CIVIL RIGHTS ADVOCACY

PENN LAW FACULTY

PENN LAW FACULTY

POSSIBLE PRO BONO PLACEMENTS FOR STUDENTS INTERESTED IN CIVIL RIGHTS ADVOCACY:

Advancement Project
American Civil Liberties Union – National Headquarters; NJ; PA
American United for the Separation of Church and State
Anti-Defamation League
Arnold & Porter
Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund
Ballard Spahr Andrew & Ingersoll, LLP
Blank Rome Comisky & McCauley, LLP
Brennan Center for Justice
Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)
Center for Disability Law & Policy
Center for Individual Rights
Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights
City of Philadelphia Law Department – Civil Rights Unit
Committee of Seventy
Drinker Biddle & Reath, LLP
Fair Share Housing Center
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Inc. (FIRE)
General Counsel of the School District of Philadelphia
Greenfield Intercultural Center
Institute for Justice
International Legal Defense Counsel – International Recoveries
Juvenile Law Center
Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, & Feinberg, LLP
Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU)
Kline & Specter
Kohn Swift & Graf, PC
Krasner & Restrepo
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights
Lutheran Children and Family Service – Adult Education Program
Mann & Mitchell
National Center for Environmental Health Strategies
National Employment Law Project, Inc.
National Federation for the Blind of Pennsylvania
National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Inc.
National Workrights Institute
Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP)
New Jersey State Bar Association
New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, Inc.
Penn Housing Rights Project
Penn Law Spring Break Abroad
Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations
Philadelphia Police Advisory Commission
Public Defender Service – Washington, D.C. – Mental Health Division
Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia (PILCOP)
Puerto Rican Legal Defense & Education Fund (PRLDEF)
Racial Profiling Project
Reproductive Rights Project
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN)
Social Security Administration
Southern Poverty Law Center
Spear, Wilderman, Borish, Endy, Spear & Runckel
Street Law
Sugarman & Associates
U.S. Attorney’s Office – NJ Criminal Division; DE Civil Division
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs
Washington Legal Foundation
Zionist Organization of America’s Center for Law & Justice

PENN LAW COURSES

Appellate litigation is an integral and multifaceted part of the overall litigation process. It naturally includes the written and oral presentation of arguments in a properly-lodged appeal. It also includes the threshold questions of whether appellate jurisdiction exists as a matter of right and/or whether the appellate courts should exercise discretionary review. It includes assuring issue preservation and development of a complete record in the trial courts. It includes helping settle case in the context of appellate mediation. This course will introduce students to the roles performed by appellate counsel while providing opportunities to practice written and oral advocacy in the appellate setting. We will consider problems arising under both the Federal and Pennsylvania Rules of Appellate Procedure. There will be two written assignments (a short petition, and a longer brief). There will be a moot court exercise and consideration of how to effectively prepare for oral argument. Attendance and participation are obviously important. You may get an assignment in August due at the first class. Class is limited to 12 students, with preference given to 2Ls.

This clinical course examines first hand the challenging issues that confront lawyers who represent clients in civil disputes and litigation. Under close faculty supervision, students will serve as litigators in the Penn Legal Assistance Office, a teaching law firm providing legal representation to actual clients whose interests are directly at stake in state and federal court proceedings and in administrative agency hearings. Students will interview and counsel clients, develop case theories, negotiate with opposing parties, and provide legal representation in formal adjudicatory hearings under Pennsylvania's student practice rule. Students will be assigned their own individual cases in which they will have primary responsibility in a broad range of substantive areas, such as housing, social security disability, child custody and support, civil forfeiture, education, and discrimination and civil rights. The skills and experience obtained in this course will serve students throughout their professional careers, whether or not they choose to pursue litigation practice. In addition to their casework as lawyers, students will engage in classroom seminars twice weekly to obtain training in basic interactional skills (e.g., interviewing, counseling, negotiating) and to discuss in a collegial setting issues of case development, strategy and professional responsibility which arise in the Clinic's cases. Students will also participate in videotaped simulations utilizing trained actors as a means of enhancing skills development. Most importantly, each student will be assigned to an individual faculty supervisor with whom he/she will meet regularly on a one-to-one basis to receive close supervision and constructive feedback. Students will develop competence in basic lawyering skills as well as self-reflection, acquiring an ability to analyze what it is they do as lawyers and to learn from their own experiences.

The United States Constitution purports to restrain the actions of state and federal governments. When these restraints are transgressed, the injured parties and their representatives look to the federal courts for remedies. This course considers the legal doctrines that shape the courts' readiness to provide those remedies and the ways in which doctrines are likely to manifest themselves in the course of litigation. Topics include: the availability of damage actions, sovereign and official immunities, jurisdictional problems, abstention, Younger v. Harris and its emanations, standing and issues of institutional litigation. The format is Socratic. Exam will be a takeaway open-book essay.

