerated. Black women and their children endure high rates of poverty living in fatherless families. The question is: What can and should be done about it? Five years ago, Bill Cosby elicited deep hostility (along with a modicum of support) from the African-American and social science communities when he used the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education to declare that racial disparity “is no longer the white man’s problem.” Cosby’s critics attacked. “Who is he to charge the black community – the very victim of racial oppression – with undoing the harm caused by that oppression?” they asked. “The taboo against blaming the victim has profoundly distorted thinking about race,” writes Wax, the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at Penn. Wax is sure to elicit controversy with her claims that the history of racial oppression is of little use in resolving today’s achievement gap and that African-Americans’ own collective behavior and mentality have overtaken racial hostility as the leading barrier to ending racial inequality. “I didn’t start out thinking or writing about race.” Wax explains. “I teach about poverty and inequality, and the laws and social programs designed to address them. In this area, race looms large. And I just got tired of the stale, ritualistic, mindless debates about race, which usually reflected what people felt they had to say instead of what they really thought – and what the evidence showed.” Drawing on social science evidence and policy experience, Wax challenges the dominant view that only far-ranging efforts by government, private organizations and society as a whole can eliminate black disadvantage. Discrimination against blacks has dramatically abated; the most important factors impeding black progress now are behavioral: low educational attainment, poor socialization and work habits, drug use, criminality, paternal abandonment, and non-marital childbearing. “I’m not denying racism – just saying that it’s a small and ever-diminishing part of the problem and dwelling on it doesn’t get us anywhere,” Wax says. In legal terms, Wax finds the answer in the law of remedies and its distinction between liabilities and cures. To illustrate her argument, she uses the parable of the injured pedestrian. Imagine someone struck by a car, through absolutely no fault of his own, and rendered unable to walk. The driver pays for the pedestrian’s hospital bills and rehabilitation expenses but cannot, with all the money in the world, restore the pedestrian’s ability to walk. Rather, the pedestrian must expend enormous effort in physical therapy if he is ever to walk again. In this unfair twist of fate, only the victim can cure himself – no matter that he is depressed and demoralized as a result of the driver’s actions. Similarly, the notion that white society can right its wrongs and save black America from itself is a dangerous rescue fantasy, she writes. What the black community needs is a “conversion experience,” an internal cultural reform whereby members discard old illusions, find a new path, and redirect their lives. “The strategies of the past have exhausted themselves and can no longer work,” she writes. “The future of black America is now in its own hands.” Put another way: “Government programs alone won’t get our children to the Promised Land. We need a new mindset, a new set of attitudes – because one of the most durable and destructive legacies of discrimination is the way that we have internalized a sense of limitation.” Another quote from Professor Wax’s book? No. The speaker was President Barack Obama. The president’s remarks “are refreshing,” Wax says, “but they go down easier because Obama sweetens them with the mandatory liberal disclaimer – ‘There is still plenty of racism and we still need special government programs to battle it.’ In my book, I call this ‘operating on two tracks.’ It is ultimately self-defeating, because it is always easier to seize on racial bias than one’s own bad choices to explain failure.” For Wax: “Equal opportunity – including consistent enforcement of civil rights laws, a wise and honest government, a well regulated free market economy, a sound education system and a humane but not overly generous social safety net – is all the support anyone needs, whatever their race, color or creed, to live a decent life. The rest is up to them.”
The University of Pennsylvania Law School has named four winners of teaching awards for the 2008-09 academic year. They are: Catherine Struve, the Harvey Levin Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence; Sarah Barringer Gordon, the Robert A. Gorman Award for Excellence in Teaching; Tobias Barrington Wolff, the A. Leo Levin Award for Excellence in an Introductory Course; and Lisa Scottoline, the Adjunct Teaching Award.
After 30 days, dozens of emails, and hundreds of phone calls, Penn Law successfully reached the finish line of its June Challenge by receiving gifts from 1,245 donors for a total of $960,922. The June Challenge was issued anonymously by three graduates of the Law School, who promised to give $125,000 if the Law School received donations from 1,000 donors during the month of June. The challenge resulted in $32,000 per day in gifts to Penn Law for the month. The 1,000th donation was made anonymously in honor of Raymond Trent, a librarian at Penn Law for the past 45 years, who curates a renowned collection of books, periodicals, articles, and audio tapes concerning the history, education and practice of black lawyers in the United States.
Jennifer Yvonne Mokgoro, a justice on the Constitutional Court of South Africa and a 1990 master’s degree graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, spoke at Penn Law’s commencement on May 18. Members of Penn Law’s JD Class of 2009 came from 33 states, the District of Columbia and nine foreign countries. Master’s degrees were awarded to students from 29 different nations.  
On the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square uprising, Penn Law's Amy Gadsden criticizes the Obama administration for weakening America's human rights policy toward China. "When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton debuted on the diplomatic stage in China in February 2009, she made a point of elevating cooperation with China on pressing transnational problems over human rights issues," Gadsden writes for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. "In a moment of candor that was highly criticized, Secretary Clinton dismissed the importance of raising human rights with her Chinese counterparts, saying, 'We know what they are going to say because I've had those kinds of conversations for more than a decade with Chinese leaders.'” "In 1989, China stood on the precipice of history," concludes Gadsden, Penn Law's associate dean and executive director of international programs. "After the Tiananmen crackdown it was unclear whether economic liberalization would continue and what the future of China might look like. It turned out to be another chapter in the story of China’s economic development, not its political reform. It would be comforting to think that China over the next twenty years will liberalize, but it is naive to assume that such changes are inevitable. China’s civil society groups offer tremendous hope for the protection of human rights in China and the Obama administration, perhaps above all others, should grow comfortable investing in this hope."
Should corporations have the right to remain silent? Penn Law Professor Tobias Wolff argues that they should not, especially when that right interferes with the government’s efforts to disseminate educational and safety information to the public. The First Amendment prohibits the government from compelling speech. For Wolff, the amendment’s compelled speech clause places two separate but overlapping burdens on the government: to safeguard an individual’s right to remain silent and to create an informed populace. In free speech cases, however, the Supreme Court has focused mostly on the individual’s rights, at the expense of analyzing the impact that a regulation may have on promoting rich public debate, said Wolff. Wolff said that the focus on the individual speaker’s autonomy began with West Virginia v. Barnette, in which the Supreme Court struck down a statute that forced children to recite the pledge of allegiance at school. The court offered two reasons. The first was to protect an individual’s right to speak his own mind and the second to limit the power of the state to regulate public discourse, even if the state had noble intentions, for the larger goal of safeguarding dissent. Since then, Barnette has come to stand mainly for the autonomy of speakers. The Supreme Court has used that principle to increasingly empower for-profit corporations, but arguments based on speaker autonomy “are categorically inappropriate for corporate actors,” said Wolff. In Pacific Gas & Electric v. Public Utilities Commission of California, the Supreme Court asserted that corporations possess many of the same rights as individual speakers. The decision effectively opened the door for corporations to take advantage of rights that had previously been available only to individuals. Seeking to widen the public discourse, the commission mandated that PG&E include informational materials supplied by TURN, a consumer protection group, in four of the twelve monthly billing statements. The commission had reasoned that the extra space in the billing envelopes belonged to customers, and that TURN’s newsletter wouldn’t impose an additional postage fee. Although PG&E could counter TURN’s messages with its own newsletter in the remaining eight statements, the company argued that the requirement violated its rights of autonomy and self-expression. The Supreme Court allowed the company to characterize the state regulation as compelled speech and then proceeded to strike it down as unconstitutional because it put PG&E in a position where it might be forced either to appear to agree with TURN’s views or to respond. That reasoning only works, said Wolff, if PG&E is treated as an individual speaker. Since PG&E, corporations have increasingly used arguments based on self-expression and autonomy to evade measures designed to disseminate information and promote commerce through industry-based advertising, said Wolff. For Wolff, corporations should only be able to seek First Amendment protection when a regulation negatively impacts public discourse.
It was 1980 and Marjorie Rendell had just given birth to her son, Jesse. As a partner at Duane Morris LLP, she felt her responsibilities precluded her from taking more than a month off from work. When childcare arrangements occasionally broke down, Jesse would accompany her to the office, where she tried to conceal his presence from clients. But it wasn’t always easy. He would sometimes make a noise during a conference call, and when clients inquired about the noise, she’d respond that she was just clearing her throat. “It wasn’t easy to admit that you had a child, it was considered a sign of weakness” said Rendell, who is now a federal judge. Clients and colleagues would question a woman’s dedication to her career. In her 35-year-long career as a bankruptcy lawyer and a judge, the Honorable Marjorie Rendell has lived through what she calls the “dark ages for women in the law.” During the keynote lecture at the Penn Law Women’s event in April, Rendell imparted lessons she had learned along the way on work, family and civic engagement. For the first five years in her career, Rendell was the only woman practicing bankruptcy law in Philadelphia, and she had to prove that she was just as tough as the men. Instead of adopting an aggressive attitude, Rendell chose to establish herself with intelligence and subtle humor. When her male colleagues would call her honey, she would call them buster. Despite the pervasive sexism, Rendell found an excellent mentor, Dave Sykes, who made her success the “barometer of his success,” she said. Often a client would not want to be represented by a woman, but Sykes would push Rendell forward as a competent, hardworking attorney. She advised students to find colleagues who push them forward as a person who can get the job done. The skill set she picked up from her practice-- litigation, negotiation and a deep understanding of commercial matters-- turned out to be good preparation for her work as a judge, she said. Today she plays a dual role: She is the First Lady of Pennsylvania and a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The idea that you can have balance is a myth, said Rendell. “As long as you know there isn’t balance, and that’s normal, you can deal with it.” The secret to managing multiple responsibilities, she said, is finding help. Rendell advised students to surround themselves with their own support group. She also encouraged students to complement a professional career with nonprofit work, because it can feed a passion, make one a better person, and prevent tunnel vision. “For lawyers it makes good sense. I used to think it was a way to get business, but it’s not about that. It’s about sharing your ideas and skill set with other people,” she said. In closing, she said the three most important things in the legal profession were the three C’s: civility, clarity and credibility. She advised students to react to situations in a civil manner; to communicate clearly with clients, partners and court members; and build credibility every day through thoughtful interactions with colleagues and clients.
Three University of Pennsylvania Law School graduates have issued this challenge: get 500 donations to the Law School’s annual fund by the end of June and they will donate $25,000 to their alma mater; get 1,000 donations by June 30 and receive a total gift of $125,000. “Penn Law has one of the smallest endowments of any major law school and relies upon annual giving dollars to support scholarships and financial aid,” said Dean Michael A. Fitts. “This anonymous challenge will help us continue to provide broad access to the finest, most cross-disciplinary legal education in America.” Qualifying donations can be made by new donors or by the nearly 3,000 donors who already have given a gift to the annual fund this fiscal year. More information is available from Gregory Schmidt, director of Annual Giving, at 215-898-5653.
How the judicial branch navigates its relationship to administrative agencies can shed light on the allocation of lawmaking power among the three branches of government, says Penn Law Professor Jill Fisch. Fisch, a securities law expert, is using the case of Levy v. Sterling Holding Co. to explore this issue. Mark Levy, a shareholder of Fairchild Semiconductor International Inc., sued Sterling Holding Co. LLC and National Semiconductor Corp. for profits that the companies had made from short-swing trading. A company can seize profits made by corporate insiders who buy or sell a company’s stock within a six-month period, under section 16(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The SEC, however, exempts certain transactions from liability. Fairchild was spun-off from National as a new company, and National and Sterling invested in the company by purchasing two types of common stock and preferred stock. Several years later, Fairchild decided to undertake an initial public offering and underwriters advised the company to convert all its preferred stock to common stock. The preferred stock owned by Sterling and National was reclassified as common stock and within six months, Sterling sold 11 million shares of common stock and National sold 7 million shares. The companies earned a sizeable profit because the stock price had increased 84 percent since the reclassification. Levy argued that the reclassification of preferred stock as common stock constituted a purchase and that the short-swing profits made by National and Sterling belonged to Fairchild. The companies claimed that the transactions were not liable under two exemptions outlined by rule 16(b). In its original decision, the Third Circuit Court found that the exemptions were ambiguous and determined that even under the best interpretation they did not cover the short-swing trade, said Fisch. After the Third Circuit’s decision, the Securities and Exchange Commission amended the exemptions to clarify that they did cover the Sterling and National transactions and stated that the amendments applied retroactively, said Fisch. In response, the Third Circuit reversed its decision, relying on principles of deference to administrative agency rule-making articulated by Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. For Fisch, Levy raises two issues: the scope of agency power to enact retroactive “interpretive” changes to its rules, and the power of an administrative agency to overturn a judicial decision. While the Court has repeatedly affirmed the power of Congress to change the law and to apply changes retroactively, she said, it has placed limits on the powers of both Congress and executive officials to reverse judicial decisions. Briefings to the Supreme Court in the second round of Levy focused on the retroactivity issue because administrative agencies are generally prohibited from retroactive rulemaking unless Congress gives them the statutory authority to do so, said Fisch. But for Fisch, the second issue of the limited power of Congress and other executive offices to reverse judicial decisions is potentially more interesting because it has only been explored by a handful of cases. Levy offers a chance, said Fisch, to study these limits and whether these limits apply in the same way to independent administrative agencies.
The Obama administration's handling of the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies "violates the basic rules of bankruptcy in ways that could have dangerous consequences", David Skeel told the House Judiciary Committee on May 21. "Our bankruptcy laws are well designed to successfully restructure the automakers," he said. "There is a widespread misconception that bankruptcy means the death of a business, but the American bankruptcy laws are designed to preserve and restructure viable enterprises like the carmakers. The first major mistake with the carmakers was waiting so long to consider the bankruptcy option." A complete copy of is testimony is available here.
Can a non-citizen who pleads guilty to a drug charge be deported because of that plea, even if his lawyer told him that he would not risk deportation by pleading guilty? The Kentucky Supreme Court said “yes.” Now, several students and professors involved in a new Supreme Court Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Law School are hoping to convince the nation’s top court to say “no.” Oral argument in Jose Padilla vs. Commonwealth of Kentucky is scheduled for the fall. “The lawyer was wrong,” says Penn Law Professor Stephanos Bibas, a former law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy and a former federal prosecutor who is leading the new Supreme Court Clinic. “Federal law is clear on automatic deportation for certain charges, and this is one of them. It’s draconian. And you shouldn’t be kicked out of the country because your lawyer got it wrong.” Penn Law’s Supreme Court Clinic will be the first of the approximately half-dozen in the country that closely integrates clinic work with a semester-long academic seminar on the workings of the Court, Bibas said. Clinic students will be expected to enroll in the seminar before or at the same time as their clinic work. The Supreme Court seminar is taught by Professor Amy Wax, who has argued 15 cases before the Supreme Court, and adjunct lecturer James Feldman, who has appeared before the Court 45 times. Both are former assistants to the solicitor general, the office that represents the United States at the Supreme Court. Guest lecturers typically include current and former high-ranking officials in the solicitor generals’ office and others who advocate before the Court. The Padilla v. Kentucky case came to Bibas’ attention through two routes. Yolanda Vazquez, a clinical supervisor and lecturer at Penn Law, sought his advice for a paper she was writing about the issue at the same time that his former Yale Law School classmate and former fellow Kennedy law clerk, Stephen B. Kinnaird, contacted Bibas to see if he wanted to help petition the Supreme Court to take the case. Kinnaird is chair of the Supreme Court practice in the Washington, D.C., law offices of Paul Hastings. That confluence of events led to Bibas and Vazquez writing an amicus brief in support of certiorari that, together with Kinnaird's reply brief, convinced the Court to take the case; to Penn Law students helping write a petitioner’s brief on the merits of the case; and to the formation of the new clinic at Penn Law that will work with the Supreme Court practice at Paul Hastings. “This allows students to see how the Supreme Court really works,” said Kinnaird. “Some think of the Supreme Court as a self-contained institution, but it is outside parties and law firms that shape the Court’s docket. “And for our law firm, we need bright and aggressive students to search for good cases, conduct research and help write briefs,” he added. “By having a law school on board, we can show clients that their cases are of broad public importance.” Rachel Fendell, a member of Penn Law’s Class of 2010, researched immigration law for the Padilla brief and said she was struck by “how meticulous everything needs to be. It’s a whole different level; you need to be prepared for anything that could happen at oral argument.” Bibas is using the new clinic’s search for cases as an opportunity to teach students about how the Supreme Court uses case selection to bring harmony to lower court rulings and what factors influence whether a case will be accepted and, if so, how to recruit others to help prepare an argument that goes before the justices. One of the next cases he plans to have the students work on is Ratliff v. Astrue, a South Dakota case in which the government seized an attorney’s fees to satisfy debts that her clients owed to the government. “The quality of appellate lawyering in non-death-penalty criminal cases can be quite poor,” Bibas said. “We are looking to help underserved populations in cases that could improve legal protections for everyone.” The new Supreme Court Clinic joins seven other clinics at Penn Law, along with externships, in which students get valuable practical experience in civil, criminal, transactional, legislative, mediation and transnational law, among others. And for Professor Bibas and lawyer Kinnaird, the new clinic is creating partners out of one-time adversaries; in law school, Bibas defeated Kinnaird in the moot court finals when he persuaded a panel of judges that a jury had to be informed that the defendant was ineligible for parole before they could impose the death penalty. “Stephanos got the side that actually won the real case,” Kinnaird said with a chuckle. “That’s the only reason he beat me.”
William Burke-White, a University of Pennsylvania Law School professor, has been appointed to a position in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Office of Foreign Policy Planning.
The office serves as the secretary’s internal think tank, providing her with direct and independent policy advice. Burke-White, will advise Clinton on issues involving Russia and international law.
The Policy Planning staff's mission is to take a longer-term, strategic view of global trends and frame recommendations for the secretary to advance U.S. interests.
Burke-White will be on a two-year leave from Penn Law to serve in the office.
Jacques deLisle, the Stephen A. Cozen Professor of Law, moderates a discussion [watch video] with President Clinton about how the American constitutional experience has influenced political thought and policy initiatives in other countries and the challenges of nurturing constitutionalism and democracy abroad.
Young, healthy people are an elusive group for health insurance companies. Dubbed the “young invincibles,” they are 18 to 29 year olds who can afford to buy insurance but don’t because they are overly optimistic about not getting sick or injured. How can insurance companies entice these individuals to buy insurance? Give them incentives, says Penn Law Professor Tom Baker. Baker and his colleague, Peter Siegelman, are proposing the revival of tontines, a centuries-old insurance scheme that pays a cash bonus when you don’t get sick and one that covers your medical expenses when you do. They will present their research at the Insurance Project Workshop of the National Bureau of Economic Research in June in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It’s important for young invincibles, who number in the millions, to have some type of insurance, said Baker. Some of them end up facing serious medical needs during uninsured periods, and their lack of coverage forces other taxpayers to subsidize their health care. Some solutions for insuring this population include establishing universal health care, requiring employers to increase the maximum age for children who are covered under parent’s health insurance and increasing the maximum age for participation in state-based programs. For Baker, none of these solutions are ideal because they are costly and some involve an element of coercion. Health insurance companies have also tried a number of approaches to lure invincibles -- flashy marketing materials, barebones plans with no premiums and stripped down policies with low premiums-- but all these efforts miss the point, said Baker. These individuals will never buy something they don’t think they need. Tontines, in contrast, are products that invincibles will actually pay for because they can be framed as a smart investment, said Baker. While Baker and Siegelman have devised a number of options for insurance companies to consider, the simplest arrangement would award a cash bonus to a policyholder whose costs are below a certain level over five years. Preventive care would not be counted towards the costs. Introduced by life insurance companies in the U.S., tontines were immensely popular during the 19th century. Tontines paid a deferred dividend to policyholders who regularly paid their premiums over a 20 year period and appealed to customers because they saw it as a way “of backing their own life,” said Baker. Companies selling tontines quickly amassed large reserves of capital, which executives began treating as their own fortune. They led extravagant lives and invested large amounts of money in stocks, allowing them to wield considerable influence over the companies. Charges of influence-peddling provoked state legislatures to outlaw tontines in 1907, ending an era of unprecedented economic control for insurance companies. Despite their unsavory past, Baker argues that properly designed health insurance tontines would avoid the issues that plagued life insurance tontines because young people have less money to invest and the funds would only be built up for five years as opposed to twenty. For Baker, tontines deserve a second life because they capitalize on a fundamental truth about human nature: an irrational belief about one’s own invincibility.
