Empirical Research Workshop: Conference Faculty
INTRODUCTION TO EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
University of Pennsylvania Law School
Gittis Center for Clinical Legal Studies
and
The Association of American Law Schools, Bellow Scholars Group
Philadelphia, PA
October 2 & 3, 2009
DAVID ABRAMS, MS., PhD., Assistant Professor of Law, Business and Public Policy, Penn Law
David Abrams is an empirical economist whose work brings modern econometric techniques to bear on a variety of topics in law and economics. His recent research has included investigations into incentives for innovation, attorney performance, the deterrent effect of incarceration, and the impact of race in criminal sentencing. In 2007, while at the University of Chicago Law School as an Olin Fellow, Professor Abrams was awarded the Coase Prize for the outstanding paper in law and economics. Additionally, Professor Abrams has begun a series of projects which make use of the unique experimental environment of virtual worlds to answer an array of economic and legal questions. He is currently working on two publications concerning the criminal justice system, Optimal Bail and the Value of Freedom: Evidence from the Philadelphia Bail Experiment (forthcoming) (with C. Rohlfs), and More Time, Less Crime? Estimating the Deterrent Effect of Incarceration using Sentencing Enhancements (forthcoming).
LEONARD E. BRAITMAN, Ph.D., Biostatistician, Albert Einstein Medical Center, Philadelphia
Leonard E. Braitman, Ph.D., is the Biostatistician at the Albert Einstein Medical Center, Philadelphia, where he works with faculty, residents, and fellows planning and analyzing medical research studies and teaches a course on Biostatistics in clinical research. Dr. Braitman is an author on more than 50 published articles. He was Statistical Editor at Annals of Internal Medicine from 1983 to 2008 and was Biostatistician at University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center and at Temple University Medical School. He holds a M.A. in Mathematics from Temple University and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago.
JEANNE CHARN, JD, Senior Lecturer in Law, Harvard Law School and Director, Bellow-Sacks Access to Civil Legal Services Project
Since 1999 Ms. Charn has directed the Bellow-Sacks Access to Civil Legal Services Project a research and policy effort aimed at making civil legal services more widely and effectively available. From 1970-1973, Ms. Charn was a legal aid lawyer. From 1973-1978 Ms. Charn was Assistant Dean for Clinical Programs at Harvard Law School and, with Professor Gary Bellow, founded and from 1979-2006 directed what is now the WilmerHale Legal Services Center, the largest clinical practice center at Harvard which also serves as a laboratory for approaches to service learning and for experiments in delivery of high quality and cost effective legal services. She teaches The Lawyering Process, Delivery of Legal Services, Legal Needs of Moderate Income Households, Poverty, Law, Policy and Practice; and Housing Law and Policy. Ms. Charn is a member of the Board of CLEA, the Advisory Committee to the International Legal Aid Group (ILAG), the ABA Standing Committee on Delivery of Legal Services, the AALS Bellow Scholar/Lawyering in the Public Interest Committee, and the Advisory Committee to CSALE.
ROSE CORRIGAN, PhD, Assistant Professor of Politics and Law, Earle Mack School of Law and Department of History & Politics, Drexel University
Rose Corrigan currently holds a joint appointment in the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Law at Drexel University, and is also Director of the Women’s Studies Program. She completed her PhD in political science at Rutgers University-New Brunswick with a focus on public law and women & politics. Professor Corrigan works at the intersection of policy studies and law and social movements, with special attention to the ways that feminist activists have used attempted to law to create social change. Her current research focuses on policy interventions concerning sexual assault, examining the impact of legal innovations on local victim service providers. Professor Corrigan's work develops state- level case studies by combining policy history, doctrinal analysis, and qualitative interview-based data. Her work has appeared in Law & Social Inquiry (“Making Meaning of Megan’s Law” [2006]) and she is completing a book manuscript entitled Talking to Strangers: The troubled Legacy of Feminist Rape Law Reform.
D. JAMES GREINER, JD, PhD., Assistant Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, Department Affiliate, Harvard Department of Statistics
Before returning to academia to earn his PhD in statistics, and then begin his teaching career, Professor Greiner practiced law for six years, three of which were in the Department of Justice, and three in private practice. His work involved employment discrimination, voting rights, and housing discrimination litigation. His current research focuses on statistics and litigation, including ecological inference models often used in cases under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act as well as the application of counterfactual frameworks of causal inference to civil rights issues. His current projects include an analysis of the flow of felony cases through the court system in Cook County, Illinois; a series of randomized studies on the effect of assigning legal counsel to indigent clients in administrative proceedings; and a set of exit polls to gather data for testing of new statistical models used infer voting patterns by racial/ethnic group membership. Professor Greiner is the author, inter alia, of, "Causal Inference in Civil Rights Litigation," 122 Harvard Law Review 533 (2008), and “Ecological Inference in Voting Rights Act Disputes: Where are We Now, and Where do We Want to Be?" 47 Jurimetrics 115 (2007).
