500 El Camino Real
Santa Clara, California 95053
408.554.4361
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Dear friends of the CSJ,
It is hard to believe we are already well into 2012; this has been a busy academic year. Following is a recap of the CSJ's fall activities and information about upcoming spring events. This academic year we welcomed alumni volunteer Laura Best, graduate fellows Aaron Hirsh and Monica Macaluso, and undergraduate student worker Lindsay Pineda to the CSJ team. Special thanks to Lindsay for her work on this e-newsletter.
Stephanie Wildman, Margalynne Armstrong,
Deborah Moss-West, and Sandra Vega
Center For Social Justice and Public Service
NEWS AND UPCOMING EVENTS
APPLICATIONS FOR 2012 SUMMER GRANTS and DONATION OPPORTUNITY
Volunteering is an integral part of the Center for Social Justice and Public Service. One of the main objectives of the Center for Social Justice is to provide funding for modest stipends for students who pursue summer public interest positions as volunteers. Last summer Santa Clara provided over $100,000 to more than 20 students, representing over 11,000 hours of free legal services in the community.
We are currently raising funds for law students applying for 2012 summer grants, including the Public Interest and Social Justice Law Board, Father Goda and Dean Mary Emery Summer Grants, as well as the LGBT Legal Issues. Click the link below for more information and application due dates. With the Benefit for Justice and the help from our generous donors, we hope to continue to provide law student summer grants that enable them to volunteer for public interest and social justice legal service organizations. We are proud to know that many of your careers began with the support of a Summer Grant from the Center for Social Justice; help us keep the program strong!
Support the Center
Information for 2012 Summer Grant Applicants
PRO BONO PLACEMENT PROJECT
In 2010 the Center for Social Justice and Public Service partnered with Public Interest Law Career Services (PILCS) to create the Pro Bono Placement Project. The Project is going strong.
The Project works to identify organizations that have a need for volunteers during the academic year. In fall 2011, 21 students were placed in Pro Bono positions. The Project allows students to serve community legal needs while also creating vital networking opportunities and on-the-job training that will be invaluable for their careers.
Participating organizations have included: Bay Area Legal Aid, Community Legal Services of East Palo Alto, Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, Senior Adults Legal Assistance, Silicon Valley Chapter of Americans for Safe Access, Pro Bono Project, Catholic Charities, and local courts, to name a few.
"At a time when legal services organizations and the courts are chronically underfunded, the Pro Bono Placement Project is a valuable initiative to help provide access to justice to low-income and other vulnerable communities locally. Our organizations are better off because we can work with the law students to serve more low-income clients. The law students are better off because they leave our organizations with the critical client skills and analytical tools needed to succeed as future lawyers. And the clients are better off because someone cared to help them in a desperate time of need."
- Sharon Bashan '05, Pro Bono Project of Silicon Valley
We are thrilled about the growing interest in this project. If you are a practitioner at a legal services organization that needs volunteers, please contact Deborah Moss-West at the Center for Social Justice and Public Service at dmosswest@scu.edu.
UPCOMING SPRING EVENTS
These events are open to both students and the general public, allowing the entire SCU community to take advantage of this unique opportunity.
Spring 2012 Social Justice Diversity Lecture
Thursday, March 22, 2012, at 4:00 p.m.
Nobili Hall, followed by Wine and Cheese Reception
Margaret Chon (Seattle University School of Law) Intellectual Property: What Do Diversity and Social Justice Have to Do with It?
1 hour MCLE credit
Margaret Chon is the Donald & Lynda Horowitz Professor for the Pursuit of Justice at Seattle University School of Law. In 2011–12, she will be a Global Emile Noël Research Fellow at the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law and Justice at New York University Law School, where she will explore dimensions of knowledge governance through international intellectual property law. Her current scholarship focuses on the relation of knowledge goods to the production of other global public goods necessary for human development and flourishing. A graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, she is also an alumna of the University of Michigan School of Public Health and Cornell University College of Arts and Science.
Spring 2012 Social Justice Workshop: The Death Penalty: Race, Poverty, and Disadvantage - led by Professor Ellen Kreitzberg
Thursday, March 29, 2012, Noon in Bannan 127
Angela J. Davis (American University Washington College of Law)
“Prosecutorial Discretion: The Power to Choose Death”
Angela J. Davis is a professor of law at the American University Washington College of Law, where she teaches in the area of criminal law. She is the author of numerous books and articles on racism in the criminal justice arena, prosecutorial discretion and criminal justice, including Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor (Oxford University Press, 2007), and co-editor of Trial Stories (with Professor Michael E. Tigar, Foundation Press, 2007). In 2002, Davis received the American University Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching, and in 2009 the American University Faculty Award for Outstanding Scholarship. She was awarded a Soros Senior Justice Fellowship in 2004.
Davis is a graduate of Howard University and Harvard Law School. She serves on the board of trustees of the Southern Center for Human Rights, the Sentencing Project, and the Peter M. Cicchino Social Justice Foundation. From 1991 to 1994, she was the director of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. Davis is a former law clerk of the Honorable Theodore R. Newman of the D.C. Court of Appeals.
2012 CENTER FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE AND PUBLIC SERVICE CONFERENCE: RACE, SEXUALITY, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
Friday, April 13, 2012, 8:30 am - 5:00 pm
Bannan Hall, Santa Clara University
7 hours of MCLE credit are available
This three-part conference, to be held at Santa Clara Law School on April 13, 2012, the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law in fall 2012, and University of Maryland School of Law in spring 2013, will explore questions about the relation between race and sexuality. These conversations seek to develop new knowledge and fresh scholarship through which deeper understanding of others, as well as new pathways for coalition and ourselves may emerge. While significantly an academic project, though not exclusively a project in law, the conferences aspire to generate concrete interventions for progressives to explore directions in politics, society, and law toward a more just future in both race and sexual equality.