Legal education is entering a time of ferment and innovation, laws should recognize a right to privacy in public places, and the government’s intervention in the economy raises challenging questions for corporate law, three Penn Law professors told the Third Circuit Judicial Conference during its meeting in Philadelphia, May 4-6. “Telling the faculty we should reform the curriculum used to be a little bit like the president going to Congress saying, ‘We need Social Security reform,’” said Dean Michael A. Fitts. Curriculum reform has moved from being “the third rail” of legal education to Priority One at many top law schools, Fitts told the judges, practitioners and scholars in attendance. At Penn Law, for example, students are encouraged to take up to four courses at one of Penn’s other professional or graduate schools; the first-year curriculum includes offerings in international, comparative and administrative law and an expanded focus on legal writing, in addition to the traditional Socratic courses on common law; and the second and third years emphasize interdisciplinary study and professional skills building. Today’s graduating lawyers must be knowledgeable in their clients’ business in addition to knowing the law – be problem solvers, not just issue spotters – Fitts said. He described a negotiations class co-taught by Penn Law and the Wharton School, in which the law and business students negotiate with each other at the end of the semester. “The Wharton students always make a million dollars, or they go bankrupt; the law students never hit it big, but they never go bust,” Fitts said to laughter. “When I would tell that story three years ago, people would say that it was good for law students to learn how business students approached risk. Now, they tend to see it the other way around.” [Coverage of Fitts’ talk by the Legal Intelligencer can be found here.] Professor Anita L. Allen asked the judges to guard against governmental invasion of privacy rights as we implement necessary security enhancements to counter terroristic threats. Allen explained that, recognizing that privacy rights cannot be absolute, she asks a senior Manhattan district attorney, Peter Casolaro, to lecture students in her privacy law classes about the importance to modern law enforcement of surveillance cameras and access to telephone records and computers. But, “we actually do have privacy interests in public places,” she said, criticizing New York City’s plans to monitor all public spaces in mid-town Manhattan and the financial district with hundreds of video cameras, license plate scanners and other technology. From Plato’s fable about the abuses of a shepherd who could make himself invisible to Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandies’ definition of privacy as involving “inviolate personality” and the 1967 ruling in Katz v. U.S. that said “a man committing a crime on a telephone in a booth on a public street” had a reasonable expectation that his conversation would be private, leading thinkers have found room for personal privacy in public spaces, she said. “We have moral interest in not being watched and listened to unaccountably,” Allen concluded. Professor Edward B. Rock, co-director of the Institute for Law and Economics, said that “at every aspect of the standard corporate law framework, you see serious questions” raised by the government’s bailout of the financial sector and its involvement in automobile bankruptcy. A $375 billion equity infusion by the government into more than 500 companies gives the government an equity interest, and sometimes controlling interest, in those companies. But while corporate law requires shareholders to act in their own interests and those of the company, the government pursues what it believes to be society’s interest, Rock said. For example, 90 percent of the creditors who went along with the Chrysler bankruptcy were part of the federal bailout, Rock added. “The government told them, ‘For the national good, you guys should accept some pain,’ so they acquiesced and took a smaller return on what they were owed than what other creditors are likely to get. “That’s not acting in interests of their company or shareholders, but is acting in the interests of another company, a company that is also in the controlling shareholders’ portfolio. Typically,” Rock pointed out, “that leads to lawsuits over breaching fiduciary responsibility.”
Articles by Penn Law Professors Edward B. Rock and Jill E. Fisch are among the Top Ten corporate and securities articles for 2008, as listed by the Corporate Practice Commentator. Teachers in corporate and securities law were asked to select the best corporate and securities articles from a list of articles published and indexed in legal journals during 2008. Rock was cited for his paper, written with Marcel Kahan, "The hanging chads of corporate voting," and Fisch was cited for her paper, written with Stephen J. Choi, "On beyond CalPERS: Survey evidence on the developing role of public pension funds in corporate governance." All of the articles, listed in alphabetical order of the initial author, are: Anabtawi, Iman and Lynn Stout. Fiduciary duties for activist shareholders. 60 Stan. L. Rev. 1255-1308 (2008). Brummer, Chris. Corporate law preemption in an age of global capital markets. 81 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1067-1114 (2008). Choi, Stephen and Marcel Kahan. The market penalty for mutual fund scandals. 87 B.U. L. Rev. 1021-1057 (2007). Choi, Stephen J. and Jill E. Fisch. On beyond CalPERS: Survey evidence on the developing role of public pension funds in corporate governance. 61 Vand. L. Rev. 315-354 (2008). Cox, James D., Randall S. Thomas and Lynn Bai. There are plaintiffs and…there are plaintiffs: An empirical analysis of securities class action settlements. 61 Vand. L. Rev. 355-386 (2008). Henderson, M. Todd. Paying CEOs in bankruptcy: Executive compensation when agency costs are low. 101 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1543-1618 (2007). Hu, Henry T.C. and Bernard Black. Equity and debt decoupling and empty voting II: Importance and extensions. 156 U. Pa. L. Rev. 625-739 (2008). Kahan, Marcel and Edward Rock. The hanging chads of corporate voting. 96 Geo. L.J. 1227-1281 (2008). Strine, Leo E., Jr. Toward common sense and common ground? Reflections on the shared interests of managers and labor in a more rational system of corporate governance. 33 J. Corp. L. 1-20 (2007). Subramanian, Guhan. Go-shops vs. no-shops in private equity deals: Evidence and implications. 63 Bus. Law. 729-760 (2008).
Penn Law has awarded Human Rights Fellowships to students working abroad this summer in public interest internships between their first and second years of law studies. The Law School provides funding and draws on institution-to-institution relationships to arrange summer positions in such fields as human rights, rule of law development, and international criminal tribunals. Recent placements include summer internships in Cambodia; Ecuador; Buenos Aires; Rwanda; Guatemala; Geneva, and Washington, DC. This summer, fellowships have been awarded to Kaylan Lasky, who will be working with the Legal Assistance Centre in Namibia; Robert Cooper, the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative, Dushanbe, Tajikistan; Miata Colman, with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda; Lindsey Freeman, with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; and Grace Sur, with Legal Aid of Cambodia.
It was a tour de force. Richard A. Sprague, L’53, grand inquisitor, fierce competitor and Philadelphia’s preeminent trial lawyer, gave a lecture last March that seemed more like a clinic on how to prosecute a murder case. Making the classroom his courtroom, he recounted the hard investigative work, the skillful presentation of witnesses and the courtroom choreography that leads to conviction. In short, he killed. Speaking to a capacity crowd attending an installment in the Dean’s Speakers Series [ watch the video], Sprague ranged over his 50-year career, recalling his lead role in everything from a test of the insanity defense to a congressional investigation of the Kennedy assassination to the murder of Joseph “Jock” Yablonski by United Mine Workers president Tony Boyle. Talking to the audience as if it were a jury, Sprague unraveled the evidence in the Boyle case, a multiyear odyssey which remains his most famous. Yablonski was Boyle’s bitter rival. He had run against Boyle and contested his election – which led to his gangland-style execution in western Pennsylvania. Sprague, who was the prosecuting attorney, recalled in vivid detail the night of Dec. 31, 1969, when Yablonski, his wife and daughter were killed by hitmen. Three men watched the house until the lights went out. First they cut electric wires and phone lines and deflated car tires. Then they walked upstairs in stocking feet and slayed three members of the family. Several days later, according to Sprague, investigators found a yellow legal pad. Written on it was CX457 Chevrolet and Paul Gilly, painter, Cleveland, Ohio. Yablonski had written this down after following a suspicious vehicle carrying men who had knocked on his door but left when they saw he had company. Sprague said this note proved crucial in helping him peel back layer after layer in the case. It led to the convictions of three hired killers, to a confession from a UMW employee and to guilty verdicts of co-conspirators including Tony Boyle, who died in prison. Sprague went on to describe another of his well-known cases: the murder of Jack Lopinson’s business partner and wife in the basement of Dante’s Inferno, a Philadelphia restaurant frequented by the mob. As Sprague recounted, Lopinson, co-owner of the restaurant, hired a psychopath with mafia ties, Frank “Birdman” Phelan, for the job. Lopinson intended to kill the hitman after he committed the murders, thus becoming a hero and launching a bid for the Pennsylvania state legislature. But, sensing a plot, Phelan shot Lopinson in the leg before the restaurateur could carry out his plan, and then snitched on him. Before the trial, Phelan had second thoughts about testifying, because he feared he would look like a “weak sister.” Sprague said he solved that problem by promising Phelan the death sentence in return for his cooperation. Phelan endured three days of cross-examination and the case turned on his testimony. Phelan later unsuccessfully challenged his conviction for first degree murder and conspiracy to murder, declaring he was mentally incompetent to stand trial. Lopinson was convicted and died in prison. Sprague also discussed the ultimate murder case: the Kennedy assassination. After years as a celebrated prosecutor in the Philadelphia district attorney’s office, Sprague was appointed chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which reopened the investigations into the deaths of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Sprague said he followed leads on the Kennedy assassination that placed his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, in the company of a CIA agent days before the murder. But, Sprague said, the Warren Commission dismissed this version of events, saying Oswald was visiting the Cuban embassy in Mexico City that day. Further, the Commission claimed it had photos and a tape of a conversation Oswald had with the Russian embassy. Sprague said he asked for photos, the tape and a transcription, but was stonewalled at every turn, at which point the chairman of the committee asked Sprague to stop the investigation. Sprague said he does not know if the CIA was involved, but the case raised a lot of interesting questions.
At this year's Equal Justice Foundation auction, which raises money to support students who are exploring public interest careers, second-year Penn Law student Sarah McConaughy's bid was enough to secure the car washing talents of Professors Edward B. Rock and Jill E. Fisch. While wearing roller skates. "The winning bid was $290 -- and well worth it!" says McConaughy, who drove away in one clean set of wheels. [During their day jobs, Professors Rock and Fisch produced scholarship listed among the Top 10 corporate and securities articles for 2008.]     
Penn Law graduating student Olwyn Conway has been named winner of the 2009 Summer Jackson-Healy Public Service Award, presented by the Equal Justice Foundation to a graduate who has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to public service. Before attending law school, Olwyn helped found a non-profit dedicated to youth empowerment and leadership development, and she also worked extensively using arts education and after-school programs to serve at-risk youth. She has been able to continue this work in law school while also founding the Environmental Law Project, working for the Reproductive Rights Project, and representing clients in the Criminal Defense and Immigration legal clinics. Olwyn has also interned at the Southern Poverty Law Center, Community Legal Services, and the Ecuadorian Center for Environmental Law, gaining broad experience in public service that is almost unmatched among her peers.
Before Michael Anderson rode his motorcycle from Philadelphia to Seattle last May, he grew a beard to protect his face from the elements. He didn’t know then that his beard would become his entrée into Middle Eastern society. But in Qatar, where the University of Pennsylvania Law School student is spending 16 months researching Islamic finance on a Fulbright Fellowship from the U.S. State Department, Anderson’s full beard and Middle Eastern appearance opened doors seldom available to Westerners. Anderson is of mixed African-American and Caucasian descent. He often needed to recount his family tree at least as far back as his American-born grandparents to convince new acquaintances that he was not from the Middle East or North Africa. As a result, his opportunities to experience Middle Eastern lifestyle have been plenty: invitations to two family farms, including one of a young sheik; family dinners regularly; and mosque and family business meetings weekly. “I have offers outstanding to visit everywhere from Sudan and Egypt to Syria and Palestine,” he says. At first, he found researching Islamic finance to be unwieldy and frustrating. The industry had been accused of being “regular finance with an Islamic gloss.” Much of the legal research seemed to indicate that the verses of the Quran on which the industry is based were becoming codified “in ways that are unworkable in modern finance settings,” he explained. But Anderson, who has an undergraduate degree in accounting, a master’s degree in taxation, and experience working for Ernst & Young and McKinsey consulting, got an assist from his past when a former professor pointed out during a phone call that accounting standards were changing in the wake of the economic collapse. Anderson wondered if those accounting changes might contribute to a modern Islamic finance industry, as well. From that point forward, Anderson shifted his focus from a purely legal to a more holistic look at the industry. “Students at Penn Law are encouraged from Day One by Dean [Michael] Fitts to look at the law and their roles as lawyers as inextricably mixed with the surrounding world,” Anderson says. He spent the next two months dividing his time among studying Islamic finance law, Sharia’ah-compliant accounting, financial statement analysis, Arabic, and the Quran. “Only then did I realize that a financial infrastructure will be in place within the next decade to create a fully self-sustaining system, regardless of whether that system is a better way of doing business or full of contradictions,” he said. “And at that point, it won't matter who agrees or disagrees with the underlying theory.” That clarity led Anderson to concentrate less on theory and more on learning how Sharia’ah-compliant institutions work in practice. He spent more time in the offices of banking executives and less time with abstract theoretical ideas. He also took advantage of Qatar’s unrivaled position as the Arab world’s meeting place of ideas to network with participants at the Arab League summit and at conferences on topics such as the rule of law. The business community in Doha, the capital of Qatar, has taken an interest in his work, leading to meetings with bank CFOs, accounting and law firm partners, Shariah law scholars, and college deans and university presidents. As part of his Fulbright Fellowship, Anderson also taught two English classes at Qatar University College of Law and co-taught legal writing with Salman Al-Ansari, a Qatari national who earned a master’s degree at Penn Law in 2007. Like many Middle Eastern universities, Qatar University has two campuses, a men’s campus and a women’s campus, which meant double the work for the teacher. On Anderson’s first day, when Al-Ansari suggested that the female students introduce themselves to “Doctor Michael,” Anderson remembers that “there was a row of about five girls in full abayas, with their faces fully covered. I could see their eyes and could hear words, but I couldn’t tell who was speaking.” Now, Anderson is quite comfortable teaching at both campuses, although the occasional guard will shoo him away from the women’s campus if he is not in a suit; wearing one is a clear indication of being a professor. “Up until two years ago, a young, single male would not have been allowed on the campus,” he says. Anderson’s beard also served its original purpose: He bought a Harley-Davidson Sportster and joined the local H.O.G. (Harley Owners Group) motorcycle club. Like their motorcycling counterparts in the United States, his new friends tended to be “a little rough around the edges,” Anderson says, adding that he was one of the few members who tried to “bridge the gap” between the group’s Arabic and English speakers. “It’s hard to explain what a thrill it is when you are riding in the desert and there’s a herd of camels running beside you,” he says. Less thrilling was having the driver of an SUV two lanes to his right suddenly stop and try to make an impossible U-turn in front of him. The accident interrupted what was to be a four-day ride through Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to the town of Fujairah on the border of Oman, but Anderson says it’s “sort of a miracle” that he was able to walk away from the mishap. The accident, captured by a video camera attached to a fellow rider’s helmet, still may make its way to YouTube. Upon completion of the Fulbright Fellowship, Anderson plans to return to Philadelphia next spring to complete his third year at Penn Law. Although he already has job prospects in the United States, Anderson expects that a lot will change in the next several years. “If I do things right, there might be a niche in the Middle East for me,” he says. “I’m in a spot where I could work for people who either need someone who can bridge the divide between western and Arabic worlds or who need to know something about the Arabic financial world. I can be that person. There are a lot of opportunities.” And he may not even have to shave his beard to take advantage of them.
Regulatory agencies must make use of science, but they should not portray policy decisions as being the inevitable result of research findings, a University of Pennsylvania Law School professor told a congressional subcommittee today (April 30, 2009). “Science describes; it does not prescribe,” said Cary Coglianese, Penn Law’s associate dean for academic affairs and director of the Penn Program on Regulation. “Regulatory agencies have not always acknowledged that their decisions are ultimately policy choices, albeit ones informed by science.” Coglianese delivered his comments to a subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Technology, which is holding hearings on “The Role of Science in Regulatory Reform.” Science is needed to discover causes and effects, and researchers can help identify emerging problems and possible solutions, Coglianese said. A government response to the swine flu epidemic that emphasized avoiding pork products instead of frequent washing of hands would be misguided and possibly dangerous, he pointed out. But science cannot and should not dictate policy, he added. Sometimes regulators must act before scientists fully understand a problem and possible solutions; at other times, regulators may be justified in failing to take any action even in the face of scientific consensus, Coglianese said. “In the context of regulatory policy, science’s role – what President Obama called its ‘rightful place’ – is to provide a necessary but not sufficient input into policy decisions,” he said. Citing research he conducted with Gary Marchant, a law professor at Arizona State University, Coglianese described a “science charade” undertaken by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency when it has revised air quality standards. EPA claimed that science must prevail, Coglianese said. But the agency never adequately explained why it chose standards that could lead to job losses and higher utility bills while tolerating known health effects. Those were not decisions driven by science, Coglianese concluded. “Science is about understanding or predicting what is, not about concluding or justifying what a standard should be,” he said. Congress could correct agencies’ misrepresentation of the role of science by amending statutes that keep agencies from fully considering all relevant policy considerations, or by considering a new law requiring agencies to clearly demarcate the role science has played in their decisions and the role played by policy reasons, Coglianese suggested. “Many observers of the regulatory process have properly sought to enhance ‘sound science’ in agency decision making – or to avoid what is variously considered ‘junk science’ or ‘bent science,’” he said. “But just as there is always room for improving the quality of the science that regulatory agencies must rely upon, there are also opportunities to enhance the quality of agencies’ policy reasoning, especially where they misleadingly suggest that science has determined their decisions.”
Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell (third from left) was the keynote speaker at the 2009 Penn Law Review Dinner. Rendell and Penn Law Dean Michael A. Fitts (second from right) are joined by (from left): next year's managing editor, Meena Sharma, and editor-in-chief, Kenji Price; and this year's editor-in-chief, Christopher DiPompeo, and managing editor, Kindl Shinn. Rendell stressed the importance of giving back to the community and recalled stories from his work as Philadelphia district attorney to a banquet hall full of students, faculty, alumni, and members of the Pennsylvania bar. Guests included federal judges Marjorie Rendell and Louis Pollak, former dean of Penn Law. This year, theUniversityof Pennsylvania Law Reviewcelebrated its 157th volume of publication. Founded in 1854, theUniversityof PennsylvaniaLaw Review is the nations oldest law review and the sixth-most cited law journal in the world.
Jennifer Yvonne Mokgoro, a justice on the Constitutional Court of South Africa and a 1990 master’s degree graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, will speak at Penn Law’s commencement on May 18. “Justice Mokgoro is a distinguished international jurist who has been at the forefront of building the new South Africa,” said Penn Law Dean Michael A. Fitts. “She was appointed to the Constitutional Court by Nelson Mandela and she has been a persuasive defender of the country’s civil liberties. Justice Mokgoro is the author of many ground-breaking opinions, including one that abolished the death penalty in South Africa.” Prior to becoming a justice, Mokgoro’s work had far-reaching influence in human rights, women’s rights and customary law, before South Africa’s transformation to democracy began. She has taught at a number of universities in South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Netherlands. Just last year, she told law graduates at the University of Pretoria in South Africa that, “the role and function of a lawyer now, more than ever before, extends beyond criminal justice, and even beyond the court room itself. The Constitution mandates a human rights approach to all the challenges in our society.” Justice Mokgoro will receive an honorary degree from the University of Pennsylvania as part of the University’s commencement at Franklin Field. The Law School commencement ceremony will begin at 3 p.m. on May 18 at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music. Members of Penn Law’s JD Class of 2009 come from 33 states, the District of Columbia and nine foreign countries. Master’s degrees will be awarded to students from 29 different nations. 
 Tianna Jackson (left) and Melanie Baptiste, both 2009 graduates of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, present Penn Law School Dean Michael A. Fitts with the 2009 Douglass Moot Court Trophy from the Black Law Students’ Association national competition. Jackson is from the Bronx; Baptiste, who is from Atlanta, also won the 2009 title for National Best Oral Advocate.
