Skip to main content area Skip to institutional navigation Skip to search Skip to section navigation

Regina Austin L'73

William A. Schnader Professor of Law

Regina Austin

Regina Austin pursues her interest in the overlapping burdens of race, gender, and class oppression in traditional legal scholarship, as well as in her work on documentary films. Continue reading… Regina Austin pursues her interest in the overlapping burdens of race, gender, and class oppression in traditional legal scholarship, as well as in her work on documentary films. She is the director of the Penn Program on Documentaries & the Law, which holds an annual Visual Legal Advocacy Roundtable for public interest lawyers, hosts screenings of law-genre documentary films throughout the year, and maintains a national repository of dozens of clemency videos as a resource for attorneys representing capital defendants.
 
In addition to making extensive use of documentaries in her traditional courses, Austin teaches a visual legal advocacy seminar in which the students make videos on behalf of actual public interest clients and causes that premiere at the annual Rough Cut Video Festival. [Hide]

Expertise

  • Torts
  • Documentary Film Studies
  • Feminism
  • Insurance Law
  • Law and Social Stratification
  • Race Relations

Articles and Book Chapters

Ed Baker, Colleague, 12 U. PA. J. CONST. L. 939 (2010).

Documentation, Documentary, and the Law: What Should Be Made of Victim Impact Videos? 31 CARDOZO L. REV. 979 (2010).

Women’s Unequal Citizenship at the Border: Lessons from Three Nonfiction Films about the Women of Juarez, in GENDER EQUALITY: DIMENSIONS OF WOMEN’S EQUAL CITIZENSHIP (Linda McClain & Joanna L. Grossman, eds., 2009).

Sapphire Bound!, in THE REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS READER: LAW, MEDICINE, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF MOTHERHOOD (New York University Press: 2008).

Super Size Me and the Conundrum of Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Class for the Contemporary Law-Genre Documentary Filmmaker, 40 LOYOLA L.A. L. REV. 687 (2007).

The Next “New Wave”: Law-Genre Documentaries, Lawyering in Support of the Creative Process, and Visual Legal Advocacy, 16 FORDHAM INTELL. PROP. MEDIA & ENT. L.J. 809 (2006).

Of Predatory Lending and the Democratization of Credit: Preserving the Social Safety Net of Informality in Small-Loan Transactions, 53 AM. U.L. REV. 1217 (2004).

"The Shame of It All": Stigma and the Political Disenfranchisement of Formerly Convicted and Incarcerated Persons, 36 COLUM. HUMAN RIGHTS L. REV. 173 (2004).

Kwanzaa and the Commodification of Black Culture, BLACK RENAISSANCE/RENAISSANCE NOIRE (2004).

Back to Basics: Returning to the Matter of Black Inferiority and White Supremacy in the Post-Brown Era, 6 J. APP. PRAC. & PROCESS 79 (2004).

Speaking Volumes: Musings on the Issues of the Day, Inspired by the Memory of Mary Joe Frug, 12 COLUM. J. GENDER & L. 660 (2003).

Step on a Crack, Break Your Mother's Back: Poor Moms, Myths of Authority, and Drug-Related Evictions from Public Housing, 14 YALE J.L. & FEMINISM 273 (2002).

Mary Jo Frug's Postmodern Feminist Legal Manifesto 10 Years Later: Reflections on the State of Feminism Today, 36 NEW ENG. L. REV 1 (2001) (with Elizabeth M. Schneider).

Race Statistics, Disparate Impact Analysis and the Economic Disenfranchisement of Minority Ex-Offenders, 4 RACE & SOC'Y 177 (2001).

“Not Just for the Fun of It”: Governmental Restraints on Black Leisure, Social Inequality, and the Privatization of Public Space, 71 S. CAL. L. REV. 667 (1998).

More publications can be found here.

Working Papers

"Not Just a Common Criminal": The Case for Sentencing Mitigation Videos, U of Penn Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 14-19. (forthcoming)
[View Document]

“This Too Takes a Village”: The Importance of Social Resources to Sustained Black Home Ownership as Illustrated in Three Documentary Films (forthcoming)

Race and Law-Genre Amateur Documentaries: Lessons Learned When the Subaltern Shoots

Documenting Injustice: Katrina, Class, and Visual Legal Advocacy

“Black People’s Money”: A Speculative Essay on the Interaction of Law, Economics, and Culture in the Context of Race, Gender, and Class

Research Areas

  • Torts
  • Insurance
  • Law & Cultural Studies
  • Minority Feminism
  • Law-Genre Documentary Film Studies (Criticism and Production)

Positions

Penn Law - William A. Schnader Professor (1996- ); Professor (1990-96); Associate Professor (1983-90); Assistant Professor (1977-83)

Law Clerk to the Hon. Edmund B. Spaeth, Superior Court of Pennsylvania (1973-74)

Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis - Associate (1974-77)

Visiting Professor - Columbia, Brooklyn, Stanford, Harvard, Fordham

Courses

  • Torts I
  • Cultural Conflict and the Intentional Torts
  • Visual Legal Advocacy
  • Documentaries & the Law

⇱ Return to Top