This seminar changes every year to cover cases and legal issues that occur during the term and throughout the previous two years. Topics to be covered this semester will include the terrorism cases, the torture memos, gay marriage, the right to die, affirmative action, sentencing guidelines, the death penalty, election law controversies, and other topics that come up during the term.

This course will introduce the basic theories and legal principles underlying equal employment opportunity law in the United States. The course will focus on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act: the fundamental federal statutes prohibiting employment discrimination based on race, gender, religion, age and disability. Students will become familiar with the role of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the administrative prerequisites to bringing a discrimination case to court. Topics will include current developments in the law of affirmative action and sexual harassment, and an employer's duty to provide reasonable accommodations in the work place.

Penn Law School, in cooperation with Dechert LLP, a major national law firm, is offering a new and innovative opportunity for students who are interested in federal appellate litigation to participate in an appellate clinical externship at Dechert's Philadelphia office. Students will work closely with attorneys from Dechert’s appellate practice to identify issues for appeal, conduct research, draft briefs, moot oral arguments, and, whenever possible, argue their assigned cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (to the extent allowed by Third Circuit Local Rule 46.3 which permits students to argue civil rights and habeas cases on behalf of indigent prisoners). Under the supervision of Dechert Partner Cheryl A. Krause, in conjunction with the Penn Clinical program, students will participate in a 4-credit externship (requiring on average 12 hours per week from each student), gaining invaluable hands-on experience in federal appellate litigation. Should some (or all) of the students have their cases selected for oral argument in the spring term, they may, on an individual basis, be able to pursue independent study credit, if appropriate, for work related to preparing for and delivering their oral argument(s). This externship is only open to third year students since a student must complete four semesters before being eligible to make an appearance in the Third Circuit under the Court’s student practice rule. Enrollment is limited to four students. Students who sign up for the externship will be required to submit a statement of interest and other related information before final enrollment decisions are made.

This course examines the functions, powers and responsibilities of the federal courts, and considers their relationships with state governments and with the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. Topics covered will include justiciability; congressional authority over, and statutory and judge-made limits on, federal jurisdiction; Supreme Court review of state court judgments; federal common law; advanced topics in federal question jurisdiction; suits challenging state and federal government action, and immunities asserted in such suits; and federal habeas corpus. There will be an in-class, open-book essay exam.

This seminar will introduce students to the range of human rights lawyering undertaken today, grounded in the historical development of human rights law and contemporary case studies. The seminar will also look at the role critical theory has played and continues to play in shaping the development of human rights. In addition to examining the law and theory that underlies human rights movements, it will also provide students with an opportunity to critically examine the practice of human rights law simulated and actual human rights research and advocacy projects. Students will engage in research, writing and strategic planning, and the drafting of advocacy documents, and will have the opportunity to work in collaboration with different partner organizations in identifying and advancing their different human rights agendas. There are no prerequisites, though an introductory course in international law would be beneficial. Class participation is mandatory. In lieu of mid-term or final examination, students will complete a final project of their selection.