“Know the world you live in” is the motto of www.ForeignPolicyDigest.org, an online magazine about world affairs and international issues. It is a message that third-year University of Pennsylvania Law School student Olivier Kamanda, the site’s founder, takes to heart. Since earning his undergraduate degree in engineering from Princeton University in 2003, Kamanda has traveled to Prague researching E.U. nuclear regulatory law, covered international perspectives on the 2008 presidential election for the Huffington Post and visited 92 U.S. cities as a consultant for BearingPoint’s Homeland Security Sector. Kamanda’s proudest accomplishment to date, however, is the November 2007 launch of Foreign Policy Digest (FPD), which aims to provide U.S. readers with the context necessary to better evaluate U.S. foreign policy. As the site’s editor in chief, Kamanda has found that many of the skills he acquired in law school are the same skills he attempts to foster in his audience: “In my experience, the folks who really understood foreign policy and how laws are made had law degrees. I wanted to learn how to think critically and ask the right questions, and I knew that a law degree would help me do that.” Kamanda believes that FPD fills a critical gap left by other foreign policy websites such as Foreign Policy Passport and PostGlobal, which assume readers are familiar with the background narratives of world affairs. Each issue of FPD offers a crash course in how major news events impact five world regions: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Russia and the Middle East. The lawyers, economists, aid workers and journalists who write content for the magazine simplify complex topics like nuclear proliferation and international trade by describing the issue, providing relevant background information and explaining how it may impact Americans. Kamanda hopes that his site will help counteract the imbalance he perceives in Americans’ awareness of foreign affairs: “The rest of the world is much more aware of the U.S. than we are of it,” says Kamanda. “We can’t expect young professionals from the U.S. to compete with those from other countries if those in the U.S. don’t understand how the rest of the world works.” But covering global issues demands a global approach. To that end, the magazine’s content is specifically formatted to feed through cell phones, social networking sites and online media; readers can get FPD status updates on Facebook and Twitter, watch interviews on YouTube and even download podcasts of articles on iTunes. Says Kamanda, “We’d like to reach the generation that spends five to eight hours a day online and explain how the world works, so that when it comes time to vote, everyone can make informed choices.” Kamanda might also describe his decision to attend Penn Law as an “informed choice.” The Law School’s journal opportunities, expansive course offerings and interdisciplinary program were selling points for him, and since starting at Penn in 2006, he has made ample use of the University’s resources. In addition to completing international law coursework at the Law School and international finance and markets classes at Penn’s Wharton School, Kamanda is an executive editor of the Journal of International Law. He is also a frequent presence at the Annenberg School for Communication, where he regularly seeks advice from the faculty about growing FPD’s readership. “The wealth of resources at the Law School and within a five-minute walk of it is something that is unique to Penn. Having Annenberg across the street is invaluable to starting your own magazine,” Kamanda says. Another major draw for Kamanda was Penn Law’s proximity to New York and Washington, D.C., which allows him easy access to the foreign policy makers and experts in those cities. But as it turns out, he does not necessarily have to travel beyond Penn’s campus to find such scholarship. For instance, Penn Law Professor William Burke-White, an expert on public international law, contributed an article to FPD about transitional justice in Uganda. For its issue on global warming, FPD interviewed a former chairman of the White House Climate Change Task Force, Roger Ballentine, following his remarks at a Journal of Business Law-sponsored symposium. And Kamanda’s fellow Law School classmates Deena Shankar (‘10) and Katie Roney (‘09) have also penned articles for FPD about their respective areas of expertise, Arab women in the Middle East and U.S. policy toward Pakistan. Following Kamanda’s graduation from the Law School this coming May, he plans to continue working on and promoting the site, which has been noted by the Philadelphia World Affairs Council and The Huffington Post. Kamanda attributes FPD’s preliminary success to his collaboration with the University, and with Penn Law in particular. “The Law School has been a great support for me,” reflects Kamanda. “The Foreign Policy Digest is the product of a community effort.”
Sharayu Jadhav, an Indian lawyer who will receive a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in May 2009, has received an award from the Philadelphia Bar Association for her outstanding achievements in international law and human rights. The award was presented by the Bar’s International Law Committee on March 24. Since 2001, Jadhav has volunteered with NGO’s to spread awareness about child sexual abuse and for the education of children. As a legal associate for Citizens for Justice and Peace in Mumbai, India, she assisted in a retrial of the Best Bakery case stemming from the 2002 riots in Gujarat, in which 14 Muslims, including five children younger than age 5, were burned to death by Hindu assailants. The retrial resulted in the convictions of nine defendants for murder and in admissions of government misconduct, including witness intimidation. Upon graduation from Penn Law, Jadhav plans to continue advocating for women and children’s rights and for legal remedies to address communal violence in India and throughout South Asia.
The federal government should take steps to improve the process of creating new regulations, three scholars at the University of Pennsylvania Law School recommend in comments submitted to the federal government as part of a review process ordered by President Obama. They suggest seeking greater public input into proposed regulations, forcing regulatory agencies to work more closely together, and evaluating rules not only by using a strict cost-benefit analysis but also by examining whether the regulation’s effects will unduly penalize the poor. “The time is ripe to instruct agencies to integrate equity considerations into their analyses,” said Matthew D. Adler, the Leon Meltzer Professor of Law. “Only a utilitarian would approve a process for governmental choice that ignores equity. Most economists are not utilitarians. My guess is that President Obama is not, either.” Adler and two other members of the Penn Program on Regulation (PPR) – its director, Cary Coglianese, Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and associate dean of the Law School, and Adam Finkel, PPR’s executive director and a fellow at the Law School – made their recommendations in separate, individual filings with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which Obama has directed to find ways to improve the regulatory process. Coglianese, who chaired a nonpartisan task force last year that issued 25 recommendations on improving the transparency of government rule making and enhancing the role of public participation, said that too often “agencies’ rationales for their regulations seem to be little more than after-the-fact rationalizations.” He added that “when agencies insulate themselves too much from the public, they are more likely to regulate badly and generate distrust.” The task force he chaired recommended that agencies “do a better job of seeking citizen comment early enough in the process to make meaningful changes in proposed regulations” and seek out “all interest groups in an even-handed manner instead of shying away from meeting with any groups at all or meeting only with groups representing just one side of a regulatory issue.” [In 2006, Coglianese moderated a discussion held at Penn Law among five former administrators of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the office that oversees federal rulemaking. A copy of those proceedings is available here and was also submitted to OMB this week.] In his comments to OMB, Adler praised cost-benefit analysis for providing a rigorous, systematic, and implementable framework for evaluating regulatory proposals but criticized federal rulemaking for not also undertaking quantifiable assessments of the distributional effects of these same regulations. For example, in some cases cost-benefit analysis can show that a policy will improve the status quo, but further study would also demonstrate that the policy will increase income inequality. In those cases, agencies should be required to explain why one consideration trumps the other. “Even when agencies follow a cost-benefit analysis and propose a regulation that scores poorly on an equity test, acknowledging the inequitable impact will spur the political process to address the equity failure,” Adler said. Finkel recommended that OIRA should be given more authority to require agencies to work collaboratively on issues that cross institutional boundaries. He also called on OIRA to correct the biases he claims have existed in its process of reviewing regulations. “We need to admit that OIRA has never provided a dispassionate second opinion on agency actions,” he said. “Instead, it has facilitated its own vicious circle of underestimated risk, exaggerated cost, and inadequate solutions.” Finkel, who led the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s regulatory interactions with OIRA from 1995 to 2000, also recommended that the Executive Branch hire more staff capable of evaluating the science behind risk assessments or instruct OIRA to review agency cost-benefit analyses “without second-guessing scientific conclusions outside its expertise.”
For Alan Lerner, practice professor of law at Penn Law, emotions are just like gravity: an invisible force whose effects can be felt throughout the law. How else can one explain 5-4 and 6-3 splits on the Supreme Court on legal questions such as what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, or an unreasonable search? If reason and logic were the only factors, then far more court decisions would be unanimous. As an example of a split decision, Lerner cites Texas v. Johnson, in which the Supreme Court lifted prohibitions on burning the U.S. flag because they violated the right of free speech. Justice Kennedy reluctantly joined the majority because he felt impelled to do so by the Constitution, but wrote that the outcome was “distasteful” because the flag symbolized values held dear by Americans. Justice Kennedy acknowledged an emotional pull in decision-making in his opinion and law school professors need to do the same in their classrooms, said Lerner. Lerner is researching the role of emotion in modern legal education and proposing that law schools implement curricula that engage with rather than ignore the relevance of emotions. Lerner’s starting point is that we are all inherently social animals, and that our personal, social and moral decision-making is guided by the region of the brain that processes emotion, not the region that engages in cognitive analysis. The knowledge that the emotional brain uses to influence decisions is learned unconsciously through daily experience, much like how children learn to speak, he said. Law faculty need to address this implicit knowledge and teach students how to deal with their own and others’ emotions, he said, because students will go on to practice and make decisions in emotional and demanding circumstances. In clinical practice, Lerner regularly witnesses the shortcomings of legal education that relies on analysis alone and avoids a thorough examination of values. “Students pass ethics exams with flying colors, but miss issues that arise in practice during clinics; the same is true in practice,” he said. Constructively engaging with emotional issues ultimately has an enormous payoff, said Lerner. In order to feel good about ourselves, we need to believe that we behave morally. Legal education that identifies emotion as both real and appropriate allows students to be effective lawyers without compromising their morality or mental health, he said.
Immigrants detained in the United States increasingly are denied due process, abused by local law enforcement and held in poor detention conditions, a delegation led by the University of Pennsylvania Law School told a hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). “As more power is delegated to different arms of the law, government control and supervision of the detention process dwindles, leaving immigrant detainees with fewer rights and even fewer recourses to correct the injustice,” said Jasmine Zacharias, a third-year Penn Law student from Valley Stream, N.Y. Zacharias was joined at the hearing by Penn Law lecturer Sarah Paoletti, who provides students with practical experience in matters related to international, human rights and immigration law as director of the Law School’s Transnational Legal Clinic. Zacharias and her clinic partner, second-year student Joshua Schlenger, from Flushing, N.Y., helped conduct the research upon which the testimony was based. The delegation also included Aarti Shahani, a researcher with Justice Strategies, and Brittney Nystrom, senior legal adviser at the National Immigration Forum. IACHR is an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States. In January, Penn Law hosted a site visit with the commission and Pennsylvania immigration advocates. Zacharias told the Commission that immigrant detainees frequently lack access to effective counsel and are often deported without being granted a full and fair opportunity to assert their right to stay in the country through the rising use of stipulated and expedited removals. Shahani testified that the empowering of local law enforcement on immigration matters – including the power to arrest individuals during routine traffic stops based on suspicion of their immigration status through the use of Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act – has led to racial profiling, increased arrests and prolonged detentions for minor infractions. Better federal oversight, including training and systems to monitor abuse, is needed, the delegation said. Finally, the coalition of advocates led by Penn Law raised concerns about the treatment of immigrant detainees. Many of those detained on suspicion of immigration violations, including young children, are unnecessarily separated from their families, even within the detention system, Paoletti said. “Generally, the conditions in detention facilities are substandard, there is inadequate medical treatment, and it is not uncommon for people to remain in prolonged detention while the government files appeals, or even to be confined for up to four months even when no appeals pending,” she said. In highlighting these human rights violations of immigrant detainees, the coalition called for increased transparency, accountability, and the preservation of due process in U.S. immigration policies and practices.
Court deadlines don’t just cause anxiety for lawyers. They can mean the difference between life and death, says Penn Law Professor Catherine Struve. Michael Richards, a death-row inmate in Texas, was set to be executed at 6 p.m. on September 25, 2007. That same day the Supreme Court decided that it would review in Baze v. Rees whether lethal injection amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. Richards’ lawyers decided to ask the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for a stay of the execution until the Supreme Court reached a ruling in Baze. Computer problems, however, prevented Richards’ lawyers from filing before the ordinary 5:00 p.m. closing time of the clerk’s office, and they asked the court to keep the clerk’s office open to accept a late filing. The presiding judge refused and Richards was executed. Two days later, lawyers for another Texas death-row inmate obtained a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court on the basis of the grant of certiorari in Baze. Struve is researching what deadlines and their treatment indicate about the litigation system. She will present her research at the Clifford Symposium on Tort Law and Social Policy at DePaul University College of Law in April. The missed deadline in Richards’ case, said Struve, highlights the tension between justice and efficiency because lawyers’ failures to meet deadlines can result in the loss of rights for clients. On cases concerning federal matters, failure to meet a state-court deadline can automatically disqualify cases from federal review. Deadlines also reveal the division of authority between courts and Congress, said Struve. Laws such as the Prison Litigation Reform Act set deadlines within which federal courts have to take action. Such deadlines may intrude into courts’ ability to prioritize their own activities and could impair their decision-making function, she said. Similarly, deadlines also shed light on how judges view the task of lawyering. Some judges will grant an extension, while others will not, depending on whether they consider the mistakes that lawyers make as impermissible or as instances of “excusable neglect.” The factors used to consider extension requests vary from judge to judge and from circuit to circuit, said Struve. Lawyers also differ in their views on extensions. Some live by the rule that they will never seek an extension, while others, like some judges, consider deadlines flexible, said Struve.
PHILADELPHIA (March 16, 2009) – Amy Gadsden, an expert in democracy and human rights promotion and Chinese politics who has served the U.S. State Department, has joined the University of Pennsylvania Law School in the newly created position of associate dean and executive director of international programs. “Amy is an excellent strategist with new and exciting ideas about where our international program might go,” said Penn Law Dean Michael A. Fitts. “At a time when our faculty are increasingly involved in important issues around the globe and our students are interested in overseas opportunities, we are thrilled to add to our staff an accomplished internationalist with Amy’s combination of skills.” Gadsden assumed her new duties March 2. She will explore possible initiatives such as the creation of an international institute, new models for faculty and student exchange relationships, affiliations with international organizations, development of international rule of law programs, and expansion of non-degree programs. Her portfolio will also include international programming for students, international student-exchange programs and the administration of Penn Law’s visiting faculty fellows and visiting scholars. She will work closely with Matt Parker, assistant dean for graduate programs, who oversees the recruitment of international students for Penn Law’s master’s degree programs, and she will represent the Law School in University-wide international initiatives. During her career, Gadsden has worked energetically on issues related to legal and political reforms and human rights in China and elsewhere with the U.S. State Department, the United Nations and the International Republic Institute (IRI). At IRI, a non-partisan promoter of democracy around the world, Gadsden created a grass-roots program establishing election processes in villages throughout rural China and worked tirelessly to encourage good governance, rule of law, human rights, and civil society reform in China. While there, she pioneered major initiatives with Chinese HIV/AIDS non-governmental organizations and with women’s rights groups. Each year, Penn Law enrolls nearly 100 graduate students representing 30 different countries who pursue a master’s degree while studying alongside JD students. Penn Law also offers to its JD students study abroad programs in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, and provides students with practical experience in international law through its Transnational Legal Clinic, in which students, under close faculty supervision, advise clients on petitions for refugee status and other humanitarian cross-border legal issues and by supporting students as international human rights fellows doing fieldwork around the globe. Penn Law’s International Human Rights Fellows Program provides selected students with summer fellowships to work in human rights, rule of law development, and international criminal tribunals in locations such as Argentina, Cambodia, Ecuador, England, Guatemala, Namibia, Nepal, Uganda, and Washington, DC. Penn Law also offers a joint degree in international studies with the Wharton School’s Lauder Institute. “It is an honor to join Penn Law at a time when more faculty and students are taking a greater interest in international law and the central role that law plays in international economics, politics and development. I look forward to strengthening and expanding the Law School ‘s efforts in all of these areas. ,” said Gadsden, who holds a Ph.D. in history from Penn and B.A. in history and English from Yale.
PHILADELPHIA (March 16, 2009) – The University of Pennsylvania Law School today announced the creation of two public interest fellowships and a significant expansion of its loan-forgiveness program at the opening of its first ever Public Interest Week. “Penn Law is unrivaled in its support for public service and public interest law,” said Dean Michael A. Fitts. “We are committed to helping the best and the brightest engage in public interest practice without worrying about how they will be able to pay off their student debt.” Twenty years ago, Penn Law was among the first law schools to require all students to perform public service in order to graduate. During the past two decades, Penn Law students have performed nearly 400,000 hours of pro bono service – the equivalent of 190 years of 40-hour work weeks. “Our students have worked on death-penalty and asylum cases, promoted community development and advocated for international human rights, while helping to represent constituencies that are often ignored by the legal system,” Fitts said. “That is something worth celebrating.” The new post-graduate public interest fellowships will be awarded to Penn Law graduates. One will be awarded beginning in fall 2010 to an alumnus who partners with a national or international public interest organization on a law-related research or service project designed by the Fellow; the other, beginning fall 2009, to an alumnus who will split his or her time working at a Philadelphia-based public interest organization and in the Law School’s Toll Public Interest Center, counseling students regarding pro bono opportunities and working to cultivate new opportunities for students. Fellowship recipients will be selected by a committee of Penn Law faculty and administrators and members of the Toll Public Interest Center’s advisory board. The loan-forgiveness effort, the Toll Loan Repayment Assistance Program (TollRAP), helps repay student loans for graduates who pursue public interest careers. The program applies a sliding scale to a student’s income and debt to determine the level of assistance. Among the benefits of the new changes, graduates who make $45,000 or less will not be required to contribute toward their loan repayment. “Our society needs more talented people to commit themselves to public service,” said Penn Law Dean Fitts. “Here is what we are saying to our students: ‘If you go into debt in order to get a Penn Law education, it is our hope that you will be able to afford to go into public service and work on behalf of the common good.” Penn Law’s first Public Interest Week (March 16-20) features lectures by Stephen Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights and noted death penalty opponent; Linda Greenhouse, who formerly covered the U.S. Supreme Court for the New York Times; and Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. A panel of experts will discuss “Crime in the City: Current Policies & Alternative Approaches” during the annual Edward V. Sparer Symposium on March 20. Penn Law’s Toll Public Interest center and its Toll Loan Repayment Assistance Program are named in honor of 1966 Law School graduate Robert Toll, the CEO of Toll Brothers and a benefactor of public interest support at the Law School.
Could an annuity scheme that was popular in the late 19th Century hold the key to providing health insurance for young adults ages 19-29, the so-called young “invincibles” who account for more than one-third of all uninsured adults? Yes it could, say two professors who claim that the annuities, called tontines, would be more effective and less expensive than forcing businesses to insure their employees’ grown children or increasing the maximum age for participation in public insurance programs. “Many young Americans don't have health insurance, and not necessarily because they can't afford it. Some just don't want to invest good money in health care that they may never need,” professors Tom Baker of the University of Pennsylvania and Peter Siegelman of the University of Connecticut write in an op-ed published today by The New York Times. “This creates tremendous burdens for the individuals who do end up having medical problems, as well as for the taxpayers who cover their visits to the emergency room.” In the late 1800s, tontine life insurance policies paid a deferred dividend to policyholders who survived and faithfully paid their insurance premiums for a defined period, usually 20 years. The amount of the dividend depended on how many people were left in the insurance pool when the dividend was paid. Tontine health insurance could be structured to pay a cash bonus to subscribers who never have to use their health insurance, the professors write. “The tontine feature frames the health insurance purchase as a smart investment rather than a way to spend money for something the customer doesn't think he needs,” Baker and Siegelman argue. Baker and Siegelman’s working paper on which their op-ed is based is available on SSRN.