SUSAN KINNEVY, PhD., Deputy Commissioner for Performance Management and Accountability, Philadelphia Department of Human Services
Formerly Co-Director, Center for Research in Youth and Social Policy, University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice, Dr. Kinnevy’s work generally focuses on child welfare and juvenile justice. She has a well-established relationship with the child welfare system in Florida, particularly in Broward County. Her first project in Florida was an evaluation of the centralized Florida Abuse Hotline in Tallahassee (Gelles, Cohen, Spigner & Kinnevy, 2001) that concentrated on screening decisions made by intake counselors. She then completed two three-year studies of the transfer of child maltreatment investigations from Department of Children and Families (DCF) to the Sheriffs Offices in 4 Florida Counties: Manatee, Pinellas, Pasco and Broward (Kinnevy. Cohen, Huang & Gelles, 2003; Cohen, Kinnevy, Huang & Gelles, 2003). She followed that with a supplemental study of the law enforcement transfer that conducted event history analysis of child welfare outcome data from the four experimental counties and their comparison counties: Sarasota, Lee, Hillsborough, and Palm Beach; the study also explored the criminal prosecution of child maltreatment offenders in Broward County and the indicators of investigative change at the Broward Sheriff’s Office (Kinnevy, Huang, Dichter & Gelles. 2005). Although the focus of Dr. Kinnevy’s research has been on child maltreatment investigations, she has also explored the intersection between investigations and service delivery (Kinnevy, 2002). Dr. Kinnevy also participated in a state-wide survey of juvenile court procedures in Pennsylvania (Harris, Kinnevy, Kirschner & Ellingsworth, 1999) and conducted a needs assessment of Latino/a juveniles in four Pennsylvania counties (Kinnevy & Erichsen, 2003).
ALAN M. LERNER, JD, Practice Professor of Law, Penn Law
Professor lerner directs the Interdisciplinary Child Advocacy Clinic, at The Law School, and serves as a Faculty Co-Director, at the University’s Field Center for Children’s Policy, Practice and Research. He is Co-chair of the AALS Clinical Section, Committee on Multi-disciplinary Education. In 2007, Lerner was named a Bellow Scholar by the Committee on Lawyering in the Public Interest of the Association of American Law Schools for his research project, “Identifying the Red Flags of Child Neglect to Facilitate Evidence-Based Focused Responses.” The Bellow Scholars Program is designed to honor innovative anti-poverty or access to justice projects that encourage collaboration and empirical analysis. At the Fifth International Congress of the Global Alliance for Justice Education, in Manila, 2008, Lerner led a workshop, Empirical Research for Justice, with Lan Rongjie, Chengdu (China) University Faculty of Law, Panarairat Srichaiyarat Director of the Legal Clinic at Chiang Mai University, Thailand, and Bruce Lasky of Bridges Across Borders. Before joining the Pen Law faculty, Lerner practiced law for 25 years, focusing his work on employment counseling and litigation. During that time he was twice chosen by his peers to be listed in Best Lawyers in America. His publications include, Teaching Law And Educating Lawyers: Closing The Gap Through Multidisciplinary Experiential Learning, INT’L J. CLINICAL LEGAL EDUC. 96 (2006) (with Erin Talati); and Using Our Brains: What Cognitive Science Teaches About Teaching Our Students to Make Ethical, Professionally Responsible Choices, 23 QUINNIPIAC. L. REV. 643 (2004).
DEAN HILL RIVKIN, College of Law Distinguished Professor, University of Tennessee College of Law
Dean Hill Rivkin is College of Law Distinguished Professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law. He has taught as a Visiting Professor at UCLA, Maryland, Harvard, and American. He was Director of the AALS Equal Justice Project and has been a member of the AALS Bellow Scholar Committee since its creation. His scholarship focuses on case studies of public interest litigation.
REBECCA SANDEFUR, PhD., Assistant Professor of Sociology, Stanford University
Professor Sandefur is associated with the Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality. She is a member of the Publications Committee of the Pacific Sociological Association, and a Trustee of the Law and Society Assoc. Her publications include, (forthcoming) “Lawyers' Pro Bono Service and Market-Reliant Legal Aid.” In Private Lawyers in the Public Interest, edited by Robert Granfield and Lynn Mather. Oxford University Press; (forthcoming) “The Fulcrum Point of Equal Access to Justice: Legal and Non-legal Institutions of Remedy.” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, and “Access to Justice: Classical Approaches and New Directions.” In Access to Justice, edited by Rebecca L. Sandefur. Sociology of Crime, Law, and Deviance, Volume 12. Bingley, UK: Emerald/JAI Press.
COREY SHDAIMAH, LLM, PhD, Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, and Academic Coordinator, Joint MSW/JD Program, University of Maryland, Baltimore
Dr. Shdaimah’s research and writing focus on the intersection of law and street-level social policy and on researcher-activist collaborations. She is particularly interested how lay people and professionals such as social workers, lawyers, and judges work in and around policies that they find limiting and, sometimes, oppressive. Current research projects include an evaluation of the context for school attendance problems and truancy for the Maryland Judiciary; a qualitative exploration of the views of women engaged in prostitution regarding efforts to establish a court-based diversionary program in Baltimore; and an evaluation of the Neighborhood Defenders’ Project, a holistic approach employed by the Montgomery County and Baltimore City Maryland Public defenders’ office. Her recent book, Negotiating Justice: Progressive Lawyering, Low-Income Clients, and the Quest for Social Change, was published by New York University Press. She is currently collaborating with Sanford F. Schram and Roland Stahl on the forthcoming Change Research: A Case Study of Social Work Research and Housing Advocacy, to be published by Columbia University Press.
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