This course traces the dramatic rise of the individual as a subject of international law in the post-World War II era; specifically, as a beneficiary of fundamental rights recognized, protected and enforced directly by that system of law. It begins by laying historical foundations, showing how the individual was formerly treated as no more than a mere appendage of his/her State, and then considers the transformation effected by the United Nations Charter (1945), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and two International Covenants (1966). The evolution of specific areas of human rights will be considered, e.g., elimination of racial discrimination, elimination of discrimination against women, freedom of religion, elimination of torture, etc. In each case, three "eras" will be traversed: (a) that of general principles, in which the notion of the rights emerges at the general level; (b) that of specificity, in which the content of the rights takes shape and is defined; and (c) that of enforcement, in which the international legal system seeks to give practical effect to the rights it has recognized, at the national, regional and international levels.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the U.S. policy responses that followed, have posed a series of challenges to U.S. and international legal rules and structures regulating the interests of human rights and national security. For some, the threat posed by international organizations like al Qaeda has demanded a reassessment of whether domestic and international law provides governments enough authority and flexibility to meet the modern threat of mass casualty terrorism. For others, images of detainee torture and prolonged detention at places like Guantanamo Bay have raised questions of whether human rights legal protections, including those forged in the aftermath of World War II, can actually be effective in constraining government power in times of acute security threat. Most broadly, as the United States continues to grapple with policy dilemmas posed by terrorism and methods to counter it, U.S. actions shed light on this country’s relationship to international law, and on prospects more generally for the legal regulation of national security. With a view to exploring these themes, this course begins with an introduction to several substantive bodies of law most centrally implicated by these questions, including international human rights law, international humanitarian law (the law of war), and affirmative legal authorities and constraints defining U.S. national security powers under U.S. constitutional and statutory law. Topics to be addressed include the nature and binding extent of state human rights obligations, the extraterritorial application of human rights treaties, the applicability of international humanitarian law to U.S. military operations, and the powers of the U.S. executive in situations of armed conflict. The course then turns to consider international and domestic structures for human rights law enforcement, with special attention to those mechanisms that most regularly encounter disputes involving human rights and security. In the international realm, the course will explore the operations of institutions including the UN Human Rights Council and relevant treaty bodies, as well as key regional courts. This part of the course will also consider how the U.S. domestic system implements U.S. and international human rights laws – both through the courts, and through non-judicial mechanisms such as administrative agencies and NGOs. The final portion of the course turns to consider how these rules and structures have been applied to contemporary topics in human rights and national security law, including interrogation and torture; security detention; prosecution and trial; and rendition of suspects from one nation to another. Drawing on case studies from recent events, the course will analyze the legal implications of these practices, and explore options for addressing the policy dilemmas that remain. Student grades for the course will be based principally on a take-home final examination distributed during exam period. Students will also be evaluated on the basis of class participation, and on the completion of a short reaction paper (3-4 pages) responding to one of the readings assigned during the semester. There are no prerequisites for this course. Cross-registrations are encouraged.

This seminar explores major lawyering themes that confront public interest lawyers in diverse practice areas and settings. It is designed to integrate theory and academic analysis with practice themes emerging from students' public interest work experiences during law school. Students will closely examine the unique challenges posed by community lawyering; the efficacy of competing service delivery models; the impact of scarcity of resources and high volume practice upon the practitioner; the empowerment of the disadvantaged and powerless through law and education; litigation and non-litigation strategies; legal and non-legal restrictions on the work of public interest lawyers; professional responsibility issues; the role of the private practitioner in the delivery of legal services to the poor; and current themes and timely issues relating to access to justice and public interest practice. Requirements include mandatory attendance, class participation, oral presentations, and completion of a seminar paper. Students will write seminar papers on topics selected with the approval of the instructors. Paper topics may, but need not, relate directly to the particular issues discussed in class. The paper is expected to be of publishable quality and may, with additional development and instructor permission, be used to satisfy the senior writing requirement. The final several weeks of the seminar will include oral presentations by students on their papers. There will be no final examination. Enrollment is limited. If the seminar is oversubscribed, preference will be given to Public Interest Scholars and Sparer Fellows who register timely for the course.

This course will study legal material as expressive of, and as supportive of, differing concepts of equality and its role as a social value, rather than as simply part of a course of doctrinal development or a system of analytical reasoning. Its premise is that differences in those concepts are often not recognized, and the contestability and bases of one's approach to equality issues are often not acknowledged. Substantively, the course will include aspects of legal regulation affecting the status of racial, religious and ethnic "minorities," women, gay and lesbian people, and people perceived as disabled, as well as, the interaction between the law and inequality in the distribution of wealth and income. It will do this in part by examining "antidiscrimination," "equal protection," or "poverty" law, but will focus also on issues of equality implicit in such mainstream first-year subjects as Procedure and Contracts.

Over ninety percent of Americans live in urban areas. This course will examine many of the issues facing urban America through an analysis of the role of local government in the American legal and political system. We will consider federal, state and local statutes and case law that shape governmental institutions and affect the capacity of state and local governments to perform basic functions effectively, equitably, and in a politically accountable manner. Specific topics include: the formation of local and sub-local governments; the scope of local autonomy with respect to zoning, policing, and the provision of public services; federal-local, state-local, and inter-local relations; the relationship between cities and suburbs; and the impact of race on the structure of metropolitan governance.

What does it mean when a police officer says "if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you"? Since 1963, the Sixth Amendment right to counsel has been interpreted to require the states to provide counsel to any defendant who cannot afford to hire an attorney. The right to counsel thus became an entitlement right, which is very rare in the Constitution. In this seminar, we will explore the evolution and current parameters of the right to counsel, including when counsel must be provided, what quality guarantee, if any, the right includes, impediments to the full functioning of the right, and efforts to enforce the right through litigation. We will also explore how the right applies outside the standard criminal courtroom, including post-9/11 contexts such as Guantanamo and Operation Streamline. Evaluation will be based on class participation (25%) and a paper (75%).