To the Penn Law community: The Equal Justice Foundation Is a wholly student-run nonprofit public interest organization at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, dedicated to supporting our students who serve those whose legal needs would otherwise go unmet.   The current economic environment posed a significant challenge to our fundraising efforts. Many who we traditionally depend on for support have been constrained by their own financial difficulties. Despite the decrease in monetary contributions, we managed to secure more items and in-kind donations this year than in any previous auction! We relied on our community to pull this auction together. The faculty and staff at Penn Law – more than ever before – wholeheartedly supported our cause by making personal contributions, reaching out to their networks and providing guidance and advice as we explored new avenues to solicit donations. We are also very thankful for the support of our alumni. From all parts of the country and all corners of the world, Penn Law alumni rallied behind us and demonstrated the meaning of community. This challenge has brought our community together and we are confident that no matter where we go from here, we can always count on our classmates and faculty for support. This is the strength of Penn Law and we are so lucky to have experienced it first hand by organizing this event in these times. The EJF auction is especially important this year as we expect more students to be seeking our funding than in the past. The auction is a time for students, faculty, alumni, and local professionals to enjoy each other’s company and to celebrate the strength of our community. It is by empowering one another that we can turn any ideal into reality. All proceeds from the auction will directly fund summer grants and post-graduate stipends for students who commit to serving the public interest — a choice which would be impossible without your support. Thank you, Meena Sharma L’10 Claire Radon L’10 Isaac Glassman L’10 Auction co-chairs  
Serena Mayeri Assistant Professor of Law and History University of Pennsylvania Law School Can administrative convenience be a legitimate reason to discriminate? It was for the Air Force until 1970, when Lieutenant Sharron Frontiero sued the military branch for not allocating equal benefits to women officers, says Penn Law Professor Serena Mayeri. For Lt. Frontiero to receive a housing allowance and medical benefits for her husband, she had to prove that she covered more than half of his expenses. Male officers, in contrast, received these benefits automatically because the Air Force assumed that their wives were economically dependent on them. In her research, which will be published as a chapter in the forthcoming book, Women and the Law Stories (Foundation Press, 2009), Mayeri is exploring how the Frontiero litigation challenged assumptions about gender roles, impacted the feminist movement and influenced the outcome of future cases involving equal rights for women. The Frontieros hired Joseph Levin, who would go on to establish the Southern Law Poverty Center (SPLC), as their attorney, but there were few legal precedents favorable to the case, said Mayeri. At the time, the Supreme Court had yet to declare unconstitutional laws that discriminated on the basis of sex. Nearly a year after the Frontieros filed the case in a federal district court, however, the Supreme Court concluded in Reed v. Reed that administrative convenience was not a sufficient justification for sex-discrimination. That is at least how Frank M. Johnson, Jr., one of the three Frontiero v. Richardson judges, interpreted it, said Mayeri. But he could not convince the two other judges to declare laws that used sex as a basis for classification as “suspect,” said Mayeri. The court concluded that although the law was inconvenient for women, it was sound because it was based on the fact that most men were the breadwinners. When the Frontieros appealed to the Supreme Court, the SPLC and the ACLU Women’s Rights Project struggled for control over the case, said Mayeri. Future Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who worked with ACLU at the time, did not want the same outcome as in Reed; she wanted to ensure that sex, like race, was declared a “suspect” classification. In the end, the SPLC and the ACLU filed separate briefs. The pending status of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) influenced the Supreme Court’s deliberations over whether sex should be classified a suspect category, said Mayeri. Justice William Brennan felt that Frontiero offered the court an opportunity to tackle the question and did not want to wait until ERA’s outcome. Justice Lewis Powell felt that not waiting would short-circuit the political process. The Frontieros won the case, but Justice Brennan could not muster a majority in favor of declaring sex a suspect classification, and Ginsburg fell short of her goal, said Mayeri. It did, however, leave a number of important legacies, said Mayeri. It helped clarify what is meant by a “suspect” class, invalidated government benefit schemes based on assumptions about women’s economic dependency on men, led to more opportunities for women in service, and served as a paradigm for sex-based schemes that harm women, in contrast to affirmative action schemes that help create equality, said Mayeri. More recently, Frontiero has also served as a precedent for gay rights advocates seeking constitutional equality, said Mayeri. As for Sharron Frontiero’s afterlife? Her marriage dissolved by the time she received the $2200 compensation for lost benefits, but she went on to enjoy a second career as a romance novelist.
One might say that every week is public interest week at the University Pennsylvania Law School, where students must complete 70 hours of public service in order to graduate. But the first official “Public Interest Week” will be held March 16-20 to celebrate Penn Law’s two decades of commitment to the community. Lectures by former New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse, noted death penalty opponent Stephen Bright, and John Jay College President Jeremy Travis, an expert on prisoner re-entry into society, will highlight activities being hosted by the Law School’s Toll Public Interest Center. “It’s hard to realize that our public-service graduation requirement has been around for 20 years,” said Howard Lesnick, the Jefferson B. Fordham Professor of Law and a founder of the program. Added Dean Michael A. Fitts: “Not only have many law schools followed us by adopting a similar requirement, but this means that Penn Law students have performed about 400,000 hours of public interest work in the last two decades. “We’ve had the best and the brightest advocating on behalf people with everyday problems,” Fitts added. “Our students have worked on behalf of children and youth, the environment, labor, prisoners and others. Penn Law is unrivaled in its support for public service and public interest law.” Here are highlights of Public Interest Week: - Stephen Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, will lecture on the right to counsel at 5 p.m. on March 16, in Silverman Hall 240B. Bright is widely known for his work against the death penalty and his work toward providing the poor with improved access to lawyers and the legal system. “Poor defendants invariably receive inadequate defense assistance” argues Bright. “Rich people get a completely different kind of justice.” In addition to his public lecture, Bright will spend several days visit classes and meeting with students and faculty as this year’s Honorary Fellow, a distinction bestowed by the faculty on a public service leader.
- Linda Greenhouse, Pulitzer Prize winner and former reporter for the New York Times will examine the role of the courts in the annual Irving R. Segal Lecture, “How Judges Know What They Know.” She will speak at 4:30 p.m. on March 18 in the Levy Conference Center. A long-time reporter covering the U.S. Supreme Court, Greenhouse will discuss sources of judicial knowledge. She now serves as the Knight Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence and Joseph M. Goldstein Senior Fellow at Yale Law School.
- Jeremy Travis, president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, will discuss prisoner reentry into society as part of his keynote address for the 28th Annual Edward V. Sparer Symposium at 1:30 p.m. on March 20, in the Levy Conference Center. The Sparer Symposium honors Edward V. Sparer, a former professor at Penn Law School and a maverick in the field of public interest law and policy. This year’s theme is “Current Practices, Alternative Solutions: Crime in the City." Before becoming president at John Jay, Travis led a national research program focused on prisoner reentry into society as a senior fellow affiliated with the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Before Travis’ address, the symposium will bring together panels of legal thinkers and practitioners to discuss community-centered solutions, collaborative policing practices and possible sentencing reforms. Among the panelists will be Robin Steinberg, executive director of the Bronx Defenders; Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey; and Penn Law Professors Stephanos Bibas and David Rudovsky.
“In addition to providing our community-leaders with access to the latest thinking on advancing criminal justice, we are delighted to provide our students an opportunity to explore the breadth of public interest law,” said Arlene Rivera Finkelstein, assistant dean and director of the Toll Center. “We hope to celebrate the vibrancy of our public interest community and encourage even more of our students to work for social change.”   
Sharswood Fellow in Law and Psychology University of Pennsylvania Law School You’re worried that the builder you’re about to hire to renovate your kitchen won’t get the job done on time, so you specify in the contract that he will pay you $1,000 if he fails to meet the target date. Feeling better? You shouldn’t. Research by a faculty fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School suggests that you’ve just increased the probability that your builder will finish behind schedule. Why? Because for most people, moral objections to breach of contract can be stronger than financial disincentives, writes Tess Wilkinson-Ryan, who holds a law degree and a Ph.D. in psychology from Penn. “One person in our study wrote that ‘there is no amount of money to make it worth going back on your word,’” Wilkinson-Ryan said. “Participants routinely reported that a contract is a promise and that breaking a contract is immoral.” But once an explicit penalty for breaking the contract is written into the agreement, people actually become more willing to break the contract if it’s in their self-interest to do so. For example, in Wilkinson-Ryan’s research, subjects were asked this: Imagine you own a small restaurant that the Wilson family is renting one evening for $1,000. Two weeks before the Wilsons’ party, a famous rock band calls to ask if they can rent your restaurant on the same night. How much would the band have to pay to get you to break you contract with the Wilsons? The results show that if the Wilsons’ agreement did not have a breach of contract clause, the rock band would have to pay $4,000 for the space in order to entice the restaurant owners to break the contract with the Wilsons. If, however, the original contract included a clause stating that Mr. and Mrs. Wilson would be paid $1,000 if the restaurant became unavailable or unusable for any reason, subjects were willing to break that contract even if the rock band was only willing to pay $2,800 to rent the restaurant. Even when there was no penalty clause in the Wilsons’ contract but the subjects were told that a general “law of contracts” would require them to pay the Wilsons $1,000, they were less likely to break the contract and rent to the rock band, even though the economic cost of doing so would be exactly the same as if a $1,000 penalty clause were written into the original contract. The lesson for psychologists is that people are more willing to break a contract if doing so is part of the contract and not a repudiation of it, Wilkinson-Ryan says. The lesson for lawyers is that writing contracts that include cancelation penalties can facilitate economically sound breaches that leave least one party better off and no one worse off. And the lesson for homeowners with outdated kitchens is that you might want to skip the penalty clause and take your chances. [This research is being published as Paper No. 09-03 by the Institute for Law and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1299817.]
Within hours of planes crashing into the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, Cozen O’Connor was flooded with calls from insurance companies. A simple question, “Can we sue Afghanistan?” evolved into a full-blown case in which the prominent Philadelphia law firm is holding more than 400 alleged sponsors of al-Qaeda, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and several Islamist charities, financially liable for 9/11. The case has taken a number of years to wind its way through the lower courts. Cozen O’Connor has filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. The firm seeks to recover $5 billion in property losses. Last November, Sean Carter and Stephen A. Cozen, C’ 61, L’64, founder and chairman of Cozen O’Connor, shared their legal strategies for the case during a forum that was part of the Lawyering in the Public Interest series at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Carter said the multimillion dollar investigation posed a number of challenges, chief among them identifying covert supporters of al-Qaeda. This is difficult, he said, because the U.S. government and intelligence agencies protect such information. Further, the firm was implicating Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally with unlimited financial and legal resources to mount a good defense. Consulting sources such as congressional hearings on terrorism and counterterrorism experts, Carter pieced together how a small group of Afghan war veterans managed to build a global organization over a decade. “Ostensible charities” that were created and controlled by the Saudi government, channeled support to al-Qaeda operatives throughout the world, said Carter. Cozen attorneys made a strategic decision to sue “robust charities” such as the Saudi High Commission for Relief to Bosnia and Herzegovina because their clients were not only motivated by public interest, but also wanted to recover losses. They decided to treat these charities as controlled agents of the Saudi government because the Kingdom used them to further its interests. This designation gave the charities immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (FSIA), but also allowed attorneys to attribute their conduct to the Kingdom and hold it accountable for 9/11. The FSIA gives immunity status to foreign states and their agencies unless one of the Act’s exceptions applies. In the U.S. District Court in New York, Cozen argued that the Kingdom and its agents were not immune because FSIA includes an exception to immunity for tort claims seeking recovery for injuries suffered in the United States. Judge Richard Casey dismissed the case, concluding that FSIA does protect the princes and that even if Saudi agents knowingly provided money to al-Qaeda, they were “exercising a legitimate government function” because they were pursuing foreign policy interests. Cozen appealed the decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which also dismissed the case, concluding that immunity for “terrorist” torts can only be withdrawn from countries on the State Department’s list of designated sponsors of terrorism. Saudi Arabia is not on the list. The court also suggested that the response to the 9/11 attacks is best left to foreign policy and not the courts. Cozen was “shocked” by the court’s “ideological approach.” Penn Law Professor Stephen Burbank, who provided legal counsel on the case, considers the decision “ironic” because FISA’s intent was to transfer such decisions on immunity from the executive to the judicial branch. The idea was to prevent short-term political interests from influencing determinations. For now, Cozen attorneys are optimistic that the case will be heard in the Supreme Court because it presents “federal questions of paramount importance,” said Carter.
Gather forty of the nation’s leading general counsel, law firm partners and legal academics in a San Diego conference room. Add one economist. Welcome a U.S. congressman and a British solicitor via videoconference. Then, lob in this piece of raw meat: legal regulations are antiquated, law school accreditation requirements are misguided, and Big Law’s billable hours are corrosive. Discuss. Or, as conference organizer and University of Southern California Law School Professor Gillian Hadfield (who herself has a Ph.D. in economics) said in her remarks that launched one-and-one-half days of spirited conversation: Law as practiced in the United States today is expensive, complex, slow, risk-averse, fragmented and static. It needs to serve a modern economy that is fast, adaptive, boundary-crossing and integrated. Her charge to the group was this: What does our changing economy need from its legal environment? How do we spur innovation? Is it through the bar? Judiciary? State legislatures? Congress? “For some,” added University of Pennsylvania Law School professor and conference co-organizer Stephen B. Burbank, “rules of professional responsibility define the very essence of the profession; for others they are a necessary foundation that, if it did not exist through state-sponsored regulation, would have to be created by contract. For still others, they are a smokescreen used by lawyers to justify anti-competitive behavior that enriches lawyers while depriving clients of cheaper and more innovative solutions to their problems. “There is, I expect, some truth in all of these positions.” The conference, “Leading Legal Innovation,” was organized under the auspices of the Southern California Innovation Project at USC’s Gould School of Law, with funding from The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Participants were invited to attend by Hadfield and Burbank before the onset of the current economic turmoil. Their meeting occurred in mid-December, as a government-in-transition grappled with a market meltdown and credit crisis. Some saw the deepening recession as the latest influence toward inevitable de-regulation of the legal profession. Others pointed to de facto extra-regulation accommodations that were already being practiced. And at least one, Lawrence J. Fox (L’68), partner at Drinker Biddle & Reath, suggested there really was nothing new under this latest economic cloud. “All I can say is, ‘Here We Go Again,’” Fox wrote in his pre-conference brief. “The demise of Arthur Andersen was not enough. The repeal of Glass-Steagall and its folly of an aftermath were not enough. Alan Greenspan’s admission that he was wrong when he relied on reputational and economic self-interest to let the markets operate unfettered was not enough. No. Now we are told that lawyers and law firms – particularly those especially worthy impecunious elite law firms – should be unshackled from 20th century state-by-state professional responsibility rules, excused from fiduciary obligations of confidentiality and loyalty, unburdened by antiquated rules of professional independence, and, in the name of progress, they should be allowed to bring in outside non-lawyer owners to provide the capital lawyers apparently cannot provide themselves, as these law firms are encouraged to become part of huge service provider conglomerates like Citibank, Lehman Brothers, or perhaps AIG. Maybe GM could have law subsidiary too,” Fox suggested. In this gathering, though, Fox was admittedly odd man out – or, as he titled his brief, “A Fish out of Water” – simultaneously celebrated for his consistency and criticized for his inflexibility. Robert F. Cusumano (L’80), general counsel for ACE Insurance, tried to stake out a middle ground, calling for regulatory changes that would bring more efficiency to litigation and to the discovery process, in particular. But Cusumano wrote in his conference brief that “innovation in the delivery of legal services should build upon, rather than eradicate, the centuries-old traditions of regulated expertise, independence and ethics that the professional Bar has built. While there is no doubt that these traditional structures can be abused and that they can be costly and somewhat anti-competitive, the current regulatory environment provides a firm and universal basis from which lawyers and clients managing problems can instill their own cultural dynamism and their own market innovations.” And then there were those who called for eradicating the current regulatory system and starting over. The group’s lone economist, Caltech professor and Yahoo Research vice president Preston McAfee, put it this way: “When we deregulated the airlines, no one predicted the incredibly effective and efficient hub-and-spoke system. Too many lawyers want to know, ‘What precisely will happen if we de-regulate?’ But you don’t need a special reason to de-regulate. Instead, you should regulate only if you have a compelling reason to do so.” Consensus was elusive and the group – like diplomats huddled around a conference table (this one was square, not round) – failed to issue a joint communiqué. In fact, there were real differences of opinion on all points. But if there were some ideas that seemed to gain at least a plurality of support, they included these: - Multi-jurisdictional practice. Members of the Bar in one state should be able to practice in any state, as long as they agree to abide by local rules. Federal preemption may be required to accomplish this.
- Litigation. Too much litigation is too expensive, primarily because of exhaustive discovery.
- Court reform. Rebecca Love Kourlis, a former justice of the Colorado Supreme Court who is executive director of the Institute for Advancement of the American Legal System, pointed out that judges have little incentive to control cases and that the Bar sometimes comes down hard on judges who efficiently manage cases through the system. The notion that court performance metrics must focus on measuring time to disposition alone is not only misleading, it can actually result in bad outcomes. According to Kourlis, this narrow view only encourages settlements, which in turn reduce trials and appellate decisions that contribute to the common law, making it harder for in-house counsel to assess risk and driving up legal costs. Kourlis contends that other measurements must be built into the performance assessment process and the Bar must demonstrate support for these criteria. Those other measurements should emphasize procedural fairness, such as: was the judge prepared for the hearing or process and respectful of participants; was he or she timely in moving the case along and in rendering decisions; and, were those decisions clear?
- Billing. The billable hour emphasizes effort over results and is leading many businesses to ramp-up in-house counsel or to out-source (to India) to control costs. “At large law firms, lawyers don’t know what their jobs are: make money or serve clients,” said Scott Gilbert, co-founder and chairman of Gilbert Oshinsky. Clients could force a new compensation structure on Big Law simply by refusing to hire firms that have billable hour quotas.
- Client-firm interactions. These associations need to become less transactional and more relational. “Clients should be willing to invest in firms beyond giving them business,” said David Wilkins, a professor at Harvard Law School. “Treat firms as true partners.” Carla Powers-Herron, group counsel at Shell Oil Co., added: “The law firm structure has killed creativity. It’s all about the book of business, not about how to best serve clients. There’s no focus on value.” Harvey Anderson, vice president and general counsel at Mozilla Corp., suggested that firm lawyers “participate in client business meetings, go to marketing planning sessions, learn about the business and act like an owner of the problem not just a provider of discrete legal advice.”
- Legal education. Legal education is too analytic, insufficiently collaborative, and emphasizes legal analysis at the expense of problem-solving and skill-building. Law schools should not become trade schools, but they would benefit from better engagement between faculty and practicing attorneys and by having more practicing attorneys in their teaching ranks. “We have people teaching who don’t practice. You would never find that in medical school,” said Michael Roster, former chairman of the Association of Corporate Counsel. The association’s Value Challenge is actively engaging inside and outside counsel in conversations regarding needed changes in the profession.
- Practicing law. The practice of law should be more narrowly and clearly defined so that it does not prohibit the provision of some basic services by non-lawyers. “We simply do not need lawyers to do some of the things that we need to have done,” said former Penn Law Dean Robert Mundheim, now of counsel at Shearman & Sterling. Added Emory Law School Professor George Shepherd: “My mom works as a tax preparer for H&R Block, and she’s not a CPA.”
- Ownership. Allowing outside investment in law firms would do more than provide additional capital; it would bring greater discipline of business reporting and analysis to the legal profession.
All of these analyses and suggestions were percolating much earlier in the year, as professors Hadfield and Burbank began assembling their program and invitation list. The arrival of an economic recession did not change the topics so much as it changed the odds in favor of some drastic changes, most attendees agreed. Absent economic turmoil it may have been unlikely that the courts, the Bar, corporate clients, law firms or elite law schools would have instigated major changes. The recession may now mean that none of those institutions will be able to resist change. Paul Lippe, CEO of Legal OnRamp, an online collaboration system for in-house counsel and invited outside lawyers and third-party service providers, predicted 20 percent budget cuts for in-house legal departments and double-digit percentage reductions in the number of Big Law associates before the summer. “There are going to be 10,000 highly credentialed lawyers out there who won’t just sit home and clip coupons,” he said. “They are going to be working in new ways. All the conditions for innovation are there.” McAfee, the Caltech economist, pointed to changes in the American boat-manufacturing industry as an example of unstoppable and often misunderstood market forces. When fiberglass became available for boat manufacturing in the 1950s, most boat owners said they would continue to prefer wooden boats. Of the major boat-makers at that time, only Chris Craft enthusiastically adopted the new material. And of the major boat-makers at that time, only Chris Craft remains a major firm. Why? Because wealthy clients who said they preferred wooden boats were a small fraction of new buyers brought into the market by the lower purchase prices and maintenance costs that came with innovation. “The legal community will always be a bit more conservative than the business world,” said Penn Law’s Dean Michael A. Fitts. “Part of a lawyer’s role always will be protecting businesses and their owners against the down side. But even though the law and law schools are institutionally conservative, they can be intellectually innovative.” At Penn Law, for example, economics and risk assessment courses are offered to first-year students, about one-half of the faculty has an advanced degree in a field other than the law, and students are encouraged to take up to four classes outside the law in business, communications, engineering, medicine, bioethics and other disciplines. Other law schools, most notably Stanford and Northwestern (whose dean, David Van Zandt, participated in the conference), also are undertaking significant curricular reform that challenges more conventional notions of how a legal education should be structured, Fitts said. Still, there is much work to be done. Fitts told the story of a negotiation class at Penn that is taught by a Wharton professor and that enrolls students from both the business and law schools. “For most of the year,” he explained, “the students work through various projects in groups. But at the end there is a grand negotiation competition between the students from the two schools. Almost every time, the Wharton students make the proverbial million dollars – or go bankrupt. The law students almost never win the million dollars – but they never go bankrupt, either. And that reveals much about the traditional approaches of the two professions toward problem solving and the personalities of the type of people who are attracted to them. “Identifying the downside is not the same as evaluating and protecting against risk or formulating alternative forms of positive action,” Fitts added. “Yet in the end, that is precisely what a good lawyer should do.” Now, it would seem, more than ever.