Confirmed speakers:
- Patricia A. Cain (Santa Clara University School of Law)
- Adam R. Chang (law student at University of Hawai`i and LGBT activist)
- Martha Ertman (University of Maryland Law School)
- Angela P. Harris (UC Davis School of Law)
- Shannon Price Minter (National Center for Lesbian Rights)
- Mignon R. Moore (UCLA Department of Sociology)
- john a. powell (Moritz School of Law, Ohio State University)
- Russell K. Robinson (UC Berkeley School of Law)
- Margaret Russell (Santa Clara University School of Law)
- Dean Spade (Seattle University School of Law)
- Marc Spindelman (Michael E. Moritz College of Law)
- Gerald Torres (University of Texas School of Law)
- Francisco Valdes (University of Miami)
For more information, contact the Center for Social Justice and Public Service at socialjustice@scu.edu or 408.551.1720.
FALL 2011 HIGHLIGHTS
The annual Benefit for Justice brings together the legal community and Santa Clara Law for a night of socializing and fundraising to support the public interest and social justice summer work of law students.
This year's Benefit, on Friday, September 23, 2011 on the Santa Clara University campus, had a wonderful turnout of law students, professors, alumni, friends, families, and attorneys from the community. The Benefit was successful in large part due to the support and generous donations from the law faculty and staff, law alumni, the University, local merchants, and Bay Area sports teams. Donations were auctioned to the highest bidders in the live and silent auctions. The auction included superb items such as a trip to Lake Tahoe, game tickets to the San Jose Sharks and Oakland A's, autographed San Francisco Giants and San Francisco 49ers memorabilia, gift certificates to restaurants and spas, and some very unique faculty donations! This year's highest selling item was the annual "Karaoke and Dinner Party." This "party of the year" was hosted at Dean Cynthia Mertens' home with the karaoke provided by Federal Judge Jim Ware! The winning bidders and some lucky friends got the chance to sing their favorite songs with law professors, Dean Polden, and Judge Ware.
Benefit Chair Katey White, 3L, commented: "Santa Clara Law's commitment to social justice work is inspiring. The Benefit for Justice helps raise money to make summer grants possible for law students who do countless hours of pro bono work. This legal work impacts the lives of so many deserving people. It was an honor to be a part of this great event."
Social Justice Service Awards were given to three attorneys and one law student who have significantly contributed to the social justice and public interest community through their work or volunteer efforts.
Denise Abrams
Kazan, McClain, Lyons, Greenwood & Harley, PLC
Cherri N. Allison ’83
Alameda County Family Justice Center
Amanda Hawes
Partner, Alexander Hawes, LLP
Martin Kopp ’12
Funds raised from the Benefit give students the chance to take part in unpaid social justice and public interest positions over the summer – positions that can perhaps launch their public interest careers. We are thankful for everyone that provides monetary gifts and auction items to support this great cause each year.
FALL 2011 SOCIAL JUSTICE WORKSHOP - Suing Governments: Federal, State and Foreign
Professor David Sloss led the Fall 2011 Social Justice Workshop on Suing Governments: Federal, State and Foreign. This workshop discusses suits by private plaintiffs against government agencies and/or officers. Lawsuits of this type are an essential mechanism for holding governments accountable and promoting the rule of law. This class discussed some of the obstacles that plaintiffs face when they pursue cases against government defendants and ways in which lawyers overcome these obstacles. The course was divided into three parts: suits against state and local government defendants; suits against federal government defendants; and suits against foreign government defendants.
The seminar featured several prominent guest lecturers who are experts in this area of law. More on the Social Justice Workshops.
Speakers List:
- Don Specter (Prison Law Office) - Litigating Prisoners’ Rights
- Steven Watt (American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Program) - Extraordinary Renditions
- Shayana Kadidal (Center for Constitutional Rights - Guantanamo Litigation
- Natasha Fain (Center for Justice and Accountability) - Litigating Claims under the Alien Tort Statute
- Professor Beth Stephens (Rutgers School of Law) - Foreign Sovereign Immunity
In Fall 2011, the Center hosted Terry Rogers and Gerald Torres.
Visiting Practitioner - Terry Rogers
From Legal Services to International Development of the Rule of Law: A Perspective on Working for Social Justice
Ms. Rogersprovided a passionate presentation on her current work and how she came to do it. She began by inviting men and women to try on a burqa to illustrate the physical experience of Afghanistan women who wear this head/body covering. Ms. Rogers described how - after 17 years as a U.S. legal aid attorney - she started working on the international rule of law, how the work has affected her, and her ideas about how one can make a contribution to the world. View Ms. Rogers talk.
Diversity Lecture - Professor Gerald Torres, (University of Texas School of Law)
Legalities: The Experience of Justice and Plural Legal Systems
Professor Torres began with a moving tribute to the late Professor Derrick Bell, explaining how Bell’s influence shaped Torres’ own decisions as a lawyer. He spoke about how the law can affect people and offered an illustration of how theoretically neutral laws were used to segregate and limit African Americans. View Professor Torres’ Lecture.
Archive of past issues
Center for Social Justice and Public Service
Santa Clara Law
500 El Camino Real
Santa Clara, California 95053
Phone: (408) 551-1720 | Fax: (408) 554-5073
Center Website
socialjustice@scu.edu
