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. 

"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.

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.