 Update: Evan Mendelson (left) and Russell King won this year's Keedy Cup; Dominic Draye was named best oralist. Does AT&T really have more bars in more places? Russell King of La Crescent, Minn., and Evan Mendelson of Owings Mills, Md., will argue that they do indeed… if by bars, one means barriers to equality. They’ll be trying to break down these barriers to win restitution for AT&T employees who became pregnant before 1978—when laws were created to protect pregnant women from job discrimination—who now find their pension benefits reduced. But should the Pregnancy Discrimination Act be applied retroactively? Dominic Draye of Kenmore, Wash., and Conor Lamb of Pittsburgh, Pa., representing the petitioner AT&T, will argue that the company is being treated unfairly. Come see what it takes to win this argument before some of the sharpest judges on the bench. This year’s competition will be judged by The Honorable Frank Easterbrook, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; The Honorable Roger L. Gregory, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; and the Honorable Gene E. K. Pratter, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and Penn Law alumna. The Keedy Cup is the culmination of the Penn Law’s moot court tournament, named for its founder, the late Dean Edwin R. Keedy. Cheer on your classmates and learn how to get your name on the Keedy Cup! AT&T Corp. v. Noreen Hulteen, et al.
In the Keedy Cup
Jan. 22 at 4 p.m.
Annenberg Center
MLK Day of Service "What are you doing for others?" According to Martin Luther King, Jr. that's "life's most persistent and urgent question." President-elect Barack Obama and vice president-elect Joe Biden are taking this question to heart; the day before their inauguration, they will participate in the MLK Day of Service in Washington, DC. Moreover, Obama has asked Americans to join him and to be "active citizens." Students, faculty, and staff from the University of Pennsylvania Law School plan to heed the call again this year. On January 19th, members of the Penn Law community will partner with Philadelphia-area organizations to complete those odd jobs non-profit organizations don't always have the resources to undertake, like cleaning, organizing, and painting. Groups that will benefit from Penn Law muscle include Philadelphia VIP, Philadelphia Reads, and Philabundance. The first King Day of Service was held in Philadelphia in 1996. Last year some 60,000 volunteers participated in nearly 600 service projects across the region. "All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence." -Martin Luther King, Jr. Come prove the content of your character. To find out more about how to participate in uplifting humanity with painstaking excellence, contact Jennifer Pesavento in the Toll Public Interest Center at 215-898-0955. Your time and effort will make a difference.
Update: The Penn Law team reached the national finals before falling to Chicago Kent on Feb. 5. Penn's Daniel Schwei was named best oralist. Before issuing the panel's ruling, the moot court's chief justice, Judge Barrington D. Parker Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, told all of the students:"Your presentations were outstanding. All of us here participate in oral arguments in one form or another at one level or another, and all of you already are very talented advocates. If there is no place to go but up, the four of you you are going to have brilliant careers at the Bar." * * * Should a private school get preferred treatment from a zoning board because of its religious affiliation? Should a state be forced to subsidize private-school tuition for a special-needs child? And should the answer to either question rest in part on the outcome of a coin flip? The first two questions are complicated but the answer to the third is an easy "yes," if coin flips help your moot court team win the regional finals. And Penn Law's moot court team - made up of third-year students Allison Reimann, Steven Myers and Daniel Schwei - arrived at the mid-November regional finals in Baltimore already knowing that its legal briefs had been unanimously judged to be the best. They let coin flips determine who would argue for the plaintiffs and the defendants before the moot court; those arguments were persuasive enough to get the team to February's national championships in New York City. "We were confident that our brief was one of the better ones," said Schwei. "I was proud of our brief. We had a maximum of 35 pages to address issues that were enormously complex. Even in the limited space, we produced a coherent whole." Myers concurred: "I thought it was a brief that could be submitted to court." Reimann was named "best oralist," completing Penn Law's sweep of the major prizes for legal writing and oral argument. "They had the best first practice round I've ever seen," said Anne Kringel, senior lecturer and legal writing director at Penn Law and the team's faculty advisor. The group has already taken beneficial lessons from their moot court experience. "I learned the value of working collaboratively with very intelligent teammates," Schwei says. Reimann appreciates "the opportunity for feedback on the delivery of an argument. We not only received great feedback from the faculty members who helped us prepare, but from the judges themselves after each round." Rules prohibit any revision of the brief for the national competition, so the team will focus on honing its oral arguments after winter break. "From what we've seen in the regional round, it's worth all of us being ready to answer questions about the issues raised in both cases," Reimann says. That preparation, and a lucky quarter, might just do the trick.
"Our economy is
poised at a ski slope: keep your knees bent and mind your center of gravity,"
law Professor Charles Mooney warned at a panel at Penn Law on Nov. 25. [Watch the video.]
Unsurprisingly
the precarious situation created by the current economic turmoil was foremost
in the comments made by a panel on President-Elect Obama's victory. The scholars expected that Obama would
re-frame some social issues --- among them healthcare and energy --- as economic ones.
They also forecast that although some new programs will be created to address
America's healthcare crises and other domestic problems, these proposals may
not be funded or implemented until the economy improves.
In tackling the
economic problem, Mooney, associate dean for academic affairs and the
Charles A. Heimbold Jr. Professor of Law, said Obama should address some of
the core problems that caused the economic crisis in the first place. For
example, Obama should enact policies to enhance the transparency of financial
markets, especially as related to credit default swaps, as soon as possible.
Mooney said that other problems like bad investments and excess leverage would
be tricky to regulate, however. He said we may see some relief for homeowners,
and he suggested the creation of a type of bankruptcy that focuses on housing,
which would allow people to default on their house payments but keep their
other assets.
Housing was also
on the mind of Wendell Pritchett, professor of law and a former urban policy
advisor to the president-elect. Pritchett said that urban policies can
stimulate the economy, and said Obama should exploit the advantages of
cities -- including density, public transportation, and technological innovations.
The government might consider offering incentives to urban institutions, like Penn,
which would further improve the urban environments surrounding them he
suggested. These policies could help our domestic economic problems. Pritchett
also looked forward to the creation of a White House "Office of Urban Affairs"
that will help coordinate the efforts of all federal agencies that deal with
our cities.
Another senior
advisor to the Obama campaign, Tobias Wolff, professor of law, said human
rights issues --- specifically those involving gay, lesbian, bisexual, and
transgendered people --- cannot and should not be put on the back burner because of
the economic situation. "Barak Obama is the man you think he is on issues of
equality," said Wolff, citing responses candidate Obama made to questions
raised by the Human Rights Campaign. Obama is committed to the core values of
equal rights and equal opportunities and that he will make these issues a
priority. Wolff argues that it makes economic sense as well: "Safeguarding
equality is good for business."
Human rights
should be a top priority for Obama agreed Seth Kreimer, the Kenneth W. Gemmill
Professor of Law, a widely-respected scholar of civil liberties. Kreimer is
pleased that the Obama presidency offers an important contrast with the Bush
administration, which "blew through laws they didn't like with flimsy legal
arguments and did so in secret." He's pleased Obama seeks to regain "America's
moral stature in the world."
Obama received
praise not only for the policy stances he has taken, but the management skills
he has already demonstrated. "The process of transition has been impressive,"
said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor of Communication
at Penn's Annenberg School for Communication. "Obama has shown he can manage
complexity compared to the ineptness of the Clinton transition. Obama is a
lawyer who is working like an MBA." Jamieson also praised Obama's choice of
Hilary Clinton to fill the post of Secretary of State for its political savvy.
Even with such a
sharp politician in office, successful government and real change happen as a
consequence of grass roots movements, Wolff reminded the audience. "Change
requires sustained efforts by the people, community-based organizations and
activists. It is up to us to push the legislative and executive branches to make
change."
Michael A. Fitts,
Dean of Penn Law and Bernard G. Segal Professor of Law moderated the panel. He
invited the audience back in two years to see how the panelists have fared with
their prognostications.
Third-year Penn Law student Amy Retsinas was among five Philadelphia-area students honored by the Philadelphia Bar Association's
Public Interest Section for their strong commitment to public
interest work.
Having worked as a social
service provider in domestic violence agencies before coming to Penn Law, as a student Retsinas volunteered with Action
AIDS and worked on various projects as a co-coordinator of the Reproductive
Rights Project. She interned in Family Court as an advocate with Women Against
Abuse, and co-chaired Penn Law's Equal Justice Foundation Auction, which
raised over $60,000 to support law students taking uncompensated employment in public interest during the summer.
Retsinas also helped the organize the 2008 Sparer Symposium, sponsored by the Toll Public Interest Center at Penn Law, which focused on the
revitalization of Philadelphia. She spent summers exploring different facets of
public interest law, interning at Alaska Legal Services and at Kairys, Rudovsky,
Messing & Feinberg. She currently works as an extern in the Employment Unit
at Community Legal Services and is a senior editor on the Journal of Law and
Social Change.
Twenty-one students at the University of Pennsylvania Law School worked for 300 hours on a 42-page paper for which they won't even receive a grade. But they just may help save the planet. When the Environmental Protection Agency proposed new clean-air rules and asked Americans, "Is there a better way to regulate greenhouse gases than using the Clean Air Act?" an environmental student group at Penn Law decided to prove that there is. "Depending on how well the government responds, the EPA's proposed rules have the possibility of being the most important [environmental] regulations of the 21st Century," says Christina Kaba, a second-year student from Drexel Hill, Pa., who is co-chair of the student pro-bono group, the Environmental Law Project. Their 42-page comment, filed with the EPA in its rulemaking proceeding, delineates how regulating greenhouse gas emissions from residential and commercial buildings - not just industrial sources - is both important and cost-effective. But granting permits to every residential and commercial producer of greenhouse gases, as the Clean Air Act does now with industrial sources, would be onerous. And greenhouse gases are fundamentally different from the air pollutants the act was designed to regulate. Instead, the students offer alternatives and are excited about their possible influence. "We've collated a lot of data in this paper; it's a major contribution," says Roland Backhaus, a second-year student from Annapolis, Md., who co-chaired the undertaking. After reviewing the legislation that mandates new air pollution regulations to address greenhouse gases, the students outline cost-effective technologies for curbing emissions from residential and commercial sources and discuss green technologies for building and retrofitting homes. In order to improve the efficiency of a building's thermal envelope and reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, they offer suggestions ranging from simple programmable thermostats to more complex air source heat pumps, an alternative to traditional heating systems. Finally, they present case studies of a statewide effort in California and localized efforts in Seattle, Wash., Berkeley, Calif., Chicago, and Portland, Ore. In Chicago, for example, new building codes were established to promote the conservation of electricity, and in Seattle the city provides consumer rebates and grants to encourage citizens to purchase new, more efficient technologies. The students' opportunity to counsel the EPA was a long time in the making. It began last year, when the Environmental Law Project approached Cary Coglianese, the Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and director of the Penn Program on Regulation, asking for additional ways to get clinical experience in environmental law. He suggested that the group participate in notice and comment rulemaking, which occurs when a government agency wishes to change a rule or regulation. The agency publishes a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register requesting comments on the proposal. During an open period, the public can offer comments that are used to make adjustments to the new rule. "Participating like this in a rulemaking proceeding gives our students an opportunity to gain practical writing and legal advocacy experience -- as well as contribute positively to the resolution of a significant public policy issue," Coglianese says. The EPA undertakes 200-400 such rulemakings each year. The greenhouse gas rulemaking grew out of the Supreme Court's 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA that held that the EPA had to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Penn Law students started following the rulemaking soon after the Supreme Court's decision, including participating in a conference call Professor Coglianese arranged with high-ranking EPA officials. They were ready to go when the EPA published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking this summer, requesting comments by November 28 on how to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. "The opportunity to comment on major regulation was exciting and unexpected. We sustained the project for one-and-a-half years while the EPA got around to asking for comments," Kaba says. Of the student group's 70 members, 21 participated in drafting this comment. Project organizers Backhaus and Kerri Kuhn, a third-year student from Colorado Springs, Colo., assigned work teams. Backhaus thinks this is where he learned the most, acknowledging the difficulties of directing 20 people toward a common goal. Kuhn, Kaba and Backhaus edited the paper to make it consistent. Kaba admits to working on it over Thanksgiving. All told, the students spent over 300 hours working on the project. "The students who did this are impressive," Kaba says. Part of this feeling of satisfaction stems from the intricate nature of the Clean Air Act. "It's the most complicated area of the law I've dealt with in law school," explains Kuhn, who spent the summer predicting carbon markets in California. "The Clean Air Act has so many parts. It was created over a long period of time and involves interaction between states and federal government." Still, she was pleased with the opportunity that this project gave her to begin to decipher the legislation. "It's been invaluable to participate in administrative law procedures since I'll be digging through comments for the rest of my life," she says. "This is yet another excellent example of Penn Law students' commitment to public service," says Coglianese. Kuhn concludes, "EPA will go to the legislature using these comments and will project our voices to Congress. It's exciting to have a say in what the nation should do." Meet the student leaders in this effort: Christina Kaba feels a strong pull toward a career in public service and hopes to work in environmental law. The second-year student became interested in environmental issues when she was a geologist working in the field for an oil company. Disillusioned, she left her graduate work in geophysics for a job in an environmental nonprofit before coming to Penn Law. She will be a summer associate at Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young in 2009. Roland Backhaus also has a background in energy: nuclear engineering. "Although I hope that one day we'll be able to efficiently use wind, solar and geothermal power, for now nuclear is one of the better options in terms of greenhouse gases." He feels a deep-seated responsibility to protect the earth for future generations. This summer he will work on nuclear energy regulation at a firm that he hopes to join after graduation. Kerri Kuhn studied resource management in Tanzania during college, working to balance resources between tourists, local people and wildlife, which sparked her interest in the environment. She's currently pursuing the Environmental Law Certificate and will join the environmental law practice at Morrison and Forrester in San Francisco after graduation.
Nominations are now open for candidates for the first-ever recipient of the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Award for Excellence in Pipeline Diversity, to be presented by the American Bar Association.
Sadie Alexander was the first African-American to earn a doctoral degree in economics at the University of Pennsylvania, completing it in 1921, and she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1927, becoming the first African American woman to do so.
Related links:
Announcement of award
Photograph of Sadie Alexander
Film "Imagining Sadie," from the Penn Program on Documentaries and the Law.
During the Owen J. Roberts Lecture in September, Yale Law
School Dean Harold Hongju Koh urged a return to the pre-9/11 constitutional
system of checks and balances after a presidency that he said expanded
executive power to protect national security.
Unchecked executive power is self-defeating and leads to
presidential political isolation and lack of popular support, Koh argued. [Watch the lecture here.]
Prior to Sept. 11, 2001, "No person or group could act
outside the law," he said. "We didn't infringe on civil liberties without
legislation. Citizen and aliens were seen as equal with respect to social and
economic rights."
After the attacks, he said, President Bush claimed to
exercise unfettered power to create "law-free" zones where enemy combatants
were deprived of judicial oversight and perceived "enemy aliens" were stripped
of rights. Koh made these comments at the National Constitution Center nearly
two decades after his book, the National Security Constitution, was hailed by
the American Political Science Association as the best scholarly book on the
presidency in 1990.
Drawing on the book, Koh said through much of its
history, the United States has operated under a "National Security Constitution"
in which the president, Congress and the courts shared responsibility for the
administration of foreign affairs.
From time to time, one or more parties have gained the
upper hand. In 1936, the Supreme Court held in U.S. v. Curtiss-Wright Export
Corp. that the president is empowered to conduct foreign affairs as "the sole
organ of the nation" in foreign affairs. By contrast, the Supreme Court limited presidential authority by addressing whether and when the President had authority to act without Congressional authorization in Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer (1952).
Koh argued against presidential unilateralism and in
favor of balanced institutional participation, in which courts and Congress,
and the American people - including
civil society, the bar, and the media - have oversight. Koh added that even
before the election in November, presidential power was receding in the face of
a revitalized "national security constitution."
He pointed to four Supreme Court decisions as signs that
the U.S. court system is exercising its role as a check on executive authority.
In these decisions the Court upheld the rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
In particular, he hailed the decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which he said
supported the rule of law during wartime and restored the vision of shared
powers.
Koh called on the next president to close Guantanamo and
guarantee that reintegrated detainees under U.S. control will not be tortured.
He also suggested the new president issue executive orders to end torture and
clarify the scope of military authority; to revise national security
legislation enacted since 9/11, and to show renewed respect for international
law and institutions.
Penn Law Fellow Adam Finkel, executive director of the Penn Program on Regulation, is one of 15 authors whose report critical of the risk assessment processes used by the Environmental Protection Agency was issued today by the National Research Council. The EPA's process of generating risk
assessments is bogged down by unprecedented challenges, and as a
decision-making tool it is often hindered by a disconnect between
available scientific data and the information needs of officials, says
the report.
Christopher S. Yoo, professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and founding director of the Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition, is making a presentation on net neutrality today at the winter meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. Yoo is part of a panel on Antitrust Issues on the Internet, being chaired by Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna. His co-panelists are Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge; Alan Davidson, director of U.S. public policy and Government Affairs for Google Inc.; and Bruce Byrd, vice president and general counsel for AT&T. Yoo is one of the nation's leading authorities
on law and technology. His research focuses primarily on how
technological innovation and economic theories of imperfect competition
are transforming the regulation of the Internet and other forms of
electronic communications.
See earlier story. PHILADELPHIA (Dec. 1, 2008) - The University of
Pennsylvania Law School has learned that Mehdi Zakerian, an Iranian legal
scholar who was scheduled to teach at Penn Law this year, has been released by
the government in Iran. "Our understanding is that Professor
Zakerian was released from detention several weeks ago but that he still does
not have his passport," said Michael A. Fitts, dean of Penn Law. "Our
invitation to him remains open and we are hopeful that we will be able to
welcome Professor Zakerian to Philadelphia in the near future. Our students and
faculty would appreciate immensely the opportunity to interact with someone who
is on the front lines of protecting human rights." Even though released on bail, Zakerian apparently still faces
criminal charges of espionage. Penn Law renewed its call urging the Iranian government to dismiss these
unfounded charges and allow Zakerian to continue his important work in
the fields of international law and international human rights. Zakerian,
an assistant professor of human rights at an independent university in Tehran,
was detained by the Iranian government in mid-August while he awaited U.S. visa
clearance to travel to Philadelphia as a visiting scholar at the University of
Pennsylvania. At that time, Penn Law was joined by the non-governmental
organizations International League for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch in
calling for Zakerian's release. Zakerian is "one of the
leading thinkers on human rights in the Middle East whose writings have helped
us all better understand the relationships between human rights and Islam," said
William Burke-White, a professor at Penn Law and an expert in international law.
At a Nov. 21 open house, Penn Law students, faculty and staff celebrated the completion of a multi-year, $18 million project to renovate classrooms, student meeting space, faculty offices and facilities for Biddle Library and the Gittis Center for Clinical Legal Studies.
The final project was a renovation to the basement of Silverman Hall. The effort completely renovated Silverman, Gittis and Tanenbaum halls -- three of the four interconnected buildings that enclose Penn Law's courtyard.
 As part of his first visit outside Pakistan since his detention in November 2007, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry of the Pakistan Supreme Court addressed a standing-room only crowd at a special dean's lecture at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Watch the lecture here. Chaudhry is travelling the east coast talking to lawyers about the "civil revolution" happening in his country ,"a decisive movement in the evolution of Pakistan to ensure the supremacy of the Constitution, the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law." His trip also included a visit to Harvard Law School, where he accepted that school's Medal of Freedom. During his lecture at Penn Law, Chaudhry refused the label "hero," saying he was simply "a guardian of the constitution." He accepted accolades on behalf of the people of Pakistan who continue to fight for the rule of law, saying: "I represent the thousands of lawyers who have been fighting for an independent judiciary and the rule of law ... I represent the countless Pakistanis who stood alongside the lawyers and have endured all kinds of atrocities... I represent the brave and valiant reporters and journalists of the Pakistani media, who have also experienced every possible hurdle, including not only risking their lives but actually sacrificing their lives because of what they stood for and what they were not prepared to compromise." In November 2007, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf suspended the constitution, and Chaudhry and his family were detained under house arrest for five months. Thousands of lawyers led a "silent revolution" to protect the rule of law, calling for Musharraf to step down. Chaudhry was released after Yousuf Raza Gilani was confirmed as Prime Minister in March 2008.
See related story.Cary Coglianese, associate dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and director of Penn's Program on Regulation, will join a Dec. 10 panel on "Regulation and Oversight: Advice for the New Administration," being held by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
Many analysts suggest that the United States is about to
enter a new regulatory era. They point to the need for more regulation on a
host of issues, ranging from financial services to food supply. What kind of
new federal regulations should be expected? How will political considerations
affect the creation of new rules? Those are among the questions the panel will
address at the conference in Washington, D.C.
In addition to Coglianese, participating in the
discussion will be Susan Dudley, the current administrator of the Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of Management and
Budget; two former OIRA administrators, John Graham (2001-2006), now at Indiana
University, and Sally Katzen (1993-98), now at George Mason University School
of Law; and Resources for the Future senior fellow Richard Morgenstern. Robert
W. Hahn, executive director of the AEI Reg-Markets Center, will moderate.
LOS ANGELES
(Nov. 14, 2008) - A University of Pennsylvania Law School professor has filed a petition with
the California Supreme Court to stop the enactment of Proposition
8 because it would mandate discrimination against a minority group
and did not follow the process required for fundamental revisions
to the California Constitution.
The petition
was filed by Professor Tobias Barrington Wolff and Raymond C. Marshall of Bingham McCutchen on behalf
of leading African American, Latino, and Asian American groups.
A press release announcing the petition stated: "We
would be making a grave mistake to view Proposition 8 as just affecting
the LGBT community. If the Supreme Court allows Proposition 8
to take effect, it would represent a threat to the rights of people
of color and all minorities."
It's been a whirlwind of a year -- or two -- for University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor Wendell Pritchett.
The University
of Chicago Press published his second
book, a biography of Robert Clifton Weaver, the first African-American to serve
in the cabinet of a U.S.
president. (See related story.)
Then Pritchett followed in Weaver's footsteps, leaving
academia temporarily to pursue government work. In Philadelphia's 2007 mayoral election,
Pritchett helped create policies on crime, education, jobs, and housing for
City Councilman Michael Nutter, and then spent eight months as deputy chief of
staff and director of policy for the new mayor.
"Mayor Nutter's focus is to change the way Philadelphians
view their city," says Pritchett. Even though the Nutter administration is in
its early days, he predicts the mayor "will be remembered for making government
work."
Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign tapped
Pritchett to serve as its chair of metropolitan and urban policy, creating
position papers and advising the candidate who now is set to become the 44th
president of the United
States.
"The election of our first African-American president,
along with the fact that he received support in so many parts of the country,
is a momentous event for the nation," Pritchett says. "President-Elect
Obama is standing on the shoulders of people like Weaver, who I know would be
very proud at this moment."
PHILADELPHIA
(Nov. 11, 2008) - Wendell Pritchett set out to write a book about cities in the
mid-20th century. During his research, he kept running into Robert Clifton
Weaver, the first Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and the first
African-American to serve in a U.S.president's cabinet.
"I was shocked that there was no biography of Weaver,"
Pritchett says, explaining why he decided to chronicle the history of modern
American cities through Weaver's story. "Weaver was deeply involved in the
initiation, creation and implementation of policies that would define the
modern city, including rent control, civil rights, urban renewal, and
affirmative action, among others."
 The result is Pritchett's second book, "Robert Clifton
Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer,"
published by the University
of Chicago Press.
In this compelling historical biography, Pritchett, a
professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, illuminates Weaver's
role with the Johnson administration in creating almost every urban initiative
of the period, from public housing and urban renewal to affirmative action and
rent control.
Beyond these policy achievements, Weaver was also a
founder of racial liberalism, a new approach to race relations that sought to
eliminate racism through education.
"Weaver thought that if you engaged with people on an
intellectual level, showing them how racism was not in their self-interest, the
environment would change," Pritchett says.
Weaver's views and successes propelled him through a
series of high-level positions in public and private agencies, working to
promote racial cooperation in American cities. In this biography, Weaver
emerges as a complex, talented man caught in the contradiction between seeking
a race-blind world and serving his race.
"We still have a straightjacket when it comes to thinking
about race today," Pritchett says. "Once
we know if a person is black or white, we categorize them, thinking we know how
they will act and think."
While there has been positive change in race relations
since Weaver's time, Pritchett holds that racial categories still frame debates
about race, with a notable exception.
"Barak Obama has figured out a different framework, a
different way to talk about race," Pritchett says. "Obama is focused on issues
that transcend race ---like healthcare and the economy --- that, if they can be
solved, will go a long way to changing American attitudes about race. Of
course, he is able to talk about race differently because he is standing on the
shoulders of the civil rights movement."
Despite his efforts to make race irrelevant, Weaver was
continually called on to mediate between the races--a position that grew
increasingly untenable as he remained caught between the white power structure
to which he pledged his allegiance and the African-Americans whose lives he
devoted his career to improving.
Pritchett, an African-American legal scholar who just
returned to Penn Law after a stint as the deputy chief of staff and director of
policy for the new mayor of Philadelphia,
Michael Nutter, readily acknowledges that he shares many similarities with his
subject.
"Weaver was interested in two worlds sometimes at odds:
government and academia," Pritchett says. "He moved between them throughout his
career despite the tensions between academic objectivity and politics."
His year with Mayor Nutter's administration confirmed for
Pritchett that policy making is difficult work. He trumpets the importance of putting policy work in historical context.
"We often think that policies failed because they were
bad policies without taking into consideration the limitations that policy
makers were facing at the time," he says.
 Pritchett hopes this biography will show the love/hate
relationship Americans have with cities as well.
"Cities are exciting; we're drawn to them, but we think
of them as problems," he explains. "It's understandable, but it's not
productive. A lot of policies were created to solve problems rather than
exploit the advantages of cities." He cites the Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) as an example. "HUD was created to develop regional regulatory
policies, but the focus shifted early on to how to 'stop blacks from rioting.'"
"Cities are a solution if you care about diversity and
sustainability, among other issues," Pritchett says.
In the end, Pritchett believes that almost all of the
urban problems Weaver sought to address are still unresolved.
"Tensions between civil rights and the marketplace
continue. It's the 40th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act, but you don't hear
much about that," he says. The
foreclosure crisis is the latest development in a longstanding housing debate
about how actively government should promote and facilitate home ownership.
"We operate under the ideal that everybody should own
their own home, and government programs like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
effectively achieved just that until the recent economic meltdown," he
says. "But other policies, like public
housing, Section 8, and laws requiring the market to refrain from
discriminating, have helped improve life for urbanites, even if they cannot
afford to buy a house."
"Despite challenges, it is possible to make change if we
act in public spirited ways. The good news is that Weaver did make progress did
during his career." Pritchett agrees with Weaver that his biggest success is
the Fair Housing Act. "It was a difficult fight, and was contested because
people's feelings about their neighborhoods and homes run high. FHA is his
longest lasting legacy--you see it listed in real estate ads every day." See related story: Pritchett Serves a New Mayor and a New President
UPDATE: Listen to Professor Burke-White's comments here. Penn Law Assistant Professor William Burke-White is among foreign policy experts from around the world who will speak at the Salzburg Global Seminar titled The United States in the World: New Strategies of Engagement, which begins today.  Participants will discuss questions such as:
How will the United States adjust to the growing importance of China, Russia, India, and the European Union as major global players?
What will the transatlantic relationship look like in the coming decade?
What strategy will the new administration in Washington adopt to advance democratic values, freedom, civil society and the rule of law internationally?
Will a new modus operandi emerge in relation to the transnational challenges of climate change, pandemics, and terrorism?
What are the prospects for more effective cooperation in the United Nations and other multilateral institutions--particularly between states which, though located in different regions of the world and being at different stages of economic development, share a broad commitment to human rights and democratic values Burke-White specializes in international criminal law, international financial law, and human rights. Positioned at the intersection of international law and political science, his scholarship addresses international tribunals; justice in post-conflict reconstruction; the International Criminal Court; linkages between human rights and national security; state responses to emergencies, and international investment arbitration. He is currently researching the newfound power of Russia and China in the energy field.
See related story.
Cary Coglianese, associate dean at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and director of Penn's Program on Regulation, is chairing a panel of international scholars who will explore enhancing transparency and public participation in the regulatory process.
The panel is part of the International Regulatory Reform Conference being held Nov. 16-18 in Berlin.
The panel includes a representative from the European Commission and academics from the United Kingdom, German and the United States.
PHILADELPHIA (Oct. 31, 2008) -- Before coming to the University of Pennsylvania Law
School, third-year student Lindsey Carson worked in several sub-Saharan African
nations to increase citizen participation in the political process, including
democratic elections.
"We worked to identify obstacles to full and free
exercise of the right to vote in parliamentary elections, as well to enhance
the ability of civil society groups to advocate within the political
structure," she explained.
It is no surprise, then, that she has joined 10 other
Penn Law students in "Watch the Vote 2008," a non-partisan election-monitoring
effort arranged through Penn Law's Toll Public Interest Center.
"Watch the Vote 2008 has been a great way of standing by
the notion that, regardless of who one votes for, we have a system that works,
that we can believe in and have faith in," Carson said. "If voters continuously
run into problems, that faith in our process and our public officials will be
eroded."
Prior to Election Day, the 11 law students compiled information
about localized election laws for key battleground states. On Election Day, they will use that
information as a quick reference when helping Penn undergraduates respond to
telephone calls about alleged voting problems. The students will provide callers
with poll location addresses, transfer callers to their local election
officials, and alert officials to potential violations of voters' rights.
The Penn Law students will spend Election Day stationed
on Penn's campus, at CNN in New York, and at Manhattan law offices of Emery
Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady. They will provide legal research on issues of
voter irregularity, including preparing briefs, seeking voter affidavits,
working to preserve ballot access, and proposing remedies for problems that voters
face. Seasoned election lawyers across the country will be standing by to take
matters to court, if necessary.
The effort is part of election protection hotlines
promoted by CNN (877.CNN.in.08), in collaboration with InfoVoter Technologies,
and radio's "Tom Joyner Morning Show" (866.myvote1).
"Voters in my age group seem more excited than I've seen
them," said third-year student Ofotsu Tetteh-Kujorjie, a native Ghanaian who
came to the United States in the mid-1990s. "If you go back to the primaries,
we potentially had the first woman nominee and we have the first black nominee.
If you look around the world, there seems to be a realignment of power; it
seems appropriate that these different presidential candidates emerged."
"Our students were
eager to be active participants in this year's election," said Arlene Rivera
Finkelstein, executive director of Penn Law's Toll Public Interest Center. "The
opportunity with Watch the Vote 2008 was a great chance for students to
participate not just on the micro level - working with individual voters who
experienced problems at the polls - but also at a very macro level -
identifying and addressing large scale problems occurring across the
country. They will also have an ongoing
role in litigation before and after the election that can shape voter access on
a long term basis."
Penn Law students are required to complete 70 hours of
pro bono work in order to graduate.
Tetteh-Kujorjie, who is not eligible to vote in the U.S.,
thought Watch the Vote would be a great way to participate in the election
process. "I'm interested in getting a sense of how the American system works. I
have a high curiosity about the problems people may face at the voting booth,"
Tetteh-Kujorjie explained. "I'll also be interested in seeing how efficacious
the legal system is in resolving issues that may arise."
Carson, a native of Rosemont, PA, has been surprised by
her research of Ohio voting laws. "What's amazed me so far, as I've been
researching Ohio, is that U.S. elections are so localized. You can have two
counties next door to each other, each with different voting procedures and
mechanisms for getting a paper ballot. It would probably surprise people that,
even as we complain about low voter turnout, our system may not be able to
accommodate all voters if a majority of registered voters came to the polls."
The hotlines expect to receive as many as one million
calls on Election Day.
Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg has become a "local
personality"--at least to the Free Library of Philadelphia--where officials
recently asked him to join other public figures in their Banned Books Week
celebration.
The third-year Penn Law student has not written a book
that's been banned, but he has gained a reputation for his blog, "Young Philly
Politics," and his recent campaign to get the city to share detailed real-time
election results with the public and not just with the news media and
well-connected politicians on a password-protected site.
The Philadelphia native made a verbal request, and later
a written one, to city elections officials to receive access. He was denied.
After he appealed to the city solicitor, he was granted a password.
If one private citizen could get a password, he wondered,
shouldn't more have access? A fax campaign resulted in 400 requests to the
election commission. As a result, the city has promised that a new, openly
accessible website will be available before next week's election.
Dan, who is cautiously optimistic the city will meet the
election deadline, undertook this campaign because he was "taught from an early
age the government should function in service of the public good. Public
interest law is the family business."
His father, Irv Ackelsberg, was with Community Legal Services of
Philadelphia for 30 years.
As for being labeled a "personality" - his efforts have
been noted in a New York Times blog--Dan says, "I'm flattered, but at the end of
the day, I have to be cognizant that no one elected me. I'm just a person with
a megaphone."
He began the Young Philly Politics blog in December 2004
as an outlet for young people who had become active in Sen. John Kerry's
unsuccessful presidential campaign. He wanted to be sure their energy was
captured and redirected to local politics.
Eventually, he'd like to take the blog statewide. "The
blog has helped people in disparate parts of the city interact around important
political issues. I'd like to do that for the state." In addition, he's considering creating a
non-profit organization with a board to run the blog--so that he's no longer the
"person with a megaphone."
For his own future, he's interested in a career as a
Philadelphia public interest lawyer. "I'd like to work for the public good
while maintaining my Olympic dreams," he says with a shrug that suggests he
finds his own words slightly corny. But it's not a pipe dream. Last year, he
took time off from Penn Law to train for the Olympics in the lightweight double
sculls. After winning U.S. Olympic Trials, his double narrowly missed out on a
trip to Beijing.
"I'm trying to navigate what happens next. I've got over $100,000 debt, I want to retire
from rowing on my own terms, and I want to work for the public good."
The annual Penn Law pumpkin carving contest generated some creative, scary, funny -- and a few "nice try, but" -- entries. Happy Halloween! 
Jagdish Bhagwati, University Professor in Economics at Columbia
University, delivers The Leon C. and June W. Holt Lecture in International Law on Oct. 23, 2008, at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. His title: "The Recent Critiques of Free Trade: Why they Are Mistaken.
PHILADELPHIA (Oct. 27, 2008) -- Two students at the University of Pennsylvania Law School
will be among the presenters at a Tuesday, Oct. 28, hearing in Washington,
D.C., on immigration and immigrant rights.
The students - Matthew Erie and Maisha Elonai - are
students in Penn Law's Transnational Legal Clinic. The hearing is being conducted at the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and will focus on due process
violations in U.S. immigrant detention and deportation.
The hearings will be webcast live on the Commission's website.
 In his annual report to alumni, Dean Michael A. Fitts calls Penn Law "the most interdisciplinary law school in the nation." "The success of our approach can be seen in the academic culture we have
created--and the exceptional faculty and students we have been able to
attract. Let me offer you some of the wonderful details of the past
year..."
PHILADELPHIA
(Oct. 13, 2008) - Greed may fundamentally explain the current economic crisis,
but what we are also seeing is a failure of effective government regulation,
says the lead author of a new report on federal rulemaking.
"The
immediacy of foreclosures, corporate bankruptcies, and stock market freefalls
appears only to confirm, tragically, that regulation truly matters," said Cary Coglianese, associate dean at the University of
Pennsylvania Law School and director of the study.
"Each year,
regulators across the federal government create thousands of new rules that
affect the economy for good or ill, and when agencies insulate themselves too
much from the public, they are more likely to regulate badly and generate
distrust."
Federal
agencies should do a better job of seeking citizen comment early enough in the
process to make meaningful changes in proposed regulations, and they should
reach out to all interest groups in an even-handed manner instead of shying
away from meeting with any groups at all or meeting only with groups
representing just one side of a regulatory issue, he added.
The report,
titled "Transparency and Public Participation in the Rulemaking Process: A
Nonpartisan Presidential Transition Task Force Report," was completed prior to
the current economic turmoil and will be featured at the Oct. 16 meeting of the
ABA's Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section in Washington, D.C.
Coglianese
initiated the study in response to a request by staff at OMB Watch, a
Washington, D.C.-based organization interested in regulatory reform. Coglianese
and other task force members worked independently to develop their
reform recommendations, which were not vetted or approved by OMB Watch. The task force's
members came from varied backgrounds - business, government, academe and the
public interest community - and the report reflects its diverse membership and
robust deliberations, Coglianese said.
The report
does not focus on any specific agency but instead identifies shortcomings that
seem to be common across the regulatory spectrum, from agencies as varied as
the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency,
and the Federal Communications Commission.
"If agencies
are open about what they are trying to accomplish and why, and if they involve
the public early in the process, we should expect better regulations that are
viewed as more legitimate," explained Coglianese, who also is director of the
Penn Program on Regulation. "As it is
now, agencies' stated rationales for their regulations often seem to many
observers to be little more than after-the-fact rationalizations."
The report
lists five major concerns about the current regulatory process and offers 12
recommendations to address them. Among
the concerns:
- Insufficient transparency and public participation
until too late in the process;
- When input is sought, it too often is sought from only
one side of an issue;
- When comment is sought from multiple parties, agencies
often do not involve all parties in the same conversations;
- Agencies have not taken full advantage of the Internet
to ensure timely public access to information.
The panel's
recommendations address transparency, public participation, and the strategic
management of the regulatory process. The recommendations include:
- Post on the Internet all records that are releasable
under the Freedom of Information Act;
- Provide more frequent online updates and improve
searchability;
- Allow public-interest groups to qualify for fee
exemptions;
- Clarify legal protections for whistleblowers;
- Encourage agencies to experiment with interactive
public comment processes;
- Create a culture that promotes communications with
external actors, so long as the existence of those communications is disclosed;
- Take steps to ensure broad-based involvement early in
the development of new rules;
- Reduce barriers to the use of federal advisory
committees;
- Encourage agencies to develop and evaluate plans to
improve public participation;
- Adequately fund the Administrative Conference of the United States
to evaluate and improve rule-making processes.
Justice Peter T. Zarella of the Connecticut Supreme Court
cited the scholarship of Penn Law Professor Amy Wax
in his opinion dissenting from today's 4-3 ruling striking down a law barring
same-sex marriage.
"In my view, the state's interests in promoting and
regulating procreative conduct are legitimate. Indeed, they are
compelling," he wrote. "I further believe that limiting marriage to
one man and one woman is rationally related to the advancement of those
interests."
Quoting Wax's 2005 paper published in the San Diego Law
Review, titled "The Conservative's Dilemma: Traditional Institutions,
Social Change, and Same-Sex Marriage,'' Zarella wrote that "the state
rationally could conclude that '[t]he power of biological ties means that
heterosexual families are most likely to achieve stability and successfully
perform the childrearing function.'"
Professor Edward B. Rock describes the new accelerated three-year JD/MBA being offered by Penn Law and Wharton.
As a national leader in cross-disciplinary legal education, Penn Law is uniquely positioned to help our community understand what has caused the current economic problems and how they may continue to evolve and be solved. At an Oct. 3 "teach-in" (watch it here), Law and Wharton Professors Tom Baker, Jill Fisch, David Skeel, Susan Wachter and Richard Herring explored the intellectual, philosophical and regulatory underpinnings of the economic crisis--and potential solutions. While introducing the program, Law School Dean Michael Fitts recalled a scene in the classic movie It's a Wonderful Life, when Jimmy Stewart's character convinces his neighbors to not take their money out of the troubled savings and loan, because doing so would make matters worse. "He has the intellectual insight, and instills confidence in everyone, and saves the day," Fitts said, describing the panel he was introducing as "academic modern-day Jimmy Stewarts." Among the points raised during the discussion: - The financial upheaval was in some ways predictable and inevitable, with its origins reaching back to the Asian financial crises in the 1990s and the savings and loan debacle in the 1980s. The crisis is a case of market and regulatory failure; there was increased risk taking without accountability.
- Bad loans were both a cause and a consequence of the problem. As banks sold pieces of their mortgage holdings to other investors in ever more creative ways, these bundled investments of collateralized debt obligations depended on the strength of the housing market.
- The current bailout shows no signs of creating regulatory reform to address the underlying causes and may end up subsidizing some firms that do not need it and ignoring others that do , while rewarding imprudent investors.
PHILADELPHIA
(Oct. 7, 2008) - Michael Wong is a 26-year-old law school student turned
filmmaker, whose newest film debuts in less than two weeks. Shmul Kaplan is an 80-year-old disabled
survivor of Nazi oppression whose complicated journey through the U.S.
immigration system is told in the film.
"The hours and hours that I spent concentrating on Mr.
Kaplan's face, both in shooting and editing the film, helped remind me to
appreciate the beauty of the human face," Wong says. "Somewhere along the line,
I had stopped observing peoples' faces when they talked. But you can learn so
much about people just by watching them; where they are coming from, their
mood, what they want."
What is a law school student doing making a film about an
octogenarian trying to obtain citizenship?
"This will make me a better lawyer," he says.
Wong's documentary contributes to the growing body of
law-genre documentaries made by lawyers and law students. Students at the
University of Pennsylvania Law School first analyze feature-length films that
focus on lawyers, the law or social policy, and then produce short advocacy
videos that explain complex legal matters to a general lay audience or that
allow clients the opportunity to situate their legal problems within the
context of their lives.
"The Documentaries and the Law course teaches students
the connection between narrative in film and legal persuasion, while the Visual
Legal Advocacy seminar gives them the opportunity to make short films on behalf
of real clients or organizations," explains Regina Austin, professor of law and
director of the Penn Program on Documentaries and the Law. "Telling stories
with pictures and sound in legal proceedings is the wave of the future.
Learning the rudiments of video production is a tool that will stand law
students in good stead."
Most of the work the students do is for general public
education (like a short video on the life of civil rights lawyer Sadie T.M.
Alexander) and for administrative proceedings (like asylum issues or pardon and clemency
hearings).
Wong's short documentary tells Kaplan's story of
surviving the Nazi invasion of the Ukraine
and then, at age 70, seeking asylum in the United States from the
anti-Semitism he had faced his entire life. He dutifully applied for a Green
Card, the first step to becoming a citizen. Delays in the naturalization
process, however, caused Kaplan to lose his disability benefits -- he was forced to live on $215
per month plus food stamps for three years. Tens of
thousands of other disabled asylum applicants suffered the same fate; Kaplan became the named
plaintiff in a class action lawsuit.
That lawsuit has been settled in favor of Kaplan and his
fellow elderly and disabled refugees. The CIS will expedite their applications
so they may continue to receive their benefits.
Since filming ended, Wong has maintained contact with
Kaplan, attending a ceremony where Kaplan received a special citizenship award
from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and Council Migration Service of
Philadelphia.
"Lawyers have a unique set of skills that allow them to
understand and explain complex issues," the law student and filmmaker says.
"The medium of film helps me present these complex issues in a way that grabs
the attention of the normal viewing audience more effectively than other media
and breaks down the issues in a way they can understand."
Wong intends to accept an offer to work in corporate law.
He feels his training in legal filmmaking has already improved his lawyering
skills.
The program is also creating a series of videos about the
pardon process and has created a library of clemency films. Currently, students
are editing a video that tells the story of an incarcerated woman who is under
house arrest while awaiting a kidney transplant. Because the woman cannot leave
the house, telling her story in the video is one of the few ways in which she
can perform community service.
Austin
sees proselytizing among lawyers about the power of film and video in legal
advocacy as part of her mission.
The program continues to seek clients who would benefit
from the student work. Their work and DVD distribution is free of charge.
"We have to overcome skepticism about the economics and
efficacy of video," she says.
To that end, the Penn Program on Documentaries and the
Law is holding a roundtable, "Building
Video Bridges,"
on Friday, Oct.17, from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the University of Pennsylvania
Law School. Public interest lawyers, entertainment
lawyers, law students, law professors, information technology specialists with
public-interest organizations and documentary filmmakers will gather at Penn
Law's second Visual Legal Advocacy Roundtable. Law professors, producers and
directors will discuss their work and best practices.
The conference will include a premiere of the
student-produced short documentary "Shmul Kaplan."
Anyone wishing to attend the Roundtable should register
in advance by e-mailing Anna Gavin, events coordinator at Penn Law School, at agavin@law.upenn.edu. The organizers will seek approval for four and one-half
hours of Pennsylvania Continuing Legal Education credit to be provided for a
nominal fee of $25. Please indicate your intention to seek CLE credit when you
communicate with Gavin about your attendance.
Harold Koh, Dean of Yale Law School, delivers the Owen J. Roberts Lecture in Constitutional Law
at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on Sept. 15, 2008. His topic:"The National Security Constitution in an Age of
Globalization."
Note: The Class of 2011 enters with the most accomplished
academic record in Penn Law history. They come from 32 states, the District of
Columbia and 12 foreign countries.
Fifty-one percent are women; 33 percent are students of color; and 10
percent already hold an advance degree.
Meet one of our new students: Dianna Myles.
By Aisha Mohammed
Eighth grade English teacher, Dianna Myles, has traded in
her chalk for a 1L seat at Penn Law School. Coming to Penn fresh from an
inner-city classroom, she is ready to influence students from another level:
policy-making.  Drawn to Penn for its interdisciplinary approach, Myles
hopes to pursue joint degrees in education and law -- a combination that could
prove powerful in her efforts to secure a promising future for America's
disadvantaged children. Myles, a first-hand witness to how public education
fails low-income students, wants to reform the education system. In particular,
she wants to make the system more accountable and promote greater community
involvement.
"Everyone has to be involved," says Myles, a subscriber
to the holistic approach pioneered by Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem
Children's Zone. Canada's credo is that low-income inner-city kids can learn
just as well as affluent suburban kids if they have access to the same
resources. To give them an even footing, he provides free social, medical and
educational services and encourages parents to participate in their child's
education.
As a sophomore at Emory University, Myles had an
opportunity to test that holistic approach. Noticing a disturbing trend in
Atlanta public schools -- the city was eliminating arts programs for low-income
students -- she set out to solve the problem by channeling funds and support
from Emory's theater department to inner-city middle school students.
Myles recruited volunteers from the college and founded
Bringing up Leaders and Achievers through Student Theater (BLAST) -- a
children's musical theatre. Working with 15 students, she organized a
performance of "The Wiz," the Broadway hit based on the Wizard of Oz that
featured an African-American cast.
Her own high school education was solid, says Myles,
which accounts for her desire to address educational disparities. Not only did
she study visual arts and music, but she was also active on the debate team.
Debating on topics as diverse as Russia, education, and privacy, she discovered
a talent for marshaling critical evidence to debunk opposing arguments or
create a new line of attack. The thrill of presenting winning arguments before
a judge led to an interest in law.
"I particularly care about how children are protected by
the law," says Myles, who has also worked to raise awareness of the sexual
exploitation of children. It is a major issue in Atlanta, she explained, with
underage girls being prosecuted for prostitution. Racial stereotypes impact the
way cases are handled, with Caucasian girls getting more sympathy from the
community than African-American girls, according to Myles.
Disparities also exist in public education, she says,
which is why she became invested in Teach for America, a movement that works to
ensure every child has an equal chance in life.
"Public education for low-income and African-American
students is not up to standard" because of the overemphasis on test scores at
the expense of liberal arts and humanities, says Myles. The singular focus on
testing, she says, limits what teachers can do in the classroom.
Despite the constraints, Myles created a lively and
engaging learning environment for her eighth graders in St. Louis. She used the
Harry Potter books- her favorite series "hands down"-- as the model for an
incentive program that encouraged teamwork. Myles passed around a hat filled
with questions, much like the "sorting hat" in Harry Potter. Students picked
questions and were assigned to one of four houses depending on their answers.
They earned points for their house by demonstrating good citizenship,
participation, and exceptional work. At the end of the year, the house with the
most points -- Hufflepuff in this case-- won dinner and a field trip.
Bad education, Myles says, begins with low standards.
School administrators blame student's home environments for poor performance
and teachers assume they can never learn. Ultimately, low expectations prevent
teachers from creating innovative approaches.
By contrast, Myles set the bar high for her students and
to her surprise she found they were jumping to reach it. Emulating her "tough"
high school English teacher who pushed her to produce her best, Myles walked
her students through the college admissions process.
She showed them how to research schools, put together an
application, and write inquiry letters to admissions officers, because she
believes it's never too early to start thinking about college. "They were
actually invested and cared about what happened," says Myles. One student even
brought a template for a resume to class and offered to make copies. Her only
regret, after noting their enthusiasm, is that she wishes she'd done it
throughout the year.
Although Myles will miss creating magic in her classroom,
she looks forward to building the kind of advocacy skills she will need in her
ongoing battle to conquer her personal Lord Voldemort: inequality in the
schools.
Note: The Class of 2011 enters with the most accomplished
academic record in Penn Law history. They come from 32 states, the District of
Columbia and 12 foreign countries.
Fifty-one percent are women; 33 percent are students of color; and 10
percent already hold an advance degree.
Meet one of our new students: Dorje Glassman.
By Aisha Mohammed
Dorje Glassman, visiting Tibet for the first time, was
searching for the Tibet he thought he understood. Growing up in a
Tibetan-Buddhist family, Glassman had come to assume that China was exploiting
Tibet and that all Tibetans were naturally anti-Chinese. Tibetans, as far as he
could see, had nothing to gain from Chinese rule. What Glassman found instead
was a challenge.
 Waiting for a bus to Mount Everest, Glassman saw an
opportunity to commiserate with a Tibetan student about China's uninvited
presence. The student's pro-China comments took him aback. If China had not
annexed Tibet, the student claimed, he would never have been able to attend a
University in Beijing. To Glassman, the Tibetan's words made about as much
sense as Gandhi touting the use of guns. After a heated discussion he
understood that Tibet's relationship with China had perhaps led to gains not
readily apparent to a foreign eye.
This ability to embrace complexity will come in handy as
he prepares to chisel out a future in Chinese law. Towards this end, Glassman,
a Levy Scholar, has enrolled in Penn Law's JD/MA program offered through the
Lauder Institute. As part of the Chinese track, Glassman will study Mandarin,
spend his first summer in China, and earn an MA in international studies.
Glassman's study of Kung Fu ignited his interest in China
at the age of 17. Several years later as a sophomore at Oberlin College, he
became enchanted by Chinese calligraphy. In order to learn the art, however, he
had to commit to a year of Chinese language classes. He quickly discovered that
he had a "real affinity" for Mandarin, and spent the next year in Beijing,
immersed in the language and culture.
After earning a dual degree in Environmental and East
Asian Studies, Glassman returned to China to work as a project manager with a
local nonprofit. He spent a year at Yunnan Mountain Heritage Foundation, a
small organization that promotes eco-tourism and cultural preservation in the
ethnically Tibetan areas of Northern Yunnan. In Yunnan, he initiated a Buy
Local campaign, which was inspired by a similar campaign he had witnessed in
Carrboro, N.C., while working as a carpenter during summer vacations in
college. Glassman helped start a series
of local markets for Tibetans to sell traditional crafts that still exist
today.
In China, where slogans are as common as bicycles
Glassman was particularly struck by one of ex-President Jiang Zemin's: Use law
to govern the country. "Chinese today take it for granted that law should be
the foundation of government, but it wasn't always this way. It has gradually
become popular opinion," says Glassman.
Glassman's interest in law, like his interest in China,
began in his teens. His high school English teacher impressed him with the
"exceptional clarity of thought and expression" he demonstrated when discussing
Dostoyevsky and Melville. Glassman was lit with a desire to develop and use
those skills. A legal education, he felt, would be the best way to do that.
Conversations with friends in China led him to
contemplate the legal foundations of the country's pressing social and
political issues. "The proper treatment of minorities, the displacement of
communities because of development projects, all these issues boil down to the
law," says Glassman.
By Glassman's account, it is an exhilarating time to be a
lawyer in China. Recent years have seen the emergence of a more accessible
civil legal system. As the Chinese government attempts to deal with increasing
levels of social unrest -- incidents of social unrest rose from 8,700 in 1993 to
74,000 in 2004 -- judges are reviewing cases in traveling courts, with plaintiffs
represented both by non-barred legal workers as well as licensed attorneys.
Low-income citizens are seeing avenues open up for legal recourse.
However, those connected to the most
politically-sensitive issues, such as Tibetan independence, still face a
dead-end. The government declined to renew the licenses of attorneys who
represented the Tibetan activists arrested in the spring 2008 Lhasa uprising.
But the non-renewal of licenses is rare, says Glassman.
Also excluded from the system are foreign attorneys,
since Chinese civil courts are off-limits to them. Although Glassman hopes
civil courtrooms will eventually open their doors to foreigners, passing the
Chinese bar exams remains a distant dream.
Approximately eight percent of attorneys pass the Chinese bar exams, and
foreign attorneys are not permitted to sit for the exam. So Glassman, who hopes
to work in China, plans to start his career by training with a commercial
litigation firm.
Training in Beijing, however, comes with a bonus: grappling
with the contradictions and complexities presented by China. Beijing, explains
Glassman, is "one of the few places in the world where one can routinely find
farmers selling apples from the back of decrepit carts drawn by gaunt horses
parked next to the latest model Mercedes Benz."
Note: The Class of 2011 enters with the most accomplished
academic record in Penn Law history. They come from 32 states, the District of
Columbia and 12 foreign countries.
Fifty-one percent are women; 33 percent are students of color; and 10
percent already hold an advance degree.
Meet one of our new students: Paul Fattaruso.
By Larry Teitelbaum
Paul Fattaruso writes poetry and fiction that is at once
serious and playful, strange and familiar, aimed at providing his readers a
fresh view of an old world. The point is, his work eludes easy description.
Take his first novel. In 2004, at age 26, Fattaruso published Travel in the
Mouth of the Wolf. The book features, among other things, a talking dinosaur, a
supernaturally talented shortstop, psychic twins, and a lonely ex-president. Given his penchant for creating fantastical worlds, the
transition to law school must seem surreal. After all, the Bill of Rights is
not written in iambic pentameter, nor do most contract law texts have
Hemingway's ear for crisp dialogue. But Fattaruso recognizes a connection
between literature and law. From Homer to Shakespeare to Kafka, writers have
consistently explored the ways in which law both shapes and is shaped by our
beliefs and actions, he says. He adds that law and literature also share a
devotion to precision and close attention to language. Further, he says, the search
for truth threads both disciplines.
To further emphasize the two fields' connection,
Fattaruso cites a quote from Percy Bysshe Shelly: "Poets are the unacknowledged
legislators of the world." Fattaruso suggests that poetry and law are both
interested in "the moral questions surrounding humans' relationship to the
world and to one another."
 It was his moral compass that ultimately pointed
Fattaruso, who is contemplating the study of intellectual property and
environmental law, to law school. After graduating summa cum laude from the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1999, Fattaruso earned an MFA from
the school, then a Ph.D. in English from the University of Denver. While
preparing for his comprehensive exams, Fattaruso celebrated the birth of his
son, Max, now two years old. His son's arrival inspired Fattaruso's decision to
enter law school and start a new chapter in his life. He started to think about
how he could make change in the world and found the study of law the best
route. He jokes, "The audience for poetry isn't what it was 100 or 200 years
ago, and there are probably more immediate routes to social change."
Nonetheless, Fattaruso's work succeeds on pure literary
merit. His first novel was praised by
critics and has been translated into German. His second book, Bicycle,
published in 2007, has been hailed as a "tiny masterpiece." His most recent
collection of poems is called Village Carved from an Elephant's Tusk.
For the past eight years, during and after his graduate
studies, Fattaruso has shared tools of the trade as a college instructor of
composition, creative writing, and literature -- an experience he hopes will
serve him well in law. "Trying to persuade a group of skeptical college
students of the modern-day relevance of Chekhov's plays might be a bit like
trying to convince an unsympathetic jury," he quips.
But the jury is not out on one thing: Fattaruso plans to
continue writing, although he concedes that the first year of law school could
cause writer's block. Will he incorporate law into this work? After all, models
exist for such convergence.
Several years ago, poet-novelist Brad Leithauser spoke at
Penn Law on how he used his Harvard Law background and early law practice as
grist for his writing mill. Noting that law is a rich subject for literature,
and one that has not been mined enough, he encouraged more lawyers to write
from experience.
Fattaruso likes that idea. He hopes the study and
practice of law informs his writing and makes it more complex, layered and
experiential. "I expect to maintain writing as a part of my life," says
Fattaruso.
Using five camcorders, members of the Visual Legal
Advocacy seminar have made a short video that captures the essence of the 2008
Commencement of Penn Law School. Held in the majestic Academy of Music, the
video shows the pre-processional preparations; the waving of the class flag;
and highlights from the speeches of Matteo Erede, the LL.M class
representative, Scott Reich, president of the J.D. class; Jared Genser, the
Honorary Fellow, and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. Before the graduates
know it, all of the names have been read, all of the diplomas have been
awarded, and they are on their way to new lives in the law. (Video)
Martha S. Jones, a professor at the University of Michigan and a former
public interest litigator in New York City, discusses "Overturning Dred
Scott v. Sandford: Everyday Histories of Race and Rights in American
Legal Culture," in Penn Law's Joint Visiting Scholars Lecture with the
National Constitution Center. (Video)
PHILADELPHIA
(Sept. 17, 2008) -- Piecemeal approaches to fighting global warming--like the
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative scheduled to go online next week--may be
worse than taking no action at all, says University of Pennsylvania Law School
Professor Cary Coglianese, who is director of the Penn Program on Regulation.
"There is good
reason to doubt the appropriateness of the current ad hoc, state and local
responses to climate change," Coglianese says. "At their most benign,
incremental reforms will have little or no effect on climate change. At the
worst, tighter restrictions in one area may lead to unintentional increases in
pollutants in a neighboring area with less stringent or non-existent
regulations."
The Regional
Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) unites the efforts of 10 northeastern states--Maine,
New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, New
York, New Jersey, and Maryland--to cap emissions for 233 power plants and charge
utilities for the carbon dioxide that the plants emit.
Taking small
steps based on accessible knowledge, or incrementalism, allows experimentation
and insurance against large scale policy disaster, Coglianese acknowledges. But
some so-called "green" alternatives can exacerbate climate change problems or
create other public health problems. The promotion of biofuels, for example,
led to clear-cutting rainforests; the wide use of compact fluorescent light
bulbs creates greater potential for environmental contamination than do
incandescent lighting.
In fact, he
argues, disjointed experimentation can entrench special interests and lull the
public into thinking progress is being made, making comprehensive policymaking
more challenging to achieve.
"It appears
better to wait to develop a comprehensive and effective climate change policy
rather than to continue succumbing to pressure to adopt incremental options
that will ultimately prove ineffective or otherwise problematic," he says.
It
would be more effective to control pollutants upstream via national, or better
yet, global, cap-and-trade policies that cover all greenhouse gases allowing
energy companies to trade and bank fuel allowances. Such caps can be phased in
over time to allow for planning and encourage innovation
"Climate change
requires large-scale, comprehensive policy," he says.
A research paper
on this topic by Professor Coglianese and 2008 Penn Law graduate Jocelyn
D'Ambrosio can be found at http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1151445.
PHILADELPHIA (Sept. 10, 2008) - Two of the nation's top law and business schools - the Wharton School and the Law School at the University of Pennsylvania - are launching an accelerated three-year program leading to both the JD and MBA degrees. "As the world becomes more complex, leaders must be able to integrate financial, legal, political and cultural issues like never before," said Michael A. Fitts, dean of Penn Law School. "From corporate scandals and globalization to crises in the housing and credit markets, there is an obvious need for people with advanced training in the law to be highly skilled in business, and there is no better place anywhere to study business and finance than the Wharton School. "This will become the leading way to educate tomorrow's leaders on Wall Street," he added. Thomas S. Robertson, dean of the Wharton School, agreed. "Business today operates in a complex legal and regulatory environment. Success requires the ability to navigate through this landscape," he said. "Penn Law, with nine Ph.D.s in economics and two MBAs on its faculty, is able to teach law informed by the considerations important to business. This three-year program and its demanding curriculum will be irresistible to top students, who also will have access to the exceptional networking and career opportunities that both Penn Law and Wharton provide." Students in the new program will spend the first year in Law School and the following summer in four Law and Wharton courses designed specifically for the three-year JD/MBA. The second and third years will include a combination of Law and Wharton courses, including capstone courses in the third year and work experience in law, business, finance, or the public sector in the summer between the second and third years. Penn's three-year JD/MBA is the country's first fully integrated three-year program offered by elite law and business schools on the same campus. The new program will target potential applicants who will typically have around two years of work experience, whether in law, finance, as entrepreneurs or in investment banking, private equity and related fields. "We expect that all sorts of people with business experience will apply," said Edward Rock, co-director of Penn's Institute for Law and Economics, the Saul A. Fox Distinguished Professor of Business Law, and an architect of the three-year program. "Some will want to pursue corporate law or corporate finance while others are likely to go in different directions. All of them will be able to navigate and lead in the worlds of business and of law, because this is the best way to prepare tomorrow's business lawyers." [View an interview with Professor Rock.] Applicants must be admitted by both schools in order to enroll in the three-year program. Students in the joint program will be required to meet the Law School's mandate to perform 70 hours of supervised legal work in a pro-bono setting in order to graduate. The new program solidifies Penn Law's position as the leading cross-disciplinary law school in the country. Penn Law already offers 10 other three-year joint degree programs that combine a law degree with master's degrees in bioethics, international studies, education and other disciplines. In total, Penn Law offers more than 30 joint- and dual-degree and certificate programs; one-half of its students take classes outside the Law School; and 70 percent of its faculty hold advanced degrees in fields other than law, including nearly one-half of the standing faculty holding a Ph.D. Wharton is the largest business school in the world, with more than 200 standing faculty in 11 departments, including finance, accounting, real estate, health care and more. The three-year JD/MBA program is expected to enroll about 20 students each year, beginning in September 2009. "For a student interested in business law today, it is essential to learn corporate finance," said Professor Rock. "In this combined program, students will be able to complete a full MBA including, if they wish, a major in finance, at the same time as taking numerous advanced courses in corporate law. The graduates of the joint program will be qualified to do just about anything at the boundary between law and business: corporate law; investment banking; private equity; hedge funds; real estate; and more." Paul S. Levy, a 1972 Penn Law graduate and a former managing director at Drexel Burnham Lambert, recalled that on his first day at Drexel, he was asked to calculate a bond's yield to maturity. He quietly called a friend with an MBA to help him figure it out. "A JD/MBA from Penn Law and Wharton will help graduates do much more than calculate yields," said Levy, now the senior managing director and founding partner of the New York-based investment firm JLL Partners, one of the leading private equity investment firms in the country. "Increasingly, lawyers are CEOs of major corporations, leading figures in private equity, investment bankers and so on. To prepare tomorrow's lawyers in ways that will enable them to move effortlessly into business and finance, it is clear that a variety of Wharton courses will serve as an invaluable supplement to the more traditional law courses."
Update: Scholar released
PHILADELPHIA (Sept. 3, 2008) - The
University of Pennsylvania Law School and two human rights groups today called
on the government of Iran to release an Iranian legal scholar scheduled to teach
in the U.S.
Mehdi
Zakerian, an assistant professor of human rights at an independent university
in Tehran, was reportedly detained by the
Iranian government in mid-August while he awaited U.S.
visa clearance to travel to Philadelphia as a
visiting scholar at the University
of Pennsylvania. The Iranian government has not released any
information about his location or condition, nor have any formal charges been
brought against him.
"Professor
Zakerian is a leading scholar on human rights in the Islamic world," said
Michael A. Fitts, dean of Penn Law. "His
scholarship is at the forefront of international and human rights law and we
remain hopeful that we can welcome Professor Zakerian to our classrooms."
Zakerian
was detained in Tehran
by governmental authorities on or about Aug.15, according to Iranian Human Rights Voice, which
reports that he has been "in a
ministry of intelligence detention center for the past two weeks." (http://www.ihrv.org/inf/?p=783).
Penn
Law was joined by the non-governmental organizations International League for
Human Rights and Human Rights Watch in calling for Zakerian's release.
Zakerian
is "one of the leading thinkers on human rights in the Middle
East whose writings have helped us all better understand the
relationships between human rights and Islam," said William Burke-White, a professor
at Penn Law and an expert in international law.
"Professor Zakerian's detention appears to be part of a broader
crackdown on independently minded academics at leading institutions across Iran."
Zakerian
is chairman of the Iranian International Relations Society and a senior
researcher at the Center for the Strategic Studies of the Middle
East. He is the editor of the journal, International Studies, published quarterly in both Farsi and
English, which is devoted to issues of international affairs and human rights. In 2002, Zakerian was a fellow at the Hague Academy
of International Law in The Hague, Netherlands.
PHILADELPHIA -- A University of Pennsylvania Law School
professor is introducing a way of teaching mediation law using an
interactive, multi-media approach, combining a text book with an
instructional DVD. Douglas Frenkel's
new book, "The Practice of Mediation: A Video Integrated Text,"
co-authored with James Stark of the University of Connecticut Law
School, is the first law-school textbook to include video, which shows
professional mediators plying their skills. "The video is very
powerful," Frenkel said. "Students retain what they see during their
homework, and their reactions to the video stand out in their minds." The
three cases featured in the book and six-hour long DVD are based on
cases Frenkel has mediated. On the unscripted videos, actors play the
roles of the disputants, and nine professional mediators handle the
disputes. One case involves a dispute between a client and contractor
in a kitchen renovation project. The others are child-custody and
personal-injury cases. The professional mediators include a former judge, lawyers and a psychotherapist. "We
wanted to celebrate different styles of mediation and showcase the
range of approaches, illustrate some of the key debates in the field
and examine how much influence a mediator should have," Frenkel said. The book will be used in law schools beginning in the fall.
PHILADELPHIA - The University of Pennsylvania Law School is strengthening its leading role in cross-disciplinary legal education by adding to its teaching ranks scholars in economics, history, psychology and law who were being recruited by several top law schools, Dean Michael A. Fitts announced.
"The integration of law and other disciplines pervades Penn Law," Fitts said. "More than 70 percent of our faculty hold advanced degrees in other fields; we sit shoulder to shoulder with some of the world's greatest medical, professional and graduate schools, and nearly 40 percent of our students take classes outside of the Law School.
"Tomorrow's lawyers need a solid foundation in the intersection between law and many other complementary fields in order to help us address virtually every fundamental issue facing our country today," Fitts added. "Penn Law's depth in cross-disciplinary education is unparalleled."
Three scholars are being appointed professors with tenure: Tom Baker, currently at the University of Connecticut School of Law; Jill Fisch, Fordham University School of Law; and Jonathan Klick, Florida State University College of Law. A fourth, David Abrams of the University of Chicago Law School, is joining Penn Law as an assistant professor.
In addition, two recent Penn Law graduates who are completing doctoral degrees at the University of Pennsylvania will join the Law School faculty through fellowship programs designed to attract some of the brightest minds into legal teaching. They are Penn Law graduates Karen Tani, who is completing a Ph.D. in American history, and Tess Wilkinson-Ryan, who is completing a Ph.D. in psychology. Both will teach at Penn Law for the next two years.
Pending university approval, all six of the appointments are effective July 1. The addition of four new tenured positions results in a 45 percent growth in the number of standing faculty since 2000; the size of the student body has remained fairly constant during that time, Fitts pointed out.
Taken together, Professors Baker, Fisch, Klick and Abrams "will contribute to our partnerships with Penn's Wharton School and will help advance our understanding the relationships between law and behavior," said Law Professor Reed Shuldiner, co-chair of the committees that recommended bringing the four to Penn. "We are delighted to welcome them to Philadelphia."
 Tom Baker, whom Shuldiner described as "the nation's preeminent young scholar of insurance law," is author of the 2005 book The Medical Malpractice Myth. In that work, Baker attacks the misperceptions behind the tort reform movement and proposes an evidence-based approach to medical liability reform. He argues, for example, that there are too many cases of medical malpractice, too few law suits filed, and that the insurance industry business cycle, not litigation, is the primary cause of the crisis in medical malpractice insurance. His work on moral hazard - whether and when it makes sense to insulate people or institutions from the consequences of bad decisions - has been described as "profound."
Baker also studies the relationship between liability and insurance in the corporate environment, including director and officer liability, and is director of the Insurance Law Center at Connecticut Law. Before entering teaching, he clerked for Judge Juan Torruella of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, practiced with the firm of Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., and served as an Associate Counsel for the Independent Counsel investigating the Iran-Contra affair.
 Jill Fisch, now at Fordham, "is in the top echelon of corporate law scholars and her talents as an academic entrepreneur will be important for our Institute for Law and Economics," Penn's Shuldiner said. Fisch is director of the Fordham Corporate Law Center and she writes extensively on securities regulation, corporate governance and federal courts. She is widely praised for her ability to bridge gaps between academia and the world of business.
Prior to joining Fordham she served as an associate with Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton and as a trial attorney in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
 Jonathan Klick, now at Florida State, is "an up-and-coming star in empirical law and economics," said Shuldiner. Klick's scholarship focuses on econometric studies of legal institutions and of health and safety regulations, in which he uses economic analyses to study the behavioral effects of new laws. He writings about health law and economics, litigation, discrimination, crime, education and other topics have appeared in journals about the law, economics, medicine and public policy.
Klick has served as a research fellow for the Department of Defense, the Council of Economic Advisors and the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
 David Abrams, an empirical economist now at the University of Chicago, focuses much of his work on criminal law, intellectual property and virtual economies. Among his research interests are attempts to measure and predict an attorney's lawyering capabilities and whether judges vary their sentences based on defendants' race.
"Having Jonathan Klick and David Abrams on one faculty brings together at Penn Law two emerging leaders in a new generation of empirical scholars who are illuminating the workings of the legal system in new and exciting ways," said Penn Law Professor R. Polk Wagner, co-chair of the faculty recruitment committee.
The two promising young legal scholars who are receiving fellowships to help them prepare for careers as law professors will have "the chance to participate in the intellectual life of the faculty, as well as the absolutely essential time to write," said Sarah Barringer Gordon, the Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and a Professor of History at Penn who helped facilitate creation of the fellowships.
 Karen Tani is a 2007 graduate of Penn Law and is a law clerk for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Guido Calabresi, a former dean of the Yale Law School. Her doctoral dissertation, "Litigating the American Welfare State, 1937-1976," explores how the courts and other adjudicative bodies have been used to clarify, justify, shape, and contest the patchwork of programs and policies that have comprised the American "safety net."
Tani is the recipient of Penn Law's Sharswood Fellowship, created by the Penn Law Review in 2007 to support research, writing and teaching by a Penn Law graduate who intends to pursue an academic legal career.
 Tess Wilkinson-Ryan is a 2005 graduate of Penn Law. Her scholarly interest is in judgment and decision-making, including negotiations. She is researching cases of contract negotiations in which prevalent moral norms inhibit individuals from pursuing legally permissible action that could be of financial benefit.
Wilkinson-Ryan is the recipient of a newly created Faculty Fellowship, which supports research, writing and teaching by a graduate of any law school who intends to pursue an academic legal career.
"Karen Tani and Tess Wilkinson-Ryan were attracted to Penn Law as students because of our cross-disciplinary opportunities," Gordon said. "Our fellowships will help them launch successful careers as law professors."
PHILADELPHIA – More than 100 leading scholars are selecting and debating the fundamental questions of modern criminal law not at professional conferences or on cable-TV news, but directly with one another via the web.
It is a law professor's version of "American Idol." Receive enough votes and you can defend your ideas against criticism from the judges (other law professors); too few votes, and you get kicked off the stage.
But instead of a new recording contract, the result will be a definitive book from Oxford University Press and a radically new approach to legal scholarship.
"Too often opposing advocates talk past each other," says Paul H. Robinson, the lead editor of Criminal Law Conversations and the Colin S. Diver Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. "You could say that this brings peer-review to legal scholarship, but it's more like peer-in-your-face."
Almost all legal scholarship occurs in one of four ways: thoroughly researched and extensively documented papers are vetted by student editors at law reviews and journals; they are presented at student- or faculty-organized conferences that offer little if any time for give-and-take among presenters; they become chapters in books that can take as long as four years to produce; or they become books from a single author.
Here comes a fifth, more interactive, way. Robinson and co-editors Kimberly Ferzan, professor and associate dean at the Rutgers School of Law—Camden, and Stephen Garvey, professor at Cornell University Law School, are guiding professors in a 10-month online effort that will result in publication of a book by Oxford University Press.
To date, 120 scholars have joined in the project. They are nominating several dozen scholarly works for discussion, based on the relevancy and compelling nature of the pieces. The author of a nominated work will produce a 4,000-word "core text" that summarizes his or her thesis, to which four to 10 scholars will then write 800-word criticisms, the length of a typical newspaper op-ed. The original author will reply to the critiques, with these "conversations" making up the published book.
All nominations, critiques and responses are managed through the Criminal Law Conversations website at Penn Law. Any full-time law professor anywhere in the world can join the website, nominate their own work or the work of others, and volunteer to comment on works that have been nominated.
Any visitor to the site can monitor the nominations, the essays and the responses. Leading topics under consideration include whether it can be proper for African-American jurors to acquit black defendants for racial reasons, whether the insanity and entrapment defenses should be abolished, and whether it's ever appropriate to jail a blameless person in order to prevent a crime.
"We are looking for well written, accessible arguments about enduring ideas that will have an audience beyond criminal law scholars and will remain interesting to readers for a decade to come," said Rutgers-Camden's Ferzan.
"We are doing this in light-speed for our business," added Cornell's Garvey. "Scholars already are excited by the give-and-take, and the papers and critiques will make these issues more accessible to students and others."
Nominations that do not generate sufficient interest from other scholars on the web site are dropped to inactive status. This has ruffled the feathers of some legal scholars who prefer the more traditional approach.
"Some professors who publish regularly in law reviews and appear at conferences may see tepid interest in commenting on their work from other scholars," said Penn Law's Robinson. "This project is an ultimate marketplace of ideas. We can't make people comment on arguments that they don't find engaging."
The flip side, and what will make the project successful, is that scholars whose works do generate interest find it hard to say "no" to writing a summary of their argument when many colleagues are volunteering to, well, take them on.
"It's human nature to be flattered when others think your thoughts are important, even if they disagree with you," Robinson said. "This effort is going to shape the future of legal scholarship."
Oxford University Press is considering applying this model to other areas of the law and other fields of scholarship, he added.
PHILADELPHIA - University of Pennsylvania Law School Dean Michael A. Fitts has named Professors Cary Coglianese and Charles W. Mooney Jr., as associate deans for academic affairs. Coglianese will serve for two years; Mooney, one year, in order to introduce staggered terms to the associate dean positions.
"Cary and Chuck are outstanding individuals who will offer a great deal to the institution both academically and organizationally, especially as we continue to expand our faculty, reform our academic program, and prepare for the construction of a new building," Fitts said.
Coglianese is the Edward B. Shils Professor of Law, a professor of political science, and founding director of the Penn Program on Regulation; he joined Penn Law in 2006.
"Cary enjoys an exceptional reputation for his interdisciplinary scholarship in environmental and administrative law," Fitts said. "He also has been an amazing academic entrepreneur both at the Kennedy School and here at Penn Law."
Mooney is the Charles A. Heimbold Jr. Professor of Law; he joined Penn Law in 1986.
"Chuck, who is an internationally recognized leader in commercial law reform, has performed legendary service to both the Law School and the University of Pennsylvania over the years," Fitts said. "Most recently he just finished a very successful term as president of the University Faculty Senate."
Coglianese and Mooney succeed professors Edward B. Rock and Wendell Pritchett as associate deans for academic affairs.
In a report commissioned by a Ugandan ambassador, one dozen University of Pennsylvania Law School students are recommending that the war-torn nation modify its eight-year-old Amnesty Act, form a truth and reconciliation commission with subpoena powers, establish a special domestic court to prosecute rebel leaders as an alternative to the International Criminal Court, and recognize the special needs of women and children as Northern Uganda emerges from two decades of civil war.
The students' completed their report one week after Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony failed to appear at a scheduled ceremony to sign the final cessation of hostilities agreement.
Uganda should "deny amnesty to those individuals who are most responsible for serious crimes, especially the planning and executing of widespread, systematic or serious attacks directed against civilians," the students write. "Under the current act, an individual can receive amnesty for crimes committed after the signing of a peace agreement.... The continuous extension of the Act all but encourages commission of crimes against the Government and undermines peace."
The students spent eight months studying the conflict--including two weeks in Uganda--and conducted five-dozen interviews with Ugandan victims, United Nations representatives, government officials, aid workers and journalists. In addition the students conducted extensive research into international criminal law and local customs related to justice in Uganda.
They undertook the project in response to an invitation from Mirjam Blaak, Uganda's ambassador to the Netherlands, to Penn Law Professor William Burke-White, who teaches a seminar about the provision of justice in the wake of mass atrocity.
"My seminar focuses on topics such as the interaction between domestic and international norms of justice and the tension between peace and justice," Burke-White said. "Often, achieving justice can be an obstacle to peace, because justice requires an accounting of misdeeds."
The conflict between the Ugandan government and the Lord's Resistance Army unfortunately presented the class with a textbook example of a brutal and devastating atrocity, said one of the students, Erin Valentine.
"The International Criminal Court's 2003 indictments of top LRA leaders have put significant pressure on the LRA to participate in the Juba peace talks and led to a relative peace in Northern Uganda." Valentine said. "But the preliminary agreement still must be converted into a final, comprehensive plan for a permanent peace."
Most of the criminal charges to date have been filed against LRA fighters; relatively few government soldiers have been tried in closed-door military tribunals. The government should disclose the results of those trials "in order to move beyond victor's justice to a comprehensive and just peace," said student Nicholas Bentley.
"Every one of our recommendations and every decision that Uganda makes has implications for the entire region because the conflict is reaching across borders," added student Alison Stein.
During their visit to Uganda, the students came somewhat close to talking with one of the LRA's leaders when a person with whom they were visiting placed a call to the rebel fighters. "But we only reached whoever it is who answers his phone when he's sleeping," said student Sarah Ashfaq.
"These students signed up last fall for a three-credit seminar," said the professor, Burke-White. "None of us imagined the long days or the all-night debates in Kampala as we compared notes on our interviews and talked about what we should recommend to the Ugandan government. This was an incredible effort by these students."
The trip was funded by a donation from Richard G. Corey, a principal of Kingdom Zephyr, a private equity fund investment manager focused on Sub-Saharan Africa, and 1974 Law School alumnus.
"I hope that the insights the students gained from their trip and the recommendations that they are making will contribute to a lasting peace in Northern Uganda," Corey said. "These young scholars are among our best and the brightest upcoming legal minds, and I was delighted to help them try to make a difference in the world."
The students presented their findings and recommendations to Penn Law School faculty and students in April and will make presentations to representatives of nongovernmental organizations; the U.S. State Department and Congress; and the Ugandan government in May.
PHILADELPHIA - An email making the rounds this month in the legal blogosphere from a female attorney laid off six days after her miscarriage - "What kind of people squander human relationships so easily?" - is the latest example of women lawyers using non-legal methods to advocate for their rights in the workplace.
"One would expect that women lawyers, when confronted with unfair hiring practices, unequal pay, or unjust choices, would turn to the legal system," writes Alison I. Stein, a student at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. "Nonetheless, a growing group of women lawyers are using the Internet - and, in particular, blogging - to resolve their disputes, address their personal grievances, challenge implicit male bias engrained in the profession, and share and obtain the information they need to become stronger bargainers in the workplace."
Stein will present her paper - "Women Lawyers Blog for Workplace Equality: Blogging as a Feminist Legal Method" - at the Joint Annual Meetings of Law and Society Association and Canadian Law and Society Association, May 30 in Montreal. She will be joined on a panel by law professors from City University of New York, University of Illinois, and Cleveland State University. Her paper also will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism.
"From cattle ranchers to diamond merchants to third-wave feminists ... groups of people opt out of the legal system - and instead use personalized and informal methods of rights assertion - as a means of 'overcoming the ineffectiveness' of state-sponsored laws," writes Stein.
For a much earlier, low-tech version of the same technique, Stein points to Myra Bradwell, who in 1873 was denied membership to the Illinois State Bar because "the natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for the many occupations of civil life."
Bradwell responded by establishing what became the country's most widely circulated legal newspaper, the Chicago Legal News, in which she "advocated for legal reforms in women's rights, child custody and in the legal system ... and transformed the public's perceptions about women practicing law."
But that transformation went only so far, Stein argues, because while nearly one-half of all law school graduates since 1992 have been women, only about 15 percent of law firm partners are female and women comprise only 25 percent of tenured law school professors, the career goal that Stein has set for herself.
Female lawyers are being "pushed" out of the profession by "inflexible jobs, lack of good, affordable childcare, and lack of paid leave to take care of sick children," she writes. In 2006, concern about the rates at which women opt out of the legal profession led a group of female law students from 10 of the nation's top law schools to create the blog "Ms. JD: Changing the Face of the Legal Profession," where members provide "networking opportunities, critical analysis of relevant news, and thoughtful discussions for women about their chosen fields of law." Newer, similar blogs include "Up to PAR" (a blog started by the Project for Attorney Retention) and "Building a Better Legal Profession."
Female lawyers turn to blogging because the law's ability to vindicate their rights is limited, their grievances are born out of institutional biases or mindsets, and because the anonymity of blogging lets them give voice to their complaints without risking their reputations.
For example, a 2007 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court (Ledbetter v. Goodyear) held that victims of pay discrimination must challenge that discrimination within 90 days. But "if a woman does not know that she is being paid unequally for more than 180 days after her first paycheck, her claim is barred," Stein writes. "By blogging about what various firms pay men and women, and by using blogs to discuss various ways in which to approach salary discussion, women are using an alternative method to address grievances that are legal in character."
Stein concludes: "Blogs like Ms. JD and Building a Better Legal Profession appear to have succeeded in leveraging market pressures to change business practices. Legal recruiting directors across the country have seen an increase in the numbers of men and women--both law students and lateral hires--who ask about work/life issues during the interview process."
Or, as the laid-off big-law female lawyer writes in her email circulating in the blogosphere: "We are human beings first before we are partners or associates